FORMER US President George Walker Bush
(yes, the senior) once told a story that I feel was very revealing of his
self-deprecating humor. He was at a home for the elderly and he met a very
senior man. Attempting at a conversation President Bush asked the man, “Do you
know who I am?” The man retorted, “No. But if you go to the people at the front
station, they’ll tell you who you are.” President Bush tells the story, I
guess, to underline the fact that we can be so puffed-up about ourselves that
our ego could easily break into shreds when we discover we are not that
important to others. The Servant of the Lord had no illusion of this kind for
he was accustomed to be a man of suffering so easily taken for granted and
dismissed. But part of his character is that together with being a man of
suffering is also a mission to save others by his suffering, his sacrifice
ending not in failure but in exaltation.
The Servant Will
be Exalted in a Manner Unheard of: a Hint at the Resurrection? (Is 52-13-15)
The fourth Song
of the Servant of the Lord begins with the end, not defeat but victory for a
suffering person or personification. “See, my servant will succeed; he will be
exalted and highly praised. Just as many have been horrified at your disfigured
appearance: Is this a man? He has no human likeness. So will nations be
astounded, kings will stand speechless, for they will see something never told,
they will witness something never heard of” (Is 52:13-15). Suppose you ask one
of your children in high school to go with you to his brother’s oath-taking as
a new lawyer. As you stand in pride looking at your older son going through the
ceremonies, you say to your younger son, “Look at your brother now, how he has
overcome. You can also be like that if you also study and work hard.”
Verses 13-15 are
like God’s fatherly remarks foreseeing the Servant’s eventual triumph over his
enemies and the realization of his goals. But he would have to go through
untold suffering, as can be gathered from the words “many have been horrified
at your disfigured appearance”. If the Servant imagery is applied to Jesus, as
we Christians naturally do, it is easy to associate it with the Transfiguration
experience where the vision of the triumphant and glorious Jesus, presented
right before his suffering and death, is actually a word of encouragement to
the apostles and Christian disciples. They would soon see Jesus going through
terrifying suffering and death by crucifixion. The sight of him transfigured is
meant to highlight his eventual triumph over suffering and death by his
resurrection. It is so easy for a Christian to see this in Isaiah’s prediction
of the Servant’s exaltation. “What’s the point of me watching you win this
tournament?” a little boy asked his older brother, a tennis player. The answer:
“If I win this thing, that means you also win.” The point of our initial
meditation on the triumph of the Servant is that he will share it with us. By
our Baptism, we share the Servant’s death in order to share in his resurrection
as well.
The Servant, Because
of his Suffering, is a Man of Unattractiveness and Rejection
“Who could
believe what we have heard, and to whom has the strength of the Lord been
revealed? Like a root out of dry ground, like a sapling he grew up before us,
with nothing attractive in his appearance, no beauty, no majesty.
He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows familiar with grief, a man
from whom people hide their face, spurned and considered of no account” (Is
53:1-3). We remember that for Jews the figure of the Servant refers to a group
of faithful Jews during the exile who suffered for the sake of the nation, with
a suffering so revolting even to their fellow Jews. For us Christians, it is so
remarkable how similar even the physical description of the sufferings of the
Servant to those of Jesus (Acts 8:32, quoting Is 53:7, “Like a lamb led to the
slaughter or a sheep before the shearer he did not open his mouth”; or 1 Pt
2:24, quoting Is 53:5, “For by his wounds we have been healed”). By these words
some have concluded that Jesus was unattractive; of course, a suffering,
crucified man, as he was, would never be physically pleasing the eyes. The
bruises and blows, the buffets and spitting alone would have ruined a handsome
appearance.
The film The
Passion of the Christ tries to make that point. More than once, Mel Gibson
the director emphasized that he wanted to shock people into realizing what a
real crucifixion was like. Reflecting on this, we must also remember how we in
our day and age have worshipped at the altar of physical beauty. How much have
we been enamored by the processes done by a Dr. Vicky Belo, how many
skin-whitening substances are making a killing in the market, how many
‘artistas’ are treated like gods and goddesses by our physical-beauty-crazy
society. The result is we have beautiful people with no substance, unable to
deal with life’s ordinary trials and problems, whose petty childish ways we
broadcast on national television and print in newspapers or cause ‘trending’
for through the social media. The Suffering Servant is not attractive in
appearance because, as the first book of Samuel puts it, “The Lord does not
judge as man judges; man sees the appearance; the Lord looks into the heart” (1
Sam 16:7). God’s standard of beauty is, unlike ours, not skin-deep.
The Servant’s
Sufferings are a Source of Redemption
“Yet ours were
the sorrows he bore, ours were the sufferings he endured…It was for our sins he
was wounded, it was for our wickedness he was bruised. Through his punishment
we are made whole; by his wounds we are healed” (Is 53:4-5). These words have
ambivalent consequences. On the one hand, if the Servant is Israel, an ideal
group of faithful Jews or the prophet Isaiah himself, we will tend to agree to
the idea of the power of sacrifice for others. The sacrifice of a Rizal or a
Ninoy Aquino went a long way in uniting our nation. For Jews, the sacrifices of
a Moses, David and the prophets also galvanized the unity of the Chosen People.
On the other hand, we ask: Can sacrifices by human heroes be enough to earn
forgiveness of sins. This is where only a divine-human Savior figure could fit
into the role of the Servant. This is our bias as Christians. And it is
understandable because the figure of the Servant as Redeemer through suffering
in the sense of his life being “made an offering for sin” (Is 53:10) is beyond
comprehension if the Servant is only purely human.
Human heroes may
offer their lives for their particular nations or for their causes but only a
divine-human Servant hero can fit the characterization by Isaiah the prophet of
his value, i.e., “my servant shall take away their sins” (Is 53:11). I once
challenged a group of boys who loved Spiderman and other superheroes: “Do you
know that priests and bishops have power
greater than Spiderman over evil?” They were incredulous. Their eyes were
asking: “Why do you say that? How?” Then I told them the powerful truth:
“Bishops and priests can do something over evil greater than the superheroes.
Superheroes can rescue you from physical evil. But only a bishop and a priest
can forgive your sins through the Sacrament of Penance. They can forgive
because it is Christ acting in and through them who brings us the forgiveness
of sins.”
The Servant
Shuns Violence
“He was harshly
treated, but unresisting and silent, he humbly submitted. Like a lamb led to
the slaughter or a sheep before the shearer he did not open his mouth” (Is
53:7). Martin Luther King, the acknowledged hero of the American Civil Rights
Movement, helped achieved so much for the equality and brotherhood of the many
races in America and the world through Active Non-Violence. He confided many
times that he and his followers were inspired by the Indian hero, Mahatma
Gandhi, who led his nation to final independence from Britain by Active
Non-Violence. But Gandhi himself confided to many people that his real
inspiration was Jesus Christ who never retaliated with violence the inhuman
violence he went through by his Crucifixion and death. The image of a Lamb is
what we Christians use to remind ourselves of the sacrifice of Jesus that
gained for us eternal life: “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world…”
The Lamb faithfully and completely reveals the humility, willingness and
gentleness of the Servant. He is at the receiving end of so much violence, but
he himself would not inflict it on others, even his tormentors. But is our
violent world listening to his witness?
The Servant’s
Rescue is From Within
“For the anguish
he suffered he will see the light and be satisfied. Through his knowledge many
will be justified; my servant will take away their sins. Therefore I
will give him his portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with
the strong. For he has been counted among the wicked and surrendered
himself to death, bearing the sins of many and interceding for sinners” (Is
53:12). I notice two models of movie hero rescue in Hollywood: one, the
Superman model; and, two, the Die-Hard model. The Superman model has the hero
coming to a person in distress from without (or from afar). The Die-Hard model
has the hero coming from the inside, among the victims themselves, and from
there stages the rescue. This second model is more in accordance with the
Servant model. The hero is “counted with the wicked” and this we see in Jesus
becoming a human being, sharing in our weak sinful nature without sinning, and
as a human being with all the weaknesses of human beings in him together with
his divinity, rescues us through his Crucifixion, death and resurrection. In a
word, our human nature is not entirely hopeless, if only because the Savior,
even in heaven, retains his humanity together with his divinity. Although we
cannot forgive our own sins, human as we are, yet fellow humans like the priest
or the bishop are used by the Savior to continually impart the fruit of his
work of redemption—the forgiveness of sins.
