FIRST CHANT OF THE SERVANT OF JAWE: ISAIAH 42:1-8

Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

One of the most celebrated passages of Isaiah. And indeed one of the most beloved in all scripture.

To begin, an apology to Isaiah is in order. The oracles were given originally, as well as in translation, in poetry. Often they were passed on orally, in song. We flatten them out to prose, alas. But it is salutary 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.)

v.1. We long to believe we are called, named, sent. 'Meaning', 'identity,' such things, we are told by psychology, start here. 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. A grand courtly scene, a court presentation.

There is an ' I ' who announces - God. 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. A biblical anthropology is indicated from the start; one who is called, chosen, elected. A dynamism is at work; a direction, vocation, a task underway. The cords of Adam (and Eve) are tightly drawn; they are in the hands of the transcendent. Grace is the drawing, the tightening of those cords, drawing the self toward the Other.

Not only is the servant chosen; 'in her my soul delights,' (RSV) 'whom my soul prefers.' (BJ) 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 others not also loved and singled out? One must believe so; lest matters of religion, race, color, turn nasty.

Let us bring the text down to size; or better, refuse to give it more warrant than good sense allows. In sum, not granting that Isaiah blesses the hideous conduct of many 'believers.'

Simply, in being 'chosen', in that dignity 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 community, all generations, on the part of God. We - all of us - are blessed, rejoiced in. From the start.

Baptism and confirmation are occasions to rejoice and accept once more, that first free 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 extended out and out; if Jews were chosen, it was in order to offer a sign of loving compassion in the world. Isaiah = prophet. Universal vocation to all nations.

Anathema then, to the multiple forms of apartheid that pullulate today, whether in N. Ireland or occupied territories or around Catholic altars.

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

'My spirit upon her...' This godly spirit, this 'finger of God', immediately appoints a task, a vocation.

God's spirit is upon the servant; so justice is in the air.

It is as simple as that; go, make justice among the nation.

Something indeed momentous, and not only for the servant. Something implied concerning "the nations."

Deprived of the spirit indwelling the community of believers, the nations are deprived of justice, its capacity or practice; indeed its very notion. Injustice is the horrid void at the heart of conventional secular power, left to its own devices and resources: prisons and death rows and abortion clinics - people are disposable, expendable. Lives are of no value. Now we see it in the streets with the homeless, the former institutionalized.

The conclusion is inescapable. 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; to obtain, by the supreme injustice of murder, illicit lands, slave peoples, oil, larcenous markets - NAFTA, GATT. Betrayal. Then they crown themselves, and seize the scepter of imperium. Behold Columbus and ourselves, descendants / conquest.

This is a very old story, often repeated, just as often forgotten and untold. The powerful learn nothing, except the old bloodstained rote of unjust structures and behavior.

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

Will the unjust one day be reborn, become just? Such will certainly occur; but only by an outpouring of the spirit, due to a persistent, passionate sense of justice - in us. Thus the realm of God can be savored here and now. Martin and Day and Franz Jagerstatter.

Thus, justice among the nations is by no means to be understood as their 'natural' evolution or as 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 quite simply, an act of God.

Still, the text does not concentrate so much on the above (the conversion of the nations or the ways and means or even on the victims of injustice). It concentrates on the vocation of the servant. Everything starts here. The servant is their savior, quite literally; being Isaiah or Isaian folks and Jesus, they are the first lonely 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.

Thus our text is like a holy manual of instruction on the vocation of the servant, upon whom the spirit of God dwells. 'Justice. To the nations.' Announce, so live in hope, "don't get tired!" (Phil)

Meantime - live in the meantime. So that, here and now, and despite all, in face of opposition and terror, there exists a trace, a hint, a foreshadowing, of that most unlikely, defamed, dreaded realm - justice; the justice of God.

And simultaneously (and justly), - the abolition of the sword. An end to war. And 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 and now.

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 "nuclear capable" bombers over Iraq, Afghanistan. No more horrible weapons research, and the savage experimentation on flesh and bone of the living. No second Iraqi war. No second Vietnam War.

Which is to say quite simply, no more injustice. Domestically, no more 'justice system', mocking true justice, delaying the realm of justice, masking the totalized, imbedded injustice. No more war, nor power to wage war; and all that follows.

Everything starts there. The end of warmaking would signal at once the 'spirit of God' dwelling in the nations, and the coming of the Realm. No more death. Nor more nukes. Nor more abortion. No more capital punishment. No more Euthanasia. 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, the hallmark of the nations, the coin of the realm, the flag, the motto, the myth.

Thus the justice of God is in a most radical sense, an import to 'the nations'. 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 or a community, these must be cut down.

'The works of the 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, slain by one of his own, and later, in the justice systems that seized on servant Jesus.

The symbol of such a vocation, its weight and glory, is the cross. The servant brings justice, she bears the cross.

The matter of bringing justice to the nations must be understood concretely, as a vocation. The nations will become just if believers become 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.

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The realism of Isaiah is striking. So, in the further exploration of the work of justice, is his understanding of the opposition that meets the servant.

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, rot and rote. Or in a fervent complicity with injustice, in the name of the presumed sanctity or righteousness of this or that nation, this or that property or institution 'under God', as they say. Under God, and unjust - only imagine!

Small steps, modest means. Purity of means certainly; the means defining and announcing and including the end.

It is immodesty that brings us down; or that impurity of means that fades into discouragement or flares into fury...

vv. 2 - 4. We are offered the moral physiognomy of the servant - gentleness, strength, steadfastness.

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

We note in the first place much talking in the streets and elsewhere, to large crowds. Occasional shouting matches. 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 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. We can tame the cur, bring it to heel. We need not prove anything; we need not live a dog's life, after a bone or a stroking.

We need only heed our calling; to speak the truth, in season and out, trusting to the native power of the truth to demand a hearing.

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, the babblings of ventriloquist dolls strung to the culture, animated by the culture. They long to be found 'relevant'. They love ego, money, power. Thus does the medium succeed in scrambling the message?

God's ways are transparent; the many moods and tones, rhythms, rejoicing and fury, 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, on a mountain, alone, catching the message, taking the truth to heart, wrestling for its possession against demons. 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 many moods and methods and responses to the Spirit of God. (cf. Mt. 12:17-21)

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v.3. There is something in the servant of both reed and flame, something feminine. A vocation to ecological integrity. She treats tenderly the fragile beauties of creation; she sees in them something of herself. 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, the vocation. 'The servant will faithfully bring forth justice.' A passion that surpasses, outlasts our lifetime (5th seal, Revelation - c.6, v.9)

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 on both sides.

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

In all this, someone of course pays, and pays dearly. Lives are broken and quenched and misery abounds. But this unpleasantness, according to its sponsors, is not to the point. Trump Towers - 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.

'I wonder if the Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple, would not today drive the religious from the stock market.' (Chuck Matthei)

'Our portfolios have never prospered so much, as under President Reagan.'

'I take it as one of the achievements of my years in office, to have resolved our financial difficulties.' (Two Jesuit Provincials)

Breaking the reed, quenching the flame, we ourselves are broken and quenched. Misuse of the earth and its resources, defrauding the poor, setting up of our (tottering) kingdom of manipulation and 'security'. And then the buzz and hubbub and palaver and 5 and 10 year plans of the churchmen (sic). The interminable efforts to put to an end, once for all, all such unpleasant matters as insecurity, improvisation, 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, siding 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, having our Isaiah, to assure us otherwise. Indeed, teachers of the truth are at one; 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 be 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 quenched, more or less contemptuously or thoughtlessly trodden upon.

No, rather to be cherished, protected, as a hand cupped over a flame, or a gentle footfall.

More, Flame and reed are, if we but knew it, mirrors of our condition in the world. We too are fragile. Someone must not quench us or crush us. We name this Mindful One Providence, Friend, Lover, Brother, Sister, Servant, One for others.

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.'

v.5. 'Thus speaks Yawe, Who...' 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 He rests his case.

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 life-givers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of injustice.

Thus the work of justice is one with the work of creation itself; the completion of the creative task of Genesis. As in v.6 'I have called you in justice (for justice)... have...formed you.' (as in Gen.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 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, an epidemic of darkness.

Social, financial, political, military arrangements create multitudes of victims, while the few ride high. Injustice is build into the entire system, quite taken for granted. The summons to even minimal justice is rarely heard, even more rarely acted on. Numbing of spirit afflicts the might.

If here and there the poor raise an outcry - a gag, and worse is promptly applied. Their light is quenched, their frail bones broken.

We note pride fully and with pain, what penalties are paid today by Christians, here and elsewhere. And this befits, as we cannot but know, even while it hurts.

v.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 underway. 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 honored and heard from; children are cherished. Money is not enthroned, nor ego, nor pride of place. Such attentiveness to modest essentials shakes the principalities; it is the start of great things in the world.

v. 8. The 'jealousy' of God. 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; 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, water, 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 stolen by 'others'.

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, of vocation, uniqueness, honor; my soul being my own, no one owning me. No one claiming my rightful place, my sanctuary, my world, in sum.)

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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 (v.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 form, while that lasts, of honoring and glorifying God. It is true worship. And the consequences - ominous - will not be long in coming.