Tag: suffering servant

• John 1: In the Beginning

  
  

  John 1: In the Beginning

  Thursday, August 22, 2024

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (NRSV)

  No matter how often we read these words they bring us new beauty.

  Footnotes tell us that the writer lays out the themes that develop as the Gospel continues: life, light, truth, the world, testimony, the pre-existence of Jesus, the incarnate Logos who is God’s revelation and the expression of God’s love for us.  When we think of the stories we hear and read in this Gospel, we know for a certainty that God is calling us to be diverse, to tend to that diversity and to place our hope in this diversity – because it is in this diversity that the Spirit manifests itself best.

  The Word was first,
  the Word present to God,
      God present to the Word.
  The Word was God,
      in readiness for God from day one. (MSG)

  God calls us to intimacy, and Jesus calls out this same petition in his brief life.  God asks us to commune with one another in a way we think impossible, and we can only do this if we rely on Wisdom.  This morning’s first reading was from Wisdom 3:1-12, The Hidden Counsels of God on Suffering.  Looking at verse four of that reading we are reminded that our hope is what makes us immortal.  This hidden counsel of God manifests itself in Jesus, the world’s only true hope.

  In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God. From the very beginning the Word was with God. (GNT)

  Jesus, the Suffering Servant, comes to us to serve – not to be served.  And so must we serve rather than be served.  No one has ever seen God except through Jesus Christ, the apostle John tells us; yet God speaks to each of us through Jesus.  It is fitting that Jesus represents this hope of God. It is correct that we awake and rise each day to look to Jesus. It is right that we act and live in hope, for it is this hope that makes us immortal.

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  Adapted from a reflection written on September 20, 2007.

  Image from: https://beithashoavah.org/in-the-beginning-logo/

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  August 22, 2024

  eternal life, hope, light, suffering servant, The Word, truth, Wisdom 3:1-12

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• Isaiah 42: Cosmic God

  
  

  Isaiah 42: Cosmic God

  Friday, December 9, 2022

  

  The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still. (Exodus 14:14)

  These are comforting words for those of us who long to lay all our needs in the merciful hands of God.

  Today’s reading from Isaiah contains several songs. Verses 1 to 9 is The Suffering Servant and verses 10 to 17 is a song of victory sung for The Warrior God.  Verses 18 to 25 remind us that only God can save when circumstances are bleakest. All of this tells us that sometimes situations and people are too difficult to handle. All of this speaks us that there are times when we must take our burden to this God who loves us and who wants us to love in return. It also reminds us that God is both servant and warrior and that despite turmoil and strife, this God tells us: I have taken you by the hand and kept you. 

  God’s form of justice – whether it be bellicose or pacific – is the ultimate force which trumps all others. Those engaged in darkness will disappear even though they may now hold sway.  The vengeful God pouring out the heat of his anger becomes the loving, suffering servant God who takes on all of our burdens. This God is so great and so powerful that control of the universe lies in the very hands that created it. This God is cosmic.

  We let God know that we wish to enter into this cosmos as God’s full and whole children when we enter into this suffering servant-ship with God. This might seem like a role too wonderful and too frightening to take in.  When fear and anxiety invade, when this cosmos seems too large and too terrible to imagine, we only need remember: The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.  He has taken you by the hand and kept you.

  We are created and loved by a cosmic God. Let us enter fully into this relationship now.   

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  Investigate facts about the Cosmos at the National Geographic site at: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/ 

  Adapted from a reflection written on November 16, 2009.

  Images from: https://mashable.com/archive/10-cosmos-facts-that-are-out-of-this-world

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  December 9, 2022

  Exodus 14:14, God’s justice, suffering servant, warrior God

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• Isaiah 49: The Cup of the Lord

  
  

  Monday, August 17, 2020

  Isaiah 49

  The Cup of the Lord

  Hear me, O coastlands, listen, o distant peoples . . . Thus begins this chapter in which the prophet laments his role as servant of the Lord. The cup from which he must drink has become too bitter. He is exhausted from the repeated warnings he delivers to deaf ears. He believes that God has made him a sharped-edged sword and hidden him under his arm, a polished bow hidden in the quiver. He believes that he has toiled in vain and yet he knows that his reward is with the Lord. 

  Although this servant of God suffers as he drinks this difficult cup of salvation, he knows that God has promised to make him a light to all nations and the chosen one of God. This servant understands that through him lies the liberation and restoration of many for God pities them and leads them and guides them besides springs of water. Still, the work of the prophet-servant is difficult, dangerous and heavy. It exhausts even those who come to the task full of vigor and strength. Yet despite this lament . . . God persists in calling.

  Look about and see, they are gathering and coming to you . . . Those who hope in me shall never be disappointed. It is more difficult for the faithful servant to walk away from this important work than it is to persist. And so the prophet perseveres. All mankind shall know that I, the Lord, am your savior, your redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob. 

  We know that Jesus comes to do God’s will, to restore and redeem, to defend and save. But do we think of ourselves as suffering servants alongside the tireless Jesus?

  We know that Jesus is the Son of God. But do we know that we are God’s adopted children created in God’s image?

  We know that we – like Isaiah – are now exhausted from the work we do in God’s name. But do we ask Jesus to shoulder the burden with us and to carry us on his own broad shoulders?

  The suffering servant is Jesus who is the Messiah. We too will suffer as we serve. Yet we too will become the pathway of freedom and redemption for many. We too will gather many who want to come to God. We too are descendants of Jacob. We too are children of God.

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  Go to the online Bible dictionary at: http://bibledictionaries.com/ , enter the words suffering servant, and explore the concept of one who drinks from the Lord’s Cup.

  Image from: https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/eucharist-our-sustenance-st-gaudentius/attachment/gaudentius-eucharist-our-sustenance/

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  August 17, 2020

  Children of God, made in God’s image, salvific suffering, suffering servant

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