The Hope of the Unjust

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him -- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human and his form marred beyond human likeness -- so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. -- Isaiah 52:13-15

THE THEME IS of suffering and vindication. Many difficulties, a multitude of them, hem in the figure of the mysterious servant, as well as the nature and source of his suffering.

To compound things, we have no inkling as to the servant's identity. Or if he is intended as more than a type. Someone, anyone, we might conclude, who lives and dies for the sake of truth-telling.

We have, so to speak, no "second opinion" at hand. Whereas, for example, in the accounts of four evangelists each offers a nuance, flavor, emphasis, as to the character, deeds, and at times, the firsthand words of one and the same Christ.

This servant, however, never once speaks for himself. We are told various things about him. He will endure extraordinary suffering with patience. He will undergo (perhaps most difficult of all) the scandal of the pusillanimous -- those who at one time placed a certain immature trust in him and his vocation. (Somewhat like Job's friends, concluding he must be cursed of God, since awful things befall him.)

We are told, moreover, that the sufferings of the servant are a form of intercession on behalf of others. And finally, we are assured that the servant will be vindicated, though too late to save his life. A cold comfort.

Thus the oracle unfolds on two or three vertical stages. First God speaks briefly. Then the form of the song is clarified; it is partly (though in small part) a biography.

The life of the servant unfolds, always as though from above or outside, told by diverse people who are in one way or another involved in events. If their words are not self-contradictory, it must be admitted that they are far from enlightening.

And finally, in the guise of "who knows all, tells all," God sums up. Her words put a brake to the rather more theological lucubrations of the other speakers.

But who, we might be inclined to ask, speaks for the mysterious servant, who by presumption cannot speak for himself? And who in consequence must invariably be described or analyzed or damned with faint praise, or overpraised, but never once encountered?

Where and by whom, in other words, is the truth of God's Word being conveyed to us? Is it by all who speak? Is it by one literary device rather than another, say the account offered by the king and people? Or are their words merely a caveat, illustrating the fallacies and special interests of the guilty, posing as simpatico bystanders?

A dense thicket of difficulties indeed!

The great ones of earth, for example, take up various themes: reproach, astonishment, admiration, regret (and, implied, moral confusion). They are joined, it would seem, by a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the action.

All admit here and there to a measure of guilt with regard to the servant's plight. But the guilt, whose cause is never spoken of, floats in the air. No crime is specified.

Did many in fact have part in crimes against the innocent one? We are not told. To compound things, it is difficult in all the above to indicate just where a given speaker begins or ends.

A MEASURE OF INCOHERENCE emerges in Isaiah 52:13-15. God introduces the servant, taking a justified pride in his moral and physical stature.

But greatness is pitifully vulnerable and shortly undermined. Ruin sets in. The admirable one is to be destroyed; a nightmare.

Those who had venerated, hearkened to the word of the servant, are appalled. They rush to and fro, as in a surreal panic. Scandalous, his condition. What can have happened? A closer question is not raised: Who brought this to pass?

The kings of earth are mum. No hint of responsibility or guilt at this point. And yet the kings and the people -- someone, some power -- brought the servant low!

It probably occurred through legal means (53:8), which may be why we are kept in the dark. Was it simply taken for granted that the trial, and those who conducted and attended it, was above-board? If so, we have an ironic "transhistorical" hint, that is, it was ever thus and shall be.

Back to the beginning of things with verse 13. At this point all is rosy, favorable, to the servant. Indeed, God has her eye on him. "High, prosperous, lifted up, greatly exalted...." But these are not tales from the Vienna woods. The words have a kind of desperate hopeful ring, an aura of "despite all," or "at the end of things."

The facts of life, this life, must include such facts as innocent suffering -- and no one held accountable. Literally no one. Neither kings nor multitudes of the earth; who are always there, present, but morally shadowy, loquacious, pious.

It is not merely that in principle the world and its powers cannot understand, let us say, the stance of the innocent one; his persistence in vocation, his wounding word, his unassailable and even scornful silence. The blank inability of the persecutors to break through, break him down, must be taken as the source of the general astonishment, as well as of the set jaw of the rulers. They are stalemated, baffled.

Still, it is hard not to take much of this as a front. The drama is played out in public; the great ones are under the klieg lights. Hence, a certain stance is required: noblesse oblige, high and low. A reconstruction might begin, "Our position is that we know nothing, we came on the scene after the fact, we had no part in this admitted outrage. And in any case, the victim is of little help to legitimate authorities; his choice, in a sense, ties their hands. He prefers to remain silent."

"They will see an event never before seen; will witness something unheard of" (verse 15), namely, the quality of such a one. The crowds have known only themselves and those who rule them. The authorities have known only one another and crowds.

Rulers and crowds. Each party thought that their version of society defined the universe. Defined law, defined order, defined power, defined cowardice, which they took for the normal response to the drumbeat of law, order, and the skirmishings of power.

At the same time, of course, this universal ignorance, this protective cover, exhausted new possibilities and crushed alternatives. In all the world, there were only "those in charge" and "those who buckle under" -- "those who give orders" and "those who march to the whip."

Such is, one reflects, the imperial message, internally and to the world at large. In time, the message can take on the force of a metaphysical principle: This is the world, the way it goes. Not to be missed is the imperative, the threat implied: Therefore pay up, or therefore keep a discreet silence.

It is as though the wrong relation of sun to earth had become a dogma of faith, as indeed it did. Therefore, let Galileos beware!

And then appears this servant, who is by no means a slave.

Slaves can be dealt with; servants cannot. At least servants like this one -- a servant of God, and of no other in creation. Or at the least, in the face of those purported emissaries and mediators of divine will, a service of unviolated conscience.

The outcome, the tragedy attendant on the servant, can be understood only if he and the kings and the crowds, in revolution and harmony and conflict, are attentively considered. Who circles about whom, who is at the center; who holds legitimacy, who kowtows? And in the midst of it all, silent as an empty grave, is the great Refuser.

The servant of God remains, in the Buddhist way, mindful, attentive, with the concentration only suffering brings. Intractable, he dares even in silence to raise questions. Questions? They are ill received by the authorities and their undifferentiated lackeys and victims -- the crowd.

He is a threat, but also a hope. Perhaps for them an only hope.

ISAIAH 53:1 CAN be seen as a direct quote from the mouths of kings and people. If so, we have a kind of pious dodge: "Who could believe what God has wrought?"

Bad faith. The tendency, by no means rare, is to raise our eyes to heaven in stupefaction of spirit at the sight of human misfortune (in which one has played a role, large or small), and thus to deflect attention from one's own complicities.

People or kings continue the description of the servant in verses 2 and 3. "He has grown up before us." Worth noting is their chosen role of onlookers, more or less guilty bystanders. They distance themselves; we look in vain for an index of responsibility.

They are like late arrivals at a scene of carnage. They are too late to prevent the tragedy (or so they would have us believe). An atmosphere of more or less detached sympathy prevails. It is all quite surreal, and unconvincing.

Several questions, quite naturally arising in the circumstance, are never dealt with. Presupposing that we have seen him thus, how did his condition arise? Should we not even now investigate and issue a report, even if it implicates ourselves? And short of that, does not a suspicion come to rest on us? Or is the destruction of the servant to be considered only a kind of disaster in nature, a blind fate?

The servant, be it noted once more, never speaks for himself. He is spoken about, like a child or a mental deficient or a mute. Or perhaps like someone already dead, whose repute, the story of whose life and death, is at the mercy of others.

As before a leper, "we cover our faces" (verse 3). This is a ritual and a psychological response, all together. One thinks of leprosy and the law, and also of the usual reaction today to the AIDS ill.

In verse 4, the people speak. They seem, after the fact, chastened in spirit. The image recalls the band of disciples, clotting together for comfort after the passion and death of Christ. Beaten in spirit, broken in heart, knowing that through betrayal and denial and cowardice their part in his death was a large one.

But as to Isaiah's servant -- for all the horror that has transpired (also by implication, through the authorities and the crowd) -- something more hopeful is under way.

Perhaps they are relieved somewhat of illusions about moral superiority, about being chosen.

Toil and trouble come up in verses 4 and 5. The servant is granted no chance to claim or deny the role of expiation. This is the interpretation of others, after the fact.

When God speaks toward the end we have a much more immediate and modest version of events.

Perhaps another way opens. One could, for example, treat the death of Christ as continuing in one's own time and place, in the death of the innocent. In consequence of this continuity in suffering, one might feel called to shoulder a part of the burden rather than thrusting it on some historical hero.

Also, with regard to the suffering of the innocent, it seems better not to reach too easily for a religious solution. Thus Christ, having done it, once and for all, must be balanced by our making up in our bodies what is lacking in his passion.

We do well to make no great claims for ourselves. As though we were expiating the sins of others. This is insulting and can only bring bad odor to a good thing.

But is it not true that the sufferings of the innocent availed on behalf of others -- the people -- us in fact? The scripture includes such declarations.

Two things might be said, in regard to a sensitive issue. First, a vivid sense of complicity in sin is laudable and of God, as long as it does not cast burdens on others.

We have had enough of scapegoating in our lifetime. Second, a vivid sense of solidarity in sin is laudable and of God, as long as such a sense leads us to action on behalf of others -- on behalf of those who are viewed as our equals, at the least, and more realistically, as our moral betters.

A servant song, it would seem, ought at some point to celebrate the changes wrought in us through the example and words of the holy servant. In this sense, the verses seem preliminary (for example, they speak of sin and repentance, but nothing of following through). And to that degree, the verses seem incomplete (they raise an iconic Christ before us but neglect to speak of ourselves as taking up the cross of the times).

Thus the verses invite us to a further thoughtfulness. Who are we, where do we stand in this noble line? What are we to do with our lives?

Surely healing is offered through the duress undergone by others (verses 4 and 5). One thinks of the healing under way in the North American church, through the atrocious sufferings of sisters and brothers in the Latin American church.

This is to be accounted as a peerless gift. We are led to contrast present attitudes and understanding with the low moral level that marked (marred) the churches during the Vietnam decade.

The ideal servant, under duress, invites us (the hardly ideal servants) to "go, and do likewise." We might consider one detail of the servant's conduct, in court, it would seem (verse 8). A like conduct is implicitly commended to ourselves.

In verse 7, "he did not open his mouth." In contrast, defendants of conscience habitually open their mouths, vociferously, in the course of their trial and confinement.

But perhaps not in contrast. Christ the servant played it both ways. In the course of his trial, he both held his peace and opened his mouth.

The meaning of such a phrase, therefore, depends. Illegitimate or intemperate questioning, then and now, is met with silence. But when the truth can be conveyed, or evidence of good faith is shown (how rarely!), or when the larger public is addressed (the media being largely ignorant or indifferent), then one speaks up.

Perhaps a deeper meaning is indicated by the silence of the servant: the will to stand by one's actions, come hell or prison or death itself. One is at peace with one's conduct, in full view of the consequences, and pays up.

THE PART PLAYED by God in all this is heavily underscored (verses 4, 6, and 10). Again, we proceed with caution. A doctrine of expiation is proposed by the interlocutors, that is, the people and the authorities. By those, in other words, whose interest is at stake; those who have the most to gain bypassing the buck, by invoking a religious solution.

But the question persists. What part, one asks, did the crowd, the judges, the prosecutors, the kings, play in the court scene, the scenes behind the scene, the dodges and ploys that wrought the destruction of the just one? To be sure, these are not the most disinterested witnesses or reporters.

God, for her part, gets to inject a word only at the end (verses 11 and 12). And when she speaks, it is not clear that expiation is a favorite theme.

Beginning with verse 4, the speakers vent a strange language, by turns admiring, all but groveling, a kind of holy hectoring of the servant. Lengthy references are made to our sufferings (he bore), our sorrows (he carried). And then, more strikingly, we thought of him as chastised, stricken, humiliated, pierced for our sins, crushed because of our crimes. God made our iniquity fall on him. For our sins, he was stricken with death.

How is all this to be understood? Two possibilities exist. First, this is a report, followed by a theological interpretation (the expiatory sacrifice of the servant). These are to be taken at face value, for example, this is what happened, this is what biblical folk are to believe concerning what happened. The speakers, in this theory, are a literary device. They stand surrogate for Isaiah in conveying the truth of the event and its meaning.

Or second, we are offered a report that exempts the reporters, who remain determinedly objective in the face of the trial, condemnation, and death. In this hypothesis, the report is followed by a theological cover-up. It went this way, and we -- authorities and people -- were the more or less horrified witnesses, helpless before the downfall of the servant.

God decreed all this, or at least allowed it to happen, in order to bring good out of manifest evil (as suggested before). Indeed the speakers are extremely shadowy figures.

Also, the theme of guilt is treated almost offhandedly. It is admitted that we went our own way, we sinned. But the errancy, the sin, is treated vaguely. No details are offered. (The atmosphere is strangely redolent of speculative theology, or of a more-or-less usual liturgy.)

A finger never points, least of all at the speaker(s). No specific crime is mentioned, no guilty party. No one is indicted for this crime against this just one, for this trial and judgment and execution. It is all very strange.

One longs to ask, Who was in charge? Who was responsible for the kangaroo proceeding, for the capital sentence? Do the facts point to the speakers, or to others unnamed? In either case, why are we not told?

The dictum that God brings good out of evil is, of course, theologically impeccable. The trouble starts when the dictum works as a cover.

WHEN GOD FINALLY speaks, the expiation theme is muted indeed (verses 11 and 12). Some implications might be ventured, as implied (always sotto voce), by the prior speakers: "The servant, admirable as he is, got in the way of things as they are; intemperate talk was followed by tumult among the people. In consequence, justice came down hard, perhaps too hard. It must be admitted that in the heat of the moment, something could have gone wrong."

Or, "For sure, we're sorry. But of course we were only onlookers, bystanders. And now that the dust has settled, we're grateful and edified. The servant has taken things so well, meek and humble and wordless, as a sheep to the slaughter. Just as the Bible commends."

But according to God, a different version of events: "Must I not weep to tell it? I summoned my servant as witness to truth and justice. And he responded, in season and out, in fear and fearlessness. Then the inevitable happened, given this world I only half comprehend. His words and acts, the ABCs I taught him -- to love the poor, to reproach the rich, in weakness and hope to trust in me -- these were badly received. He was plucked away, shoved through the knothole of the legal system. And predictably, but you know the rest -- you the bystanders, you the generals.

"He was faithful to the end. I swear, you will see it yet; great things will come to pass."

The pieties reach a climax in verse 10. Talk about Job's comforters, or the wicked burying the just! Like Job's theologically inclined friends, they are so sure of themselves! So sure about God (who, be it noted, has not yet been heard from).

In verses 11 and 12, God speaks. There is a notable modesty in the words -- terse statements of praise and acceptance of the life and death of the servant. The dogma of expiation, so dear to the kings and citizens, is ignored. No more of that.

A simple tribute. Inspiration and example are praised.

"After the testing of his soul, he will see the light and be consoled." Indeed darkness surrounded the last days of the servant. He must often wonder, in a kind of torpor of grief and loss, if the sun had vanished from the sky. It is a common enough feeling among those who are ground under by the rigors of law.

In such lives, to be conscious of innocence is by no means consoling. It is another point of anguish. The question comes home like a dagger. It is not, Why do the innocent suffer? but, Why do I, who am innocent, suffer?

And God, who is by self-definition light, becomes darkness.

WHAT DOES ONE say of a providence that has withheld providing for one who is by every right "more than the lilies of the field, or the birds of the air"? Whatever light and consolation might be thought to exist are literally out of this world. Little enough of either is available, at least for such as the servant (or for such as Christ, as we learn from the cry that darkens the noon of Good Friday).

These are matters to be accepted with that edgy nod -- sometimes grudging, less often fullhearted -- we call faith. The servant, like most of his kind, sees little come of the life he was called to. God is silent as the grave his persecutors are fervently occupied in choosing, digging, and cordoning off. Meantime, they have the task, no less pressing, of destroying not only the servant's good name, but his sense of ever having possessed one.

"By his sufferings, my servant will bring many to justice, even as he bears their iniquities" (verse 11). The iniquities, as is not often pointed out, are precisely the injustice.

It is tempting to point out the irony here. The servant has been denied all and any justice in his lifetime. Now he brings others to justice. Not to the bar of worldly justice; he has finished with that (as it has finished him) once and for all. His example and grace go deeper.

It is to the justice of God that he invites the unjustified, which is to say, to holiness. To the all but unimaginable possibility of love. To the truth he lived and died for, and exemplified so purely, at such cost.

Included in the swath of his love are those who presumed to speak for him (and so muffled his own speech, turning his tongue to stone). The interlocutors, the crowd, the authorities -- those in whose interest it was to issue theological pronunciamientos, a very lava flow, interpreting (misinterpreting) the servant. Also those (the same perhaps) who were skilled in dodging their part in his death.

Also the next generation, the pseudo biographers, hagiographers, pious distorters of truth. Those anxious to clean up the act.

In verse 12, power flows from the powerless one, and it has a torrential effect on others. The verse reminds one of the "great hinge" of Paul's letter to the Philippians. "Because Christ was obedient even unto death, therefore God exalted him, and conferred on him a name above every name" (Philippians 2:9).

Thus early on a kind of principled understanding is struck between God and the servant. No blank checks descend, fluttering from on high. No promises of vindication, glory, good times, happy outcomes, are issued.

Providence? A dark cloud. The hideous processes of this world, the destruction of the innocent, proceed on schedule. Ironbound, as though God does not exist, or has given up, or vanished.

Likewise, the servant, deprived of any protector, may as well be a criminal for all the world knows, to all appearances (for all the church knows?). The crime: interference, clear talk, a forbidden language. He will in any case be placed in the dock along with the social jetsam washed up there, regular as the return of high tide.

Still, the servant of God retains his self-knowledge. It is lodged in his mind, not to be corrupted or dissolved.

Along with other defendants, like them but unlike too, he is a victim of the iniquitous (inevitably legal) arrangements protecting property and public order. The servant will be tried by the same laws as these small-time (or big-time) losers. Laws that like a Cerberus stand guard with sleepless eyes to protect property, including the most hideous illegitimate property, property that is pure theft.

Indeed, caveat canem!

The servant will not be vindicated in time, we are told. But the effect of his life will be known in time. Multitudes will hear and see; trophies (even the humblest) will be placed at his tomb.

Thus the vindication of the just need not rest on a theory of expiation of others' sins in order to be found precious in the eyes of the Lord. Indeed the death of the just cannot affect others.

THE SERVANT HAS sought no other justification; his appeal has been to God only. Neither works nor orthodoxy nor discipline nor cultural approval nor the nod of the great nor finally that court of last appeal, justification by the law.

In such austerity and carefulness of spirit, the servant beckons others to seek the loving source of all justification. The source of existence itself, of meaning, of capacity for love, received and given. It is all one.

This because "he handed himself over to death, and was accounted one with the sinners" (verse 12).

There was no choice between dying or not dying; the common fate. There was a choice only about the manner and circumstance. One could fade into things as they are, the low profile of the born coward. Or one could put on the tawdry robe of the justice system, hum along, lock-stepping in a moral crepuscule.

The servant seeks a third way. He offers a paradigm: We are to make of it what we will. Seek justice all the days of one's life and take the heat, the consequence.

Thus he beckons others toward the same freedom he evidenced in giving his life. Thus too the servant is multiplied like bread -- friends, servants, sisters, brothers, abroad, at home, at hand for those who seek. One and the same gesture of soul; come, this is the way!

Christ, so often identified with the suffering servant, bore in his flesh, we are told, the sins of many. Let us accede; let us also begin with the sins of those in power, those who connived in his destruction, in violation of justice, in meticulous venomous observance of the law. He bore in his flesh (nothing could be more obvious than those wounds and stripes) the sins of Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, the executioners, soldiers, police, the people. The sins of recusant disciples. The sins of family members who, early on, concluded he was mad and washed hands of him.

One can indeed enlarge the scope, understanding that such crimes are endemic to every place and generation, crimes against the just. We are called to "call the shots" on such crimes, which generally go unchallenged in churches or out. Sins that in the old catechism were described as "crying to heaven for vengeance."

And finally, the servant "intercedes for the transgressor." The image is of a kind of attorney of defense. Imagine! Prosecuted to the fullest rigor of the law, denounced by apoplectic property holders, chimeric priests, sloths in the guise of sages, and disposed of, capitally punished. The servant has all along been exercising a function exactly opposite to that of the legal hounds.

Turning things around! His life and death have been an intercession on their behalf.

It does not do justice to the image merely to say that he did not respond in kind. He went further, a long, long way. His conduct became in effect the only hope of the unjust.

This is a large claim indeed. But it is totally accurate to the facts of whatever concoction, whatever case -- civil or human rights, anti-war, sanctuary -- that today summons conscientious violators to court.

The reversal of fortune is staggering. The defendants, stripped of recourse, their work vilified, their good name held to scorn, are the mighty protagonists of a quite different drama of which the visible one can be called only a most tawdry mockup.

The prosecutors perform a far different task. They "stand there, night and day accusing the just." And the just, in response, invoke the mercy of God on their tormentors, a sweet revenge indeed.

Need it be added that if this momentous reversal is to occur, if prosecutors and executioners are to be transformed, such will come to pass only when God at last, at last, hearkens to the tears of her servants?

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