The Vocation of the Servant

IT WAS IN THE SUMMER OF 1980 that a group of us "discovered" Isaiah. It seemed as though we had all accidentally broken the crust of an ancient cave and come upon a treasure in a stone jar, a veritable Dead Sea scroll.

He had of course been there all the time, all our lifetime. But now he was "our" Isaiah.

That summer we were seeking in scripture a metaphor, an image that would lend strength to an as-yet-nascent purpose. Finally it came to us, through Molly Rush, mother and grandmother, of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. The text that would turn life on its head: "God will wield authority over the nations and render judgment over many peoples. They will hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into sickles."

All great moments are finally simple. We took our small household hammers (and our smaller courage) in hand, and on September 9, 1980, entered the General Electric Reentry Division plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Armed, so to speak; disarmed by Isaiah. Preparing for these nefarious goings-on was, I reflected often since, a perfect way of doing scripture study. There we were, willy-nilly, under the nudge of conscience, rueful, dead center. In some place known as the geography of faith, a terrain, icy and torrid by turns, in which Isaiah himself had stood.

He stood there, in his own time, a time uncannily like our own. And then occurred to him this oracle, swords into plowshares! A word highly unlikely, absurd even, given "the facts" (his, ours), "realism," "big-power diplomacy," "just war theory," the curious game known as "interim ethic."

A vision of peacemaking, in a bloody, unpeaceable time. The century of Isaiah, the seventh before Christ; turbulent in the extreme. War and rumors of war. In the grand tradition of prophets in action, Isaiah intervened directly in political, military, and diplomatic events. He predicted the invasion of Palestine; it happened twice. He lived to see the threat of siege laid to his beloved Jerusalem.

A time like our own. A time of whetted swords and rusted plowshares, of immense violence and social conflict and neglect of the poor.

Need one go on with analogies that fit, hand to glove, sword to hand? Social and military crimes; and then the worship that smoked and muttered away, all honor to Gog and Magog, all mockery to the God of compassion.

Enough said. We need Isaiah, this last-ditch voice of sanity, this unlikely and practical visionary--somewhat as his own times needed him. Our times, it goes without saying, are plain mad; and not the times only, but those who presume to speak up, to speak for us; and who in fact concoct the imagery, betrayal, and moral decrepitude that lead us headlong into the ditch. Blindfolded we go, and who shall give us sight?

God's Call to Justice

"Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I have bestowed my spirit upon him, and he will make justice shine on the nations. He will not call out or lift his voice high, or make himself heard in the open street. He will not break a bruised reed, or snuff out a smoldering wick. He will make justice shine on every race, never faltering, never breaking down, he will plant justice on earth, while coasts and islands wait for his teaching."

Thus speaks the Lord who is God, who created the skies and stretched them out, who fashioned the earth and all that grows in it, who gave breath to its people, the breath of life to all who walk upon it: "I, the Lord, have called you with righteous purpose and taken you by the hand; I have formed you, and appointed you to be a light to all peoples, a beacon for the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring captives out of prison, out of the dungeons where they lie in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; I will not yield my glory to another, nor my honor to idols."
- Isaiah 42: 1-8

A CELEBRATED PASSAGE of Isaiah. And indeed one of the most beloved in all scripture. To begin, an apology to Isaiah is in order. The oracles were first passed on in poetry and song. We, alas, often flatten them out to prose. But it is a source of joy to recall that God's Word is often a poetic one; a celebration, not a cerebration. And meant to be recited or sung, not made the object of an academic treasure hunt (or a witch hunt).

We long to believe we are called, named, sent (verse 1). "Meaning," "identity" - such things, we are told by psychology, start here. Though to the servant of God, such ways of arriving at self-knowledge would seem utterly banal. One does not open the scripture to search out one's "identity"; one comes to self-knowledge in faith; in approaching God, we are granted a measure of insight into ourselves. "A gift to be simple." "Noverim Te, noverim me," Augustine said. So the servant is presented, or celebrated. She does not present or celebrate herself. Light falls on the "Other," in whose shadow (or light) the servant stands.

There is an "I" who announces himself. The servant belongs to God, is one with God; much is made of this from the start.

We are in the presence of God; and at the same time, of the human. The essence of the human is defined from the start; one who is called, chosen, elected. A dynamism is at work; a task under way. The cords of Adam (and Eve) are tightly drawn, they are in the hands of the transcendent One. Grace is the drawing, the tightening of those cords, drawing one's self toward the Other. Not only is the servant chosen; "in her my soul delights," or "whom my soul prefers." Ecstasy, the delight of God, is in the air, awakened by the presence, the life of the servant.

This is a delicate matter, this "choice" of one by God. Are not others also loved and singled out? One must believe so, lest matters of religion, race, color turn nasty.

Let us refuse to read the text from the point of view of ego, whether personal or political. In sum, not granting that Isaiah blesses the hideous conduct of many "believers."

Simply, in being "chosen," one becomes a sign - of the choice of all. Indeed to be created, to exist, to walk the world indicates a primal choice of the human on the part of God. We are blessed, summoned, rejoiced in - from the start.

Baptism and confirmation are occasions to rejoice and accept once more that first choice. "To choose to be chosen." Symbolically we follow through on the first act of God, echo her "yes" with our own. Thus our dignity, and our vocation.

In classical Jewish commentary, the servant song was understood from the start as the story of God's choice of a community. The loving choice was extended out and out; if Jews were chosen, it was in order to offer a sign of loving compassion in the world. The everlasting arms enfolded all.

Anathema, then, to the multiple forms of apartheid that pullulate today, whether in South Africa or Israel or around Catholic altars.

Therefore too, we rejoice in all the living, the unborn, the rejected and despised, those once born and declared expendable, the aged (so often also unwanted). We welcome them all! We rejoice in each and every!

Justice and the Nations
"My spirit upon her ..." This godly spirit, this "finger of God," digitus Dei, immediately appoints a task, a vocation. God's spirit is upon the servant; so justice is in the air.

It is quite simple: Go, make justice among the nations. A momentous summons; and not only for the servant. Something is implied concerning the nations.

Deprived of the spirit indwelling the community of the godly, the nations are deprived of justice - its capacity or practice, indeed its very notion. Injustice is the horrid void at the heart of the conventional secular power, left to its own devices and resources.

The nations are, by biblical definition, unjust. They traffic in injustice, they glory in it, they demand unconditional surrender to its sovereignty. They wage horrid wars on its behalf; obtain, by the supreme injustice of murder, illicit lands, larcenous markets, colonies they shortly begin to despoil. Thus they crown themselves and raise the scepter of imperium.

This is a very old story, often repeated, just as often forgotten in the telling. The powerful learn nothing, except the old blood-stained rote of unjust conduct.

Indeed, one could substitute for "the nations", "the realm of injustice."

Will the unjust one day get reborn, become just? Such will certainly occur, but only by a miraculous outpouring of the spirit. Then the realm of God will be upon us.

Thus justice among the nations is by no means to be understood as their "natural" evolution, or the fruit of this or that form of revolution. So unlikely, considering the history of secular power, is the advent of this miracle, that it must be called an act of God.

Still, the Isaiah text does not concentrate so much on the conversion of the nations as on the vocation of the servant. The servant is, quite literally, the savior of the nations. He is a lonely forerunner, a first presence and sign that the plight of the unjust is not hellishly hopeless.

Let the servant be born, summoned. Let him stand there, speak the truth, face the murderous music.

How long, O Lord, how long? The servant does not know. The text is seemly and reticent on the vexed subject of how and when the realm of God is to prevail. As we are reminded in another text, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven" (Matthew 24:36).

Thus our text is like a holy manual of instruction: "The vocation of the servant, upon whom the spirit of God dwells." "Justice. To the nations." Announce, live in hope, grow not weary.

Meantime, live in the meantime. Bear with that advent, that "not yet." Do not seize the times, as though you owned the future or the past - or for that matter, the present.

So that here and now, and despite all, in face of all opposition and terror, there may exist a trace, a hint, a foreshadowing of that most unlikely, defamed, dreaded justice: the justice of God.

And simultaneously (and justly) the abolition of the sword. An end to war. An end to playing God, the prevailing crime of the powers: that human institutions would claim life and death power over the living. And, in the name of that power, wield the sword, from Babylon to here.

No more war, no more incursions, no more invasions. No more armed forces on the prowl, on the ready, on the trigger. No more nukes. No more horrible weapons research, and the savage experiments on flesh and bone of the living.

Which is to say quite simply, no more injustice. No more "justice system," mocking true justice; delaying the realm of justice; masking the totalized, imbedded injustice. The power to wage war; and all that follows.

Everything starts there. The end of war-making would signal at once the "spirit of God" dwelling in the nations, and the coming of the realm. Isaiah has said so: "swords into plowshares."

No more death. No more abortion. No more capital punishment. And then the other "abolitions," of no less import: No more hunger and homelessness, rich and poor, expendable and high and mighty.

"My spirit upon that one" is thus to be understood as the spirit of life, justice, peacemaking. Practical and to the point; piercing the cover of crime in high places, the denial and caricature and scorn offered to the Spirit. Injustice is the hallmark of the nations, the coin of the realm, the idol "in whom we trust," the flag, the greed, the motto, the pledge, the myth, the allegiance, the covert deals, the hired guns, the "freedom" killers.

The justice of God is in a most radical sense an import to the nations. This we are told. And yet, justice is the vocation of the nations. In spite of all, in spite of themselves. They know nothing of it; it withers in their soil. Should it appear there in the person of the servant, it must be cut down. "The works of their hands" are entirely other; commonly, idolatrous forms of injustice.

Therefore bring justice, bear the burden, import it. A lonely vocation. A lonely spirit, this spirit of God, most often wandering in desert places, far from the "centers" of power and recognition. A spirit often defamed, derided, dealt with in utmost harshness. As it was in the beginning, in the "case" of Isaiah; and later, in the justice system that seized on servant Jesus.

The symbol of such a vocation, its weight and glory, is the cross. The servant brings justice, he bears the cross. How measure the "chances" of such an intervention, given the massive resistance of the nations, the bulwark they raise against justice and the just?

Measure? Chances? That way lies madness. Which is to say, despair, immobility of conscience, numbing. For humanly speaking, the "chances" are slim to nil. The "measure" is no human calculus, but an act of God.

One takes the evidence soberly into account, and then makes a leap. Not into the void; into faith.

The "chances" do not rest on the evidence. What they rest on is the spirit of God in us.

Thus the matter of bringing justice to the nations must be understood concretely as vocation. The nations will become just if the people are servants of justice, infused with the spirit of God who is the spirit of justice.

And the first demand of justice is that people be allowed to live, and live humanly. The matter should be put that baldly. No more war; an untiring cry, uttered again and again, in the teeth of contrary winds.

THE REALISM OF ISAIAH is striking. In the further exploration of the work of justice is his understanding of the opposition that arises against the servant.

The resistance arises not only from the nations, a fact quite in the nature of those entities. But it comes also from the "religious" sectors, among whom "vocation" begins and ends in a void of complacency and indifference.

Or in a fervent complicity with injustice, in the name of the presumed sanctity or righteousness of this or that nation, "under God," as they say. Under God and unjust. Small steps, modest means. Purity of means, certainly; the means already defining and announcing and including the end.

It is immodesty that brings us down, that brings whole nations down; the immodesty, corporate ego, inflation of appetite and avarice - all this included in warmaking.

In verses 2-4, we are offered the moral physiognomy of the servant - gentleness, strength, steadfastness.

"She will not raise her voice...." We gain some light on the text by pondering the conduct of Jesus as servant.

We note in the first place much palaver, debate, instruction in the streets and elsewhere, to large crowds. Occasional shouting matches as well. And all this certainly not to be thought of as reproved by our text.

We note also a confident self-awareness, a calm reliance on the prevailing power of the truth. A sense of modesty and human scope. Also a radical detachment from the "other end" of the message; whether it is heard and lived, ignored, even despised.

For us, a salutary detachment from the mongrel "success" that sets upon and devours every good thing in sight. We can tame the cur, bring it to heel. We need not prove anything; we need not live and work on the world's terms.

We need only heed our calling: to speak the truth, in season and out, trusting to the power of the truth to win a hearing, independently of servant or auditors.

All this is not to say that Jesus invariably sailed tranquil waters; quite the contrary. Nor to presume that he dealt equably with the hostile and hypocritical; quite the contrary. We are offered extraordinarily scathing diatribes, denunciations, judgments, manifestos, even ultimatums. Rarely, but issued; and so recorded.

There are, it must be concluded, ways and ways of "raising one's voice," of "getting heard in the streets." There are the ways of the world. They are like the babblings of ventriloquist dolls, wired to the culture, the volume up and up.

The voices long to be found "relevant," but intemperance condemns them to utmost irrelevancy. They mime love of ego, money, power, violence. Thus does the medium succeed in scrambling the message.

"Other ways" are transparent, hopeful, nonviolent; the many moods and tones, rhythms, faults, and furies, of the Spirit who is said to dwell in the servant. Medium and message are one, fused in that fire. The voice of the servant is raised, is indeed heard, loud and clear, in the streets. But the outcry is preceded by a long apprenticeship in listening, usually passed in desert places, catching the message on the winds, taking the truth to heart, wrestling for its possession against demons.

And finally the servant is possessed by the Word, becomes its finely tuned organ. Perhaps the text offers a chance to apply the "analogy of faith," in which one intractable passage is illumined by another.

It seems notable that Matthew, indeed all the evangelists, apply the servant passage to Jesus, including his talking, loud and clear, in the streets; his many moods and methods and responses to the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:17-21).

THERE IS SOMETHING IN the servant of both reed and flame (verse 3). She treats tenderly the fragile beauties of creation, for she sees in them an image of her own soul. Therefore, neither quenching nor breaking, she is neither quenched nor broken. The parallel is striking.

A further artistry and truth. Interposed between the two (the care of creation, the resultant strength) is a verse that indicates, indeed insists on, vocation. "The servant will faithfully bring forth justice."

One moves gently about the earth, and so learns strength. In treating with needful care things easily destroyed, one goes from strength to strength. A consonance of oppositions, fruitful and illuminating.

There are other ways, of course. There is the theory of domination - the mastery and control of things, the speculating and wheeling and dealing.

In all this someone of course pays, and pays dearly. Lives are broken and quenched, misery abounds. But this unpleasantness, according to its sponsors, is not to the point. Trump Towers, those secular (and sacred) pretensions thrusting upward on our landscape, here and there and everywhere - these are the point. The point is possession and power, nine points of the lawless law.

All they stand for, all they proclaim, all they deny and ignore! The luxury that creates and maintains the misery. The poor and homeless who are mortised into those mighty foundations, and perish there, bones, bones, dry bones. And the church aping this.

Breaking the reed, quenching the flame, we ourselves are broken and quenched. Misuse of the earth and its resources, defrauding the poor, setting up our own (tottering) kingdom of manipulation and "security." And then the buzz and hubbub and palaver and five- and 10-year plans of the churchmen. The interminable wearying efforts to put to an end, once and for all, all such unpleasant matters as insecurity, improvisation, life with the poor, hearkening to the Spirit.

And in consequence, little is said and less done about "faithfully bringing justice to earth."

The text is so clear. Out of injustice - systemic, abstract, straight-faced - justice cannot rise or be proclaimed. One notes how, as accompaniment to the dollar stampede, the "quenching and breaking" proceeds; bringing people in line, wrecking good work, lining up with the powers.

We too would like to conclude that the end justifies the shady and despicable means. We are perhaps not in need of Gandhi or Isaiah to assure us otherwise.

Indeed, teachers of the truth agree: The means are one with the end, its yeast and leavening. And the end, to remain recognizably "good," demands that the means be scrutinized, corrected, reproved, variously abandoned or strengthened.

How to become teachable, attentive to simple and lowly things; candle flames endangered in the winds, reeds more fragile than bird bones. The vulnerability and mortality of the symbols urge us to pause, to grow mindful. The flame, the reed; they are more than simple phenomena, to be passed by, more or less contemptuously or thoughtlessly trodden upon. To be cherished, protected, as a hand cupped over a flame or a gentle footfall.

More. Flame and reed are, if we only knew it, mirrors of our own condition in the world. We too are fragile. Someone must not quench us or crush us. We name this Mindful One "Providence."

In so describing the Servant, God describes herself. The qualities praised in the Servant are literally godlike.

We too are summoned to play Providence in the world - by "making justice."

"Thus speaks God, who...." In verse 5, the credential is creation, here as elsewhere. It is the Creator of the world who speaks, the One who gives breath and spirit to humans. On this the case rests.

The images are all of life, the vitality and variety and verve of the world, the spirit that animates all. The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.

Thus the work of justice is one with the work of creation itself; the completion of the creative task of Genesis.

"I have called you in justice [for justice]... I have formed you, [as in Genesis 2:7], as covenant to the people and light of the nations...."

The human vocation stretches beyond, a passionate outreach. God's servant people are the arm of God.

We know the character of that "vocation to justice" today mainly through its heroes, peacemakers, servants. We also know the vocation through its opposite - the crimes of the nations. Our horrified gaze rests on the injustice that proliferates across the world, a pandemic darkness.

Social, financial, political, military arrangements create multitudes of victims, while the few ride high. Injustice is built into entire systems, is taken for granted. The summons to even minimal justice is rarely heard, even more rarely acted upon. Numbing of spirit afflicts the mighty, numbed despair those who cave in.

And if here and there the poor raise an outcry, a gag, and worse, is promptly applied. We note pridefully what penalties are paid today by Christians, here and elsewhere. And this befits a scriptural people, as we know, as we cannot but know.

VERSE 7 IS PARTICULARLY poignant in this regard. Our history is hinted at, our long connivance with the powers of darkness. And yet, in spite of it all! We have been healed of our blindness, led out of the past, a prison indeed. There we sat, perennially in darkness. But now we have attained the light. Or have we been "led out"? In any case, some have. We think of the base communities, the liberation theologies, the suffering servants of the Third World.

And once healed, healers emerge. The public work, the proffer of healing and relief, gets under way. The servant, or better, the community of servants, now embraces "the people." In the community of servants, justice is proclaimed.

The covenant is honored, a light struck. Women are heard from; children are cherished. Money is not enthroned, nor ego, nor pride of place.

Such attentiveness to modest essentials topples the principalities; it is the start of great things in the world.

The "jealousy" of God (verse 8). The sense of one's self; in this case, of the sole self-existing One.

And the fury that attaches to this sense of truth, at the sight of the outrage of truth. For the idols are laying claim to being God.

We have a slight sense of this momentous occurrence today. The Latin peasants awaken to the theft of honor, land, dignity, work, money, education, health, housing - everything at the hands of the oligarchs. The truth of life, the honor accruing to life, all that gives life its aura, meaning, hope, future - these are snatched.

A sense of outrage follows, of dislocation, being placed at distance (beneath) a usurping power. A sense of being disclaimed, alienated, put to naught, degraded.

The original claim must be stated, shouted in anger! I know my own name! You may not say it is your name! Name, in the sense of power, vocation, uniqueness, honor; my soul being my own, no one owning me. No one claiming my rightful place, my sanctuary, my world in sum.

WE HAVE HEARD SUCH rage before, usually uttered by the prophet in the name of God. But here God speaks of God, and of the apes of God.

It is the God who has summoned the Servant (verse 6) to serve the covenant of justice, not the idols. The idols, it goes without saying, cannot serve the one who serves justice; they are the very spirit of injustice and rapine in the world.

The passion of the Servant echoes the cry of God: that God's honor and glory be "given to no other."

To serve the cause of justice in an unjust world; it cannot be said too often that the work of justice, the vocation of the Servant, is the temporal form of honoring and glorifying God. It is true worship. And the consequences will not be long in coming.

Daniel Berrigan was a Sojourners contributing editor when this article was published.