YHWH says –

“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.

I have endowed you with my Spirit that you may bring true justice to the nations.

I have appointed you to be a covenant people,

 a light to the nations;

to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison,

and those who sit in darkness, from the dungeon.

This is part of the passage we heard last week from Isaiah 42, where the suffering servant is described.

Today the Suffering Servant is given a voice.

I had been thinking,

    “I have toiled in vain,

     I have exhausted myself for nothing” –

yet all the while my cause was with YHWH

   and my reward was with my God.

I can’t help but think of Dr King when I hear this voice. I am sure that he knew this passage from Isaiah. And I am sure that he did not see himself as the great Savior. He was too theologically and biblically astute, too focused on his cause to use his energy on an ego trip.

But similar thoughts must have crossed his mind as he sat in jail, for days and weeks at a time – simply for sitting down to lunch, for ordering a sandwich, for riding a bus. It was in jail that he wrote sermons, penned long theological treatises and letters on whatever scraps of paper he could find. Did he ever think he was marching for a lost cause? Did he ever wonder if the exhaustion he felt, the loneliness at being separated from his wife and children, was all for nothing?

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As Christians, we have generally been taught to hear these texts from Isaiah as predictions, a foretelling of Jesus and his suffering on the cross, his suffering for us all. But this text was written as a comfort for people who were taken in chains from their homeland, taken as prisoners and slaves.

It was time of great violence. The misery is almost indescribable: repeated invasions, rapes and ransackings. Family and friends captured and hauled off, if not killed.  The people endured this for several hundred years. Until finally – Jerusalem fell. The temple was destroyed. The people lost their land, began to lose their culture, began to lose their sense of YHWH as God.

It would be indescribable – if it wasn’t so familiar. Unfortunately it is also the story of enslaved Africans brought to this country. It is the story of people today in Syria, South Sudan and Central African Republic, who are taken from their lands or run for their lives, only to return and be run off again. Losing family, land, culture, life, faith.

This is one of the reasons the biblical text is so important: it tells a story that never gets old. It continues to be replayed over and over again, the horrific parts as well as the beautiful parts. We know violence, pain and suffering. We know the beauty of creation, the tenderness of human love, unexplained mysterious experiences. The laments we read in the Psalms are current, the love poetry in Song of Solomon, the parables and stories of Jesus, even the outdated prohibitions in the law code – we even understand how that can happen.

So it is here, in this familiar story of fear, loss, violence and despair that we get this word of hope from Isaiah. Here is a word of hope that someone will emerge to lead them. Not a king or a warrior but a servant whom God has known from before the servant was known at all. This servant will bring justice, restoring the hopeless to their God, to their community, to themselves. The servant will be them, the servant is Israel. As June Jordan writes in a poem and Sweet Honey in the Rock sing – “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

The suffering servant says – we will be a people that are looked to as a light; we will no longer be the ones who are trampled upon. Even the great rulers will stand when we enter the room. We who have been despised and spat upon will be the ones who bring YHWH’s light to the whole world.

What a vision. What a turn around after so much destruction and despair.

Five hundred years later, after the temple is rebuilt, the people are again under occupation, this time by the Romans. And the people are again looking for a mighty leader. They get Jesus, a man so humble that he hardly speaks in this passage from John. Jesus doesn’t say anything except “What are you looking for?” and “Come and see.”

Today, the world still waits for leaders, not who will ask questions but who will tell us what we want to hear. Most of the time we are not so interested in a servant leader. We don’t want a humble person who uses power in relating rather than relegating. We get impatient with a leader who uses a peaceful process instead of an efficient process. After the fact, sure, we like to hold them up but while they are doing their slow and humble work? It is sometimes hard to even know where to look for this kind of leader.

Martin Luther King was a leader more like the suffering servant. He called people together, to be disciplined, to see the good in each other, to work together. I read this week some instructions he gave to the African American community in Montgomery after the bus boycott was over, when they were ready to get on the busses again. Among other things Dr King reminded people that: “This is not a victory for Negroes alone but for all Montgomery and the South. Do not brag! Do not boast!”

He wrote “Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.”

About getting on the bus again he wrote, “ For the first few days, try to get on the bus with a friend in whose non-violence you have confidence. You can uphold one another by a glance or a prayer.” http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/01/17/martin_luther_king_montgomery_improvement_association_advice_for_riding.html

Dr King could have said, “See, God is on our side. We won this one.” But his faith pointed him in a different direction, to a different response. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Let us now act the way we want to be treated.

On at least one occasion, Dr King was attacked by a young white racist and he did not defend himself. The police urged King to press charges but he refused. “The system we live under creates people such as this youth,” he said. “I’m not interested in pressing charges. I’m interested in changing the kind of system that produces such men.”  http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1952031,00.html#ixzz2qlmWqK5s

Forty-five years after his death, the system still has a long way to go. We do have movies that help us recall history, like Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and 12 years a Slave based on Solomon Northrup’s own writings. But we also have for-profit prisons where too many African American men and people of color spend too much of their lives. We have laws that would keep people from voting unless they have a certain identification card. The justice system, the education system, the financial system – they are all stacked, not just against African Americans but against people of color, people who live in poverty, who do not speak English well, who don’t fit the image that we are told is what an American should look/act/be like.

This came home to me last summer when the “not guilty” verdict was announced in the Trayvon Martin case. A friend, who is African American, shared with me the pain she felt at the verdict that let George Zimmerman go free. She did not want to be around white people, she did not want to be around those who imagined themselves on her side and yet did not speak out. The verdict made her aware of how she can be made to feel like she is less than human because of the color of her skin.

Her painful reflections ended with a question that I have been wrestling with ever since. She knows we are a congregation of good will and good intentions.  “I am asking that you demonstrate compassion, by reaching out to a traditionally African-American pastor in this DC area or any area of this country, to begin to figure out how “white-skinned” people, “brown skinned” people, African-Americans and all people who care about justice can begin (or progress) in the healing process as a result of racial divisions in the United States of America.”

I don’t often talk about “The United States of America” from the pulpit.  Yet today it seems appropriate, for the wound that we are naming is not a general wound of violence that needs to be healed. It is a wound that we remember when we remember Dr King. It is the wound of racial division that still exists in this country.

My friend’s request overwhelms me. I am very inadequate for the task. I am so, so white. How can I even begin? And yet when a friend in pain calls, I do not want to ignore her. And it has already been 6 months.  I want to answer somehow. The system needs to be changed!

But my friend does not ask me to start by changing the system. She asks me to start by making another friend, by reaching out.

I know from my experience of working with the Inclusive Mennonite Pastors around LGBTQ interests that it is important to work together. Working alone to bring change can be draining. But working together with others can make even the hardest work joyful and life-giving. So I want to begin there, by finding the courage to humbly reach out to one other pastor, not because I know what to do but because I want to learn and grow and be changed.

I also need to acknowledge that while I have this commission from my friend, I still operate from a place of privilege.  Really, who am I to call another pastor up out of the blue and ask them to work together on this? Not every African American pastor may feel the same call to this particular work or have time or want to relate to me. It is good to own up to my privilege – and it is not an excuse.

I tell you this personal story because I need to be accountable. And maybe some of you feel called to build relationships as well.  Maybe a few of us can again be part of the Race Matters group, exploring together what it means to humble ourselves and rise up in the face of this big wound.

Pay attention distant peoples!

YHWH called me before I was born,

   and named me from my mother’s womb.

The Holy One said to me,

   “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

We are the ones we have been waiting for. Not white people saving black people.  Not women saving men. Not straight people saving LGBTQ people. Not the able bodied saving the disabled people. No, we together, all of us working together. With all of our disabilities and abilities, our gifts and foibles and liabilities.  Not one person but the whole gathered body, we are the servant. We are who we have been waiting for. We are who God has called. And it is this body in whom God will be glorified.

I had been thinking,

    “I have toiled in vain,

     I have exhausted myself for nothing” –

yet all the while my cause was with YHWH

   and my reward was with my God.               

May it be so.