Our Servant King
Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, year B
Bible reading: Isaiah 53:2b-3,5
If you travel the world you will undoubtedly find signs and symbols of other world religions everywhere you go. In most cases, the examples are far from subtle.
Travel to Bangkok in Thailand and you’ll see the famous giant statue of the Buddha – the big golden, smiling face looking very much enlightened and at peace.
Travel to India and you’ll find a plethora of gods and goddesses in statue form. While we were visiting Mauritius 2 years ago we drove past an impressive 30 metre high, bronze statue of Shiva – a sign of the dominant Hindu presence on the island.
Or you can go to Mecca and see the great, black cube-shaped Kaaba. What an extraordinary and grand sight it must be – to see all the Muslims dressed in white, making their way around the Kaaba in prayer having made their hajj – their pilgrimage to that holy city.
Or go to Egypt and visit the mighty pyramids, or see the great awe inspiring Sphinx – the largest monolith statue in the world – proudly staring out over the desert.
Or to Pyongyang in North Korea – where the political leader is the closest thing to God – and there he is! People gather around to bow in respect to the giant statue of their venerable leader, and woe to anyone who shows any disrespect.
All of these symbols convey power, majesty and a certain awesome beauty – qualities which most humans consider befitting when attempting to portray deity.
But then you visit a Christian church. And though the building itself may be large and grand, you take a stroll down the stone aisle, towards the altar, and you look up, only to see a dying man nailed to a wooden cross. What’s happening with that?
And you might hear Christians singing a hymn with the line: Would you know what I most prize? Jesus Christ the crucified.
Or When I survey the wondrous cross
, or Nothing but the blood of Jesus
, or This is our God, the servant King
.
And you might ask yourself, ‘What is it that brings Christians here to worship this God – represented by this rather pathetic figure? Couldn’t they at least portray God brooding over the world showing the power of his creative might, or with scales in his hands ready to judge between good and evil?’
That would certainly give Christianity a fighting chance in an age where it has to compete with both growing secularism and a whole swag of other religions with far more attractive faces.
There is nothing pretty about Christianity. There is nothing ‘nice’ about the God-man on the cross. Good, yes, but not necessarily nice. Apparently a number of churches have realised this, and have chosen to ditch any semblance of the crucified Lord – ‘Chuck it out! It’s not nice. In fact it’s downright offensive to our target clientele. Give them what they want in a religion: they want a sense of power, strength, success, dominance, not this embarrassing symbol of defeat, weakness, shame.’
And already you can see that some churches are more interested in presenting Christ as ‘nice’ rather than telling it like it is – God’s Son Jesus died for the world. There is no God but the one who chose to suffer and die, and that at the expense of his outer beauty and coming across as nice.
The apostle Paul, thankfully, was not one to compromise. He wrote to his friends in Corinth,
When I came to you, brother and sisters, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles…
And also to other friends in Galatia: Far be it for me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…
And still many would ask, ‘What’s with all that?’
Why would anyone come to devote their lives to this Jesus, to pray in the name of this God who, when he visited earth in person, had no beauty or majesty that we should desire him; the same one who surprised all his power-hungry followers when he announced, For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many
?
The answer is this: we come to Jesus Christ precisely because of what his abasement and horrible death meant for all people.
He is divine love, and he was willing to shed His own beauty and glory for the sake of sinners like me, and like you, and like these little babies gathering to get wet at their baptism, and like the boat people, and like Bin Laden, and the wretches that have him pinned down in the mountains fighting what many consider to be a futile war, and like all those people dragging each other to court and who are never satisfied with the penalty dished out nor the compensation in their bank accounts, or like those children who are victims of their parent’s ongoing feuds or substance abuse, or like the victims of earthquake who have no answers, but ‘Inshallah’
–it is God’s will.
In short, Jesus died for all the ugliness we see around us daily, an ugliness that can’t remain hidden for long – even though society crams it under the glossy façade of a chocolate-coated way of life that denies human sinfulness and is repulsed by suffering. But such ugliness like this cannot be denied, because it eventually, eventually raises its ugly head – if no-where else, then certainly when we breath our last.
We come to Christ because he has entered into that same death we all share, in order to reverse it and disarm it. We come to him because none of the would-be gods is with us, near us in our suffering, acquainted with the grief that visits us all in either great or small measure. Exclusively in Jesus Christ the crucified we find the both divine sympathy and empathy flowing from his head, his hands, his feet.
No-where else in the Old Testament do we have such an accurate and detailed picture of our Saviour Jesus than here in Isaiah 53. The suffering servant can be none other than but Jesus, he can’t be anyone but the guy on the cross… even though this was written about half a millennium before the squawks of his first breath broke the silence of an otherwise quiet night in Bethlehem.
His great test was to stay on task. Satan would tempt him to take the glory road. Peter, likewise, would try and keep him from the cross. Today we heard how James and John also had their minds set on power. But the Lord of creation instead chose to go to Calvary.
And though it was God the Father’s will to subject Jesus the Son to suffering, it was a plan driven by love for the world. But it was also a plan that would finish on a high note. Beauty was restored to that forlorn and despised figure when Jesus rose again from the tomb – fulfilling these words from Isaiah: when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of his travail and be satisfied.
When our Lord uttered the words It is finished
and died, he announced that payment had been made for us. But he also was rewarded when he rose, and saw the outcome of his sacrifice – the light of life, which he shares with all who aren’t ashamed of him.
That’s why we lift high the cross wherever Christians gather around the world. That’s why it is the most significant symbols of our faith. It reminds us of the unstoppable love of God, the moment of our salvation, the God who reigns on high but was not too aloof to stoop down low and serve humanity, and restore beauty and hope where otherwise there was none.
The cross also reminds us of our journey – a life now devoted to serving others; a life ready to put aside self-glory and walk in Jesus’ shoes for the sake of others.
This is our God the Servant King.
He calls us now to follow him
– to bring our lives as a daily offering,
of worship to the Servant King.So let us learn how to serve.
And in our lives, enthrone [Jesus Christ].
Each other’s needs to prefer – [for when we do that,
it is Christ the Lord and Saviour] we are serving.