A Servant Soul
(based on Isaiah 42:1-9,
Matthew 3:13-17)
If you ask a child, "What do you want to
be when you grow up?" it's unlikely you'll receive the answer, "I
want to be a servant." Being a "Servant"
is not found on any of the lists of hot new careers. Yet servanthood and being a good and faithful
servant is at the essence of our faith and who we are as Christians. In fact, God chose the very image of the
servant to describe the One God would send to give his life on our behalf.
In our Old Testament reading this morning from Isaiah
42, the servant is linked closely with God: "Here is my servant, whom I
uphold,/my chosen, in whom my soul delights". Further, "I have put my spirit upon him”,
someone whose very identity and purpose is derived from God who has chosen that
person for service or a particular role.
But what is that role? I think
it’s pretty well defined in the first few verses of Isaiah 42: to bring justice
to the nations and on earth. But not
justice that wields a sword, but rather one that does the work of justice with
care, gentleness, and perseverance. Justice
will be brought about without the servant's voice having been raised, without a
wick being snuffed out, and without the servant having been overcome by the
size or difficulty of the mission. The images of restraint that Isaiah uses here
like a bruised reed unbroken, or a dimly lit wick unquenched, give new meaning
to the word grace. If justice is the
mission, it is not to be marched in by a lock-stepping holy army, but cupped in
hand, cradled in arms, shielded by the body.
In Frederick Buechner's fictional account of
Jacob, The Son of Laughter, God is sometimes called "the Shield,"
meaning that God "is always shielding us like a guttering wick...because
the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live
to warm its hands at. It is a fire in
the dark that will light the whole world home." It’s that image of cupping your hand against
the breeze, protecting us or shielding us, so that the candle’s flame or our
flame does not go out. I love that
image.
This profile of identity in Isaiah for the
servant leaves us with a picture that is both inspiring in its tenderness and
exemplary for any life of faith. Not only does the image of such a strong yet
gentle worker of justice give us pause to contemplate, it also becomes a model
for how we should be living our own lives after Christ.
This passage from Isaiah coupled with the
passage from Matthew regarding Jesus’s baptism works really well together to describe
the meaning and purpose of the servant in whom God has put God’s own Spirit. That spirit, Isaiah claims, leads the servant
to bring forth justice on the earth—not through power and might, but through
gentleness and a tireless pursuit of God’s redemption and liberation for all
the peoples of the earth.
So, once we get to Matthew and this idea of
servanthood, "What did baptism mean to Jesus?" I think it was an experience of blessing for him.
God said, "You are on the right track. Continue with my blessing."
The voice of blessing is one that many people take for granted. Many people
wander through life, like Esau, searching for a blessing that is never
pronounced.
But being blessed isn’t something that is
simple given, it also involves responsibility. Jesus lived in obedience after receiving the
blessing. He took the hand he had been
dealt and he played it. That's what we
can do. That may be all we can do. We
must be like Jesus and let nothing deter us. The crowds wanted to make him king. He resisted. His best friend wanted to talk him out of it. He refused. Judas tried to force another course. Jesus chose to play the hand God had dealt. We can do the same. Parents and other significant adults will fail
to bless us even under the best of circumstances. Other times we will not feel worthy of blessing.
That is true—we're not worthy. As in
Jesus' most famous story, the parent waits to bless whether or not we are
worthy. God's presence depends not on
our faithfulness but on God's. So we
continue.
Keith Miller asked, "Who gives you your
grade?" Who is the audience to whom
we play out the drama of our lives? It
can be an audience of the One who will never fail to be with us as we carry out
God's will. John Claypool quotes a rabbi
who once said, "When I stand before God, He will not ask me why were you
not Abraham, Jacob or David?" He
will ask, "Why were you not Bernie?" In 1969, Bob Whelan, six two and two hundred
pounds, departed for Vietnam. Within a
year this fine athlete returned weighing eighty-seven pounds. A land mine had blown away both legs. A long recovery followed. Never did he bow to despair or see himself as
unblessed. "Before," he said,
"I had one hundred options. Now,
only five, but I'll make the best of those five."
In 1990, Bob Whelan completed the Boston
Marathon. He covered all twenty-six miles-plus running on his hands and
arms—hopping much like a frog. When he crossed the finish line, few dry eyes
were seen. He is a winner. He chose to look to God in gratitude for what he
was, not what he was not. He played the hand he was dealt. So can we, for each
of us already has the blessing. (Gary L. Carver)
Baptism is serious business. A National Public Radio story a few years back
told of a seventy-one-year-old Frenchman who was seeking to be de-baptized. The man, Rene LeBouvier, formally petitioned
French church officials to annul or invalidate his baptism. He had been raised in a very religious family,
and his mother dreamed that one day he might become a priest. Yet, in the 1970s, like many of his
counterparts, Rene dared to explore intellectually beyond the confines of his
strict Catholic, religious community, and that was the beginning of the end as
far as his faith was concerned.
After years of attempting to have his name
removed from church rolls and baptismal records, Mr. LeBouvier learned that
this simply was not possible. He then
decided to take the church to court. A
magistrate found in his favor, but the church appealed. It was not possible to erase history, they
argued, nor to deny that a sacred rite had taken place, vows and eternal
declarations made.
Baptism is more than simply a rite of passage
or a religious ceremony; it’s one of life’s defining, threshold-crossing moments.
It’s a destiny moment when, whether you
chose it or not, you were declared God’s beloved “and marked as Christ’s own
forever,” as the liturgy poetically states. Nothing you can do, even renouncing your
faith, can ever nullify that fact. This
is why baptism is serious business.
In baptism we claim that everything changes. That’s what happened at Jesus’s own baptism. It was literally a “heavens opening” moment.
Imagine Jesus as Matthew depicts him—curious, searching, insightful,
precocious. Being spiritually
adventurous, he decided to go down by the river, where so many others were
flocking to hear his relative, John, preach a fiery message, and they were
being baptized into a new relationship with God. There is so much we cannot know about that day
and what motivated Jesus to join John and the others, but what we do know is
that at the moment of his baptism, everything changed. He went down to the river that day searching,
longing, open, and he came back a changed man. He discovered, or had confirmed,
his true identity and the true nature of his relationship to God. The church has always claimed that in baptism
the same is true for each of us.
This is why Mr. LeBouvier cannot be
de-baptized. What happened to him as a
child in baptism had the essence of God in it, regardless of how broken the
institution that celebrated this truth might be and regardless of Mr.
LeBouvier’s later rejection of God’s eternal declaration about him. His baptism cannot be undone because it was
God’s doing in the first place. The good news about our God is that God’s
choice to love us so fully, and to claim us eternally, cannot be undone.
- Javier
Viera
“In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger,
and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that
bridges all divides and heals all wounds.” (Henri Nouwen)
That is the role of the servant soul. Let us follow the example of Christ and be
servants in this world of ours. Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
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