If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
10 May. Isaiah chapters 49-53
This is a lengthy passage of verse, beginning and ending with two of the “songs of the Servant”. These are usually identified as prophecies of Jesus Christ, and chapter 53 in particular is seen as describing his crucifixion, which Christians believe was a willing sacrifice by a sinless man, according to the will of God who lived in him, to settle with God the debt owed to him by all people for their sins. There is far more in them than I can look at in detail now. Many books have been written and sermons preached to try and explain this – the commentary I am following devotes 21 pages to these chapters – but few as poetically as the “second Isaiah” (whoever that was) writing over five hundred years before the event.
Many of the phrases in these chapters have been used by composers over the years, from the sublime music of Handel in his “Messiah” (“he gave his back to the smiters”; “surely he has borne our griefs an carried our sorrows”; “all we like sheep have gone astray”), to contemporary songwriters (“how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings”; “led like a lamb to the slaughter in silence and shame”; “the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion” [=Jerusalem]) – and many more. For the promises here are not only the restoration of the tribe of Israel/Judah to the Holy Land for a second time, but of the reconciliation of all creation to God once and for all time.
In between these servant songs are words addressed, at least in part, to the people in captivity in Babylon. Did they rush back to Jerusalem at the first invitation of God? No, it seems they needed much encouragement. To many of them who had been born there the “old country” held no attractions; like all refugees, they were crushed and in despair at ever being a free people or having their own home again; the journey seemed daunting, and much hard work would be needed to rebuild the ruins. Despite those setbacks, it was their only hope.
But these passages contain many hints that it is not only the Jewish people who were being addressed, but the whole world. People would flock to join them from all directions, and would together become witnesses to the Servant’s redeeming love. Together they would be a renewed Israel that would be a “light to the Gentiles” (a phrase repeated when Jesus was dedicated to God as a baby). This is what we mean by the Church – all those who have been drawn from whatever held them captive, by the love of God shown in his suffering servant, to join his people in the new Jerusalem.
Like the captives here, people rarely walk into a church the first time they hear of Jesus and ask to be baptised and join the community of the redeemed. The Christian faith seems strange to those who were not brought up in it, it needs to be explained with many words of encouragement, and for many it is a journey of many years. Yet we equally believe that Christ is the only way to God, and that those who make this journey to faith in Jesus will find themselves in the “new Jerusalem”, the Kingdom of