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Volume II |
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Contents: Volume 2 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time - October 20, 2024
1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP2. -- Dennis Keller
3. -- 5. -- (Your reflection can be here!)
Sun. 29 B 2024 October 20, 2024
Our first reading is from the second book of Isaiah, the Suffering Servant. It comes to us from the Babylonian Captivity period of the Jews. The hope of these exiles was for release from enslavement. This Isaiah writes about a Suffering Servant whose suffering would bring ransom. This ransom is not a payment to anyone but a work of God lifting up the suffering people. Once again God orchestrates freedom for his Chosen, freedom as did the paschal lamb long before in the land of Pharoah. The reason for this servant is laid to the feet of the Lord who was pleased to crush him in infirmity. Wow! What a God we have who appears to rejoice in our suffering. Not so fast! That God was “pleased” doesn’t mean delight depicting a sadist God. It means the captives’ suffering was taken up by this servant. God was pleased that this Suffering Servant embraced the suffering of the people. This Servant would take to himself all the pain of the captives and provide them relief. Before this captivity the people in Judea failed to listen to the prophets.. After their first defeat a Babylonian governor was assigned. Soon after there was a successful plot to assassinate the Babylonian appointed governor. The Babylonians returned and destroyed the city, looted the temple and leveled Jerusalem’s walls. Educated and prominent people surviving the slaughter and destruction of the city were taken as slaves to Babylon and its cities. This captivity came to the nation as the consequences of sin. Those sins included idolatry, denial of God’s warnings through the prophets, corrupt business practices robbing the poor, and pride creating the insurrection. The consequences were taken up by this Suffering Servant. After 70 plus years of exile – more than one generation in captivity - it was the will of God they return to their homeland and the revelation of the law and customs. It was during this terrible time that the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures were collected from oral traditions and written. Through the suffering of the Servant this came about. This servant took on the consequences of idolatry, corruption, and sinful behaviors. Those sins were against the poor, the alien in their midst, and orphans. Corruption in government, in business, in denying equality among the people of the nation caused their defeat.
The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews supports the narrative of the Suffering Servant. The new high priest – Jesus – is able to sympathize with us, understand us because he was tested as we are tested. But he did not sin. The duty of the high priest is to enter into the Holy of Holies in the Temple to offer sacrifice to God. Our new high priest instills in us confidence to approach the throne of grace for mercy and inspiration. Grace is energy, the life of God we think of as the Holy Spirit. There in the Holy of Holies that is God’s throne is timely help for suffering and deprivation.
Looking at the gospel for this Sunday we should begin our meditation by reading the first part of this narrative. Jesus has just been telling the apostles that he is the Suffering Servant come to bring freedom. He states he will be rejected by official religious leaders and will be handed over to the Gentiles and murdered. Immediately after James and John come to him asking for privileged positions in Jesus’ Kingdom. They have been with him and just heard his words identifying himself as the Suffering Servant. It is also amazing that these two brothers have excluded Peter. Those three were Jesus’ inner circle. They reveal what is in human hearts through the ages. It’s the “What’s-In-It For-Me” syndrome. Jesus asks them for a commitment. “Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” Even though the prophet Isaiah was well known and revered, they didn’t understand how this applied to their time and place. Like many of us, they didn’t realize that Jesus came to fulfill the Scriptures. He told them on this journey to Jerusalem that he was indeed the fulfillment of the role of the Suffering Servant. They responded without thought and said they would drink from the same cup.
He tells them they will drink of the cup. He tells them, and all the apostles, and us, that being a servant that follows him is how one becomes the first among others. Suffering in service of the Lord is our work as Christians. Jesus’ suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, on trial, betrayed, scourged, mocked, and on the cross is Jesus taking on the consequences of sin. In that sense Jesus suffered and died for our sinfulness. The consequences of sin disorder creation, fracturing relationships. How often, though, we forget that after a sacrifice of suffering there is resurrection. What is reborn is greater than what was suffered. If we hang onto suffering in a “woe is me” victim attitude, we overlook our mini-resurrections.
We are all servants of the Lord for we are baptized into the death of Jesus – his suffering, his rejection. We receive his body and blood in communion because of his body given over for us. And that reception is why we are a community, living a life enhanced by God’s abiding presence. We continue reconciliation through the Blood of the Lord, shed as in a sacrifice that expiates the consequences of sin. That is how suffering becomes meaningful and purposeful. It comes without our searching for it. It comes and we are brought to our knees in pain and separation. Yet it is not meaningless. In our suffering we have a brother who went through this before us and now with us. And that Brother came to us because our Creator loves us with a love that wraps us in a blanket of strength and meaning and purpose.
As we learn during the Triduum of Holy Week, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah is a prophecy of Jesus --- and of us.
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