The Witness of Suffering

“The Witness of Suffering”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, April 17, 2016
Text: Isaiah 52:13-53:12 // Series: Isaiah: New Day Dawning

We’re going to have some fun this morning as we play a little game this morning called Expectations Vs. Reality.  I’m going to put up some photos that highlight the expectation and then also the reality.  Are you ready to begin?  Good.  We’ll start off simple…  When you go into a shopping centre and you walk into a store that sells both men’s and women’s clothing.  One might expect, that in a Fashion store, the retail floor space would be split 50/50.  But let’s be honest, shall we – the reality is more like this! 

Let’s say you don’t go on Facebook for a week.  Your expectation might be this (25 new friend requests, 35 messages, and 95 whatever the globe stands for).  But the reality might be this – a single like.   

Or what about the difference between expectation and reality when it comes to organization.  As a parent or a teacher, you may have expectations that your kids will come in and put their backpacks all neatly on hooks, homework in labeled folios and shoes in baskets… And then this happens: a jumbled mess!

Christmas is the worst for expectations vs. reality.  Here’s what we expect of Santa and here’s what the reality of a visit to Santa can turn out to be!  Or fast food…  When you see it on TV or in a web ad on your screen it looks sooooo appetizing. But when you order it and open it, the reality can disappoint you. 

Two more… How about the expectation or perception of what it would be like to snuggle with your child as you both blissfully drift off into a peaceful sleep.  And then you actually try it and the reality is more like this – kid hogs the whole bed, has their feet in your face and no sleep is happening, am I right? 

Now, at the risk of stepping on a few toes, can we agree that Pintrest is the worst offender in this category?  Because Pintrest sets our expectations for stuff miles and miles above where it reasonably should be.  So we look at wedding ideas or kids birthday party images and we think “fantastic!  I’m making my little angels a Cookie Monster themed party complete with adorable cupcakes.  And then we try to make them and the look like this!  Oh Pinterest, how we hate you!

It’s interesting to observe what our response is when we continually have our expectations unmet.  Many of us are shocked at first, but over time and with repeated experience, we can begin to tell ourselves something about expectations: that is “Always Aim Low”. 

Here at Jericho Ridge, we’ve been moving through the book of Isaiah this spring and we’ve heard right from the very start of this Old Testament book warnings that things are not headed in the right direction.  The people are engaged in all kinds of activities that God directly expresses to them not to engage in. They are being disingenuine in the worship. They are treating people who are poor as disposable.  They are engaged in the pursuit of unbridled consumerism with no thought to the consequences.  They have forgotten about God and the life He has invited them to live and the calling He has on their lives to be a blessing to the nations around them.  In Isaiah 5:7 God says to the people “He expected a crop of justice, but instead he found oppression. He expected to find righteousness, but instead he heard cries of violence.”  So after repeated warnings by multiple prophets, God has allowed the nation of Babylon to capture Judah and the city of Jerusalem and all of the people from the least to the greatest have been exiled from their land and marched off to Babylon.    

So now the people are sitting in captivity in Babylon and the prophet begins to tell them that deliverance is coming.  That God has a rescue mission in the works.  That someone is coming to redeem and restore and set things right.  And their expectations couldn't be higher.  In this section of Isaiah, we have 4 songs or poetic interludes that are introduced that describe God’s expectation of what He is up to.  They are called the Four Servant Songs.  They give insight into what people should expect of this deliverer, the divine servant God is sending. 

In 42:1-7      Servant brings justice; set captives free – sounds awesome

49:1-13        Brings freedom, comfort & compassion – need all of that!

50:4-11        Servant does God’s will; comforts weary – picturing more

52:13           Servant will prosper, be highly exalted… This is what we need!

Sounding better all the time!  This servant God is sending is coming to kick some Babylonian butt!  They will pay back those who have wronged us, the servant will march in victory and lead us out of captivity and they will help us recapture our land and our homes.  It’s going to be a great military and political victory – we’ll be on the winning team, highly respected amongst the nations – we’re #1!   

Then at the end of Isaiah 52, there’s some surprises that begin to emerge in this picture of what the servant will accomplish and how amazingly victorious the servant will be… “But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. 15 And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about.”  

____________is going to pick up reading in Isaiah 53:1 – In invite you to follow along in your Bibles, on phone or on the side screens as it is read [5 slides] 

HOLD ON now.  I thought this was about getting justice for wrongs done to me / us.  I thought this servant was going to bring freedom to me from my oppression.  I thought that God’s will was for the Babylonian to be overthrown and the people of God to march forth in victorious singing.  That was my expectation of deliverance! This servant sounds disturbing in his ministry, his mission.  I don’t like all of this talk of suffering.  Where’s the prospering, where’s the exaltation?  Where’s the happy-clappy Joel Osteen kind of stuff?  This sounds a lot like suffering, not a lot like deliverance, joy, tranquility and all that!      

We’re left like the people of Isaiah’s day with a sense of dissonant wondering: Who is He?  Who is this deliverer of whom the prophet speaks?

 Here’s where we get a completely unfair advantage – we get to cheat because hindsight is always 20/20.  In the book of Luke and throughout the New Testament, we see this passage of Isaiah 53 quoted repeatedly to refer to Jesus.   Jesus specifically pick up the same wording and names as his mission “the spirit of the Lord is upon Me he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set a liberty those that are bruised”  In Matthew 11:3 we have people around Jesus, disciples of John the Baptizer, coming to Jesus and asking ““Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”.

Now… here’s the tricky part.  We have SUCH a hard time reading through this chapter without thinking “oh, oh… I know the answer!  Pick me, pick me!  The answer is “Jesus” – that’s who the prophet is talking about!”  And that would be true.  This is an incredibly specific prophecy made over 600 years before His arrival about Jesus – the specificity is amazing!  The description of His suffering and death and being killed like a common criminal but being laid in a rich man’s tomb.  It’s a beautiful reminder to us of the integrity continuity of the Scriptures. 

BUT here’s the kicker: remember that the people of Isaiah’s day didn’t know this was about Jesus.  They didn’t get the privilege of having that insight.  They were just left thinking – so a deliverer is coming. At some point.  But this deliverance sounds um, really, uh “different” than I am expecting. 

You see, just like us, their expectations were shaped by their experiences.  And the cultural understanding of deliverance would be a lot like ours.  Think about what they had known and experienced.  They had seen political and military powers rise up and use that power to overthrown their nation.  They had seen incredible acts of violence against them.  They had seen authority wielded with brutality and force.  And so what had been forged in their thinking was that you fight fire with fire.  You meet force with stronger force.  The way you accomplish victory is by being stronger than the one you are overthrowing or displacing, right

Here’s where we see an incredible dissonance between expectations and reality.  The people had their own set of expectations of how God was going to act to fulfill his promises to them.  In their minds, God was sending them a… 

• Victorious warrior
• Strong political leadership
• Amassing influence & power
• A king of David’s line and thus of David’s stature

You think Nebuchadener had an army, you should see God’s army!

I am continuously amazed reading Scripture and in my own experience of how God acts in completely different ways than I expect Him to.  I think I would have also expected all the things the people had on their list.  And yet God in this chapter is working to reset their expectations along totally different lines.  God says do you know what the reality is going to be?

You expected victorious warrior?  My deliverer will experience

• Vicarious suffering
• You expected someone to work within the structures of power? I’m sending you a wandering Rabbi from the margins (can anything good come from Bethlehem and Nazareth?)
• You expected someone who would Giving His very life away
• Wore robes & crowns of a very different kind

You might say “well, Brad”  We’re more sophisticated than all of that.  We know that’s Do we?  It’s so easy to fall into habits and patterns of thinking that are influenced by our majority rules culture and the default settings we are used to.  I think about how the religious right and the moral majority try to gain access to the halls of power and influence and use political means to legislate morality.  I think about people who are on Facebook or social media all the time lecturing others about how wrong they are with a tone that communicates “when you become as enlightened as I am, you too will get it!”.  I think about my own desire to use language or the persuasion of personality to convince people to do things that I want or need them to do.  We’re not at all beyond seeking power, influence, and control through the means of the world. 

But in this text, we are reminded poignantly that the Kingdom of God runs on a different template and a different timeline than the kingdoms of this world.  Donald Kraybill in his excellent book uses the title “The Upside Down Kingdom” to describe how living in the way of Jesus is so backward and so counter-intuitive to our western cultural norms that it’s upside down.  In the kingdom, you win by losing.  You are first by being the last; you gain the whole world by laying your life down for another.  This is what it means to follow Jesus.  And this is why it is often such hard work – because we are constantly bumping up against a dissonance between our expectations and reality. 

Let me give you an example.  In her book “Out of Sorts” local author and blogger Sarah Bessey writes about an affliction she calls “The Evangelical Hero Complex”.  She puts her finger on something helpful and interesting.  That is that some of us have grown up in an evangelical sub-culture that has fed us certain messages about life.  It has given us certain expectations about who we are and what our lives are about.  Pastor Wally started with us this week here at Jericho and when he was unpacking his office, he had a very, um interesting décor element.  Can you see this?  It’s super hero Jesus.  You can re-enact the miracle of turning the water into wine and feeding the 5,000. There’s even loaves and fishes!  And disturbingly, Jesus’ hands glow in the dark!  Really not sure why 

Remember earlier I said our expectations are not only governed by our experiences but they are also governed by what feeds them.  And I would share Sarah Bessey’s concerns when she notes that we’ve been fed a fairly steady diet of lines like “you are a generation that is going to change the world!” 

• We are fed a steady diet of the Christian life being about doing BIG, HARD, RADICAL things for God

It’s like we’re all to be a bunch of super-heroes running around saving the world.  If you listen to and absorb all of that messaging – which is given with the best of intentions – to challenge us to dream and to do hard things.  But if you absorb it all uncritically, you can get the wrong message about the Christian life.  You can get the impression that if you are a real Christian, your life should resemble that of an evangelical super-hero.  Your job is to save the world.  Your job is to have the biggest more impressive platform from which to do bigger and more exciting things.  And if your life seems, well, fairly ordinary, then there must be something wrong with you. 

There’s a very popular song that gets lots of airplay on Christian radio these days and the lyrics go “We know we were made for so much more Than ordinary lives It's time for us to more than just survive We were made to thrive – Joy unspeakable… anything is possible” Now I don’t think the band is out to lunch as a whole, but I do question the messaging that this particular song is sending.  If my life consists of mundane, small acts of faithfulness – volunteering for breakfast club at my kids’ school, wiping bums and cleaning up cereal off the floor for the umpteenth time this week… Faithfully instilling the fundamentals of math into the minds of recalcitrant middles schoolers… Fabricating sheet metal into refrigerator doors… picking up yet another wheelchair from yet another care home and putting it into storage so it can be shipped to Guatemala… tucking my kids into bed yet again and counting it a massive success because I made it through the day without yelling at them...   These don’t fit the expectations of big, hard, radical evangelical super hero stuff.  And sometimes we can begin to think maybe God isn’t pleased with me unless I sell all I have and move to deepest darkest Africa.    

And this doesn’t just happen to individuals.  This also happens to churches.  We begin to wonder hum, but year 11 I thought Jericho would be twice this size.  I thought we’d have a building by now.  I thought we’d have baptized thousands or filled the arena bowl on Sundays.  And so when our expectations aren’t met, there is a sense of dissonance and dissatisfaction.  This is what the people of Isaiah’s day were confronted with.  The notion that their expectations of God’s actions did not match up with God’s actions.  That the narratives they had told themselves about how life works were not working.  But part of this was that they had an up and to the right narrative of power, victory, and well, being made for so much more than ordinary lives. We were made to thrive.  I love the grounded reminder that Bessey brings as she challenges us to re-think our expectations.  She says that

• “As the Church, we are called to exist in a prophetic community, an alternative to the narratives of the world, living out the Kingdom of God in our right-now lives.”                                                              - Sarah Bessey

In the little actions.  Mundane faithfulness.  Mustard-seed kind of stuff.  It’s little.  It’s often hidden.  It’s not showy or dripping with the trappings of power and influence and often it doesn’t’ feel or look like world-shaking, generation-changing, stuff.  It looks a lot like brining Jesus into the day to day fabric of our right-now lives.  Church, it’s time to confront some of the idolatry of our evangelical super hero complex and to begin to tear it down.  In order to do this, we have to ask What are My expecations? 

• Of God: What does God owe you? You owe Him?
• Of Christian life: What should it look like?
• Of Church: What do you expect to receive & give?
• Of Leaders: How should they live & lead?
• Of Community: How do you define authenticity?

Of Yourself: Where did you think you’d be now

You may want to spend time this week exploring what has shaped those expectations.  Maybe you grew up in a home where you had some unhealthy things modeled four you and you absorbed messages about things that you need to be free from.  One way to do that is that once you have uncovered what your expectations are, to Feed Those expectations a healthy diet. For some of us,

• What false expectations need to be repented of?
• What practice will I engage this week that helps me to nurture a healthy walk with God?
• Where is God expecting me to partner with Him?

Ultimately, life may not turn out as you imagined….  Kids might have feet in your face, you may not have Pinterest perfect Christianity, but know that there was One who did life the perfect life and died the perfect death to not just freshen up the bad things you have done, but who by laying down His life won the ultimate victory.  Pastor Wally is going to come and lead us into a time of communion.