"The Suffering Servant"

Sunday Mass Readings

Both the first reading and second reading talk about the “suffering servant.” There are four “servant songs” in the book of Isaiah that talk about the ideal servant leader: Is 42:1-7; (b) 49: 1-6; (c) 50: 4-9; and (d) 52:13 – 53:12). The servant leader is specially chosen by God to bring God’s saving grace to his people. The suffering servant accomplishes this mission by taking upon himself the suffering of the very people he comes to redeem. Today’s first reading is taken from the third of these “servant songs.” There are many characteristics of the “suffering servant.” First, the servant willingly accepts his call to be the servant of God. Second, the servant of God is persecuted at the hands of the very people he is serving. Third, in spite of this irony, the servant puts his trust in God.

Christians identify Jesus as the “suffering servant” par excellence. In the second reading from the letter to the Philippians Jesus is presented as the suffering servant who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2: 7-8). Because of this, Jesus has now become the salvation of everyone of us, who bend our knees at the name of Jesus (Phil 2:10).

The life of the suffering servant has much to teach us. We learn that evil is a part of the human condition. In some way, we all experience the consequences of the sinful human condition. We too experience the pain of betrayal, illness, age and death. But we also learn that there are things over which evil has no hold – the capacity within us to take all the evil we experience and smother it within us with the power of God. Like Christ, we have the choice to take in the evil in the world and transform it into good. Over that power, evil has no control. We do not have to return evil with evil. Instead, we can turn hate into love, resentment into forgiveness, betrayal into loyalty, death into life. This is the most powerful way of being Christ-like in the world – taking all the pain we encounter and make it an opportunity for salvation.