Despised and Rejected

Nobody noticed him. Nobody thought he was special. People looked away when he walked by. And yet, Isaiah says, he was carrying something for every one of them.

This is the fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs, the longest and most surprising. In the earlier songs, God's servant was gentle, faithful, a light to the nations. Now Isaiah tells us how the servant will do his work. And it is not how anyone expected. It begins with God speaking. “Behold, my servant will deal wisely. He will be exalted and lifted up, and will be very high.” Then, immediately, a shock. Many people were appalled at him, because his appearance was so marred. Kings will shut their mouths in amazement at him. And then a group of voices begins to speak. They are the people looking back, trying to understand what they saw.

“Who has believed our message?” they ask. Who would have guessed this is how God would show his power? “For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground.” A small green shoot in dusty, hard soil. Easy to overlook. “He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” He did not look like a king. He did not look important. “He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering and acquainted with disease.” People turned their faces away from him. And, the voices admit, we did not respect him.

Then comes the great turn. “Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering.” Our sorrows. Not his own. We thought God was punishing him for something he had done. But no. “He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.” The people speaking are realising the truth. The wrong things were ours. The pain was his. “All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Like sheep wandering off in every direction, each one choosing its own path. And the servant carried the weight of all of it.

And how did he respond? Like a lamb. “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” He did not fight back or shout. He was taken away and cut off from the land of the living. They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. But that is not the end. Isaiah says, after the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many. He will have a portion with the great, because he poured out his soul to death, and was counted with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and prayed for the transgressors. In the book of Acts, an official from Ethiopia was riding home in his chariot, reading this very passage aloud. Who is the prophet talking about? he asked. And Philip, beginning with this scripture, told him the good news about Jesus.

We can read this chapter in a copy made long before Jesus was born. In nineteen forty-seven, Bedouin shepherds found ancient scrolls in a cave near Qumran, by the Dead Sea. One of them, the Great Isaiah Scroll, contains the entire book of Isaiah, all sixty-six chapters. It was copied around a century or more before Christ, and it is about a thousand years older than the oldest copies of Isaiah known before then. Today it is kept in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Despised and rejected. You'll find it in Isaiah chapter fifty-two, verse thirteen, to the end of chapter fifty-three. The baby born in Bethlehem grew up like a tender shoot, and carried what we could not carry. So here is a question to carry with you. Isaiah says we have all gone astray like sheep. What does it mean to you that someone carried that for you?