The body of Christ, the church, is the life and mission of Christ the Savior in the world today. To look at the mission of the church is to look at the mission of Christ. In the suffering servant passages of Isaiah interspersed through chapters 42-61, we find a beginning description of who God's Christ would be when he came. The Christ is described there as a suffering servant rather than a regal earthly monarch. The definition of any community of God's people, local or otherwise, needs to be based upon this suffering servant image, this image of Christ.
Jesus encapsulated the prophecies of the Old Testament in his life and mission as the suffering servant of God. He was the Christ, the one whom God anointed by his Spirit. When he departed, he sent forth his power and authority upon his followers. He gave his disciples, the body of Christ, the power to continue his mission, to be him in the world. So his people are to be the suffering servant community. Therefore we should shape our understanding of the church on those Old Testament passages concerning the Christ who is to come.
Jesus' call to public ministry at his baptism is confirmed by a voice from heaven with words taken from the suffering servant poem of Isaiah 42. In the first chapter of Mark's gospel it is recorded that Jesus went to the river Jordan. As he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. A voice from heaven said, "you are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased." After he had been tested in the wilderness concerning his calling, he came preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and began gathering his group of disciples around him. Similarly, in Matthew 12:17-18, after Jesus has manifested all kinds of power, he is identified as the Christ, the anointed one in whom the Spirit, the life of God, lives. "This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: 'Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles...' " These words are again taken from the same suffering servant poem in Isaiah 42.
Further, at the opening of Jesus' ministry in Luke 4, Jesus identifies himself very carefully as the anointed one by quoting from Isaiah 61: "He opened the book and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives...." He has identified himself as the suffering servant and the Christ, in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, because the Spirit is upon him, because he has the very life of God within him.
Biblical scholars argue over whether these suffering servant passages are talking about a person or a people; I suspect it is both. There is an Old Testament feeling that the suffering servant is a group of people, and the first thing that the Christ did was to gather others about him. He talked to them as though they were identified with himself: "As the Father sent me, so I send you." "The authority which I have, I have given you." The whole implication of his own teachings about himself as the suffering servant, the anointed one, is that he is going to pass this on to the group of his followers.
The disciples are then baptized with the Spirit and so given the life of the Spirit. That life which made Jesus the suffering servant, that life which made him the anointed one, has now been given to the group; his group is given the commission to do what, he did. Jesus poured out his life on his people which Paul calls his "body," upon whom rests that same Spirit, and which has the same task as the suffering servant in the Old Testament. Any description of the Christ from the Old Testament needs to be identified as the description of the church in the New Testament. What is the task of this community? What is the suffering servant community given to do? What is the anointed community given to be? We can begin to find answers by examining the Isaiah passages that have to do with this suffering servant.
The words of Isaiah 42 describe the meaning of the anointing of the Spirit at Jesus' baptism, defining his ministry. But this is also a prophecy fulfilled in us, the church, as the suffering servant community. Taking seriously these words about the mission of the coming Messiah, we see that he lays down his life, not just for a few, not just for the "brethren," but for the whole world. Further, the Spirit of God is upon him to bring forth justice to the nations, not just to rule over the group.
Since the group is defined by its mission, and its mission is the whole world, the suffering servant community must be identified by the sacrificial laying down of life not just for the people in it, but for the whole world. That throws a whole different light on the nature of Christian community. Leadership is not meant only to gather the group together and identify just with those people called to it.
Another passage describing the suffering servant and underscoring this same truth is Isaiah 49:16:
Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the mob, from the body of my mother he named my name.... He said to me, "You are my servant, Israel in whom I will be glorified.... It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
It makes a tremendous difference whether we see the suffering servant community as just a local group drawing people in, or whether we see our task and our mission to be for the nations. If the Christian community is going to take the kind of authority that Jesus had, we too must lay down our lives for the world.
Isaiah 50:4-6 describes a further attribute of the suffering servant:
The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.... The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
If this is a definition of Christ's community, then in proclaiming the word, not just to each other, but to the nations, I suppose we can expect the same treatment that the Lord himself received because of it: persecution.
Servanthood
The word "servant" in the Old Testament is a difficult concept for us to get into the English language. It doesn't just mean a person who does a ministry or service for another; it doesn't mean a person who is a slave and therefore inferior to another. It's a description of a person who has really given up himself or herself in order to fully carry out the purposes of another. It's a person who has laid down one's identity, independence and self-determination, not because of feeling inferior to another, but out of respect, honor, love for another. In the Old Testament, the servant is one who is so thoroughly identified with the master that he or she carries out the master's will as though that person were actually the master. It's an identity of person which involved complete and thorough fellowship, communion, understanding, sharing, agreement, and commonness of will.
We don't think that way about people any more; but underlying the word servant in the Old Testament mind is that kind of wedding, person to person. I used the term "wedding" because I mean by it the very thing that I think they talked about in a master-servant relationship. If we can think in terms of a wedding of two persons together, then we can get some feeling for the meaning of the word "servant."
The word most frequently attached to the term servant in the Old and New Testaments is obedience. The characteristic of the servant throughout was obedience to the will of one's master, in the sense that the servant identified absolutely with the master. When the Old Testament speaks of individuals being the servants of God, it is this kind of total union of will, identity, and obedience to God that is meant--the laying down of one's life for God's purposes, the unity of one's life with God's Spirit and its work in the world, Jesus' authority came both in his identity with and obedience to his Father, and in sacrificially laying down his life for humanity. The twofold thrust of Jesus' authority is shown in Philippians 2: The one who had all power and authority was sent from God to humble himself to die on a cross that others might live. Both of those aspects of who he was are crucial to the authority he bore. If the Christian community is to have the kind of authority that Jesus bore, we too must have the dual thrust of holiness through identification with the Father and perfect obedience to his will, coupled with laying down our lives for the world.
All of this has great implications for the leadership of the body of Christ. The word leadership describes something which is basically a function of a group. Broadly described, leadership permits a group to maintain its ideals and accomplish its goals. All of us may have certain natural leadership capacities, but that's not the criterion of leadership in the body of Christ. Rather, the authority of leadership derives from a life which fosters and nurtures the group as the suffering servant community.
Just as Jesus taught that his group is the suffering servant community, so he also taught that its leadership was that of the servant. Actually, leadership is not a New Testament word. To understand the meaning of leadership, one must understand the meaning of being a servant, as has just been discussed. "If you are going to be great, you must be a servant, the least." The whole idea of leadership in the kingdom of God is summarized in the word servanthood. The responsibility of leadership within the local community is to see that the community conforms to the image of the suffering servant.
If we identify the body of Christ with the suffering servant community, and if leadership is a function of community, then the authority persons have as leaders comes not primarily from any powers that they have, but from the life that they live out, which is the life of the community.
I don't hear that being said very much about authority. Today within church renewal circles there is a big hassle about authority, headship, and discipleship. As I read about these things, it seems to me that there is a unique kind of power being given to those who have leadership which is not necessarily born out of the life that they live, but is something laid upon the community. Leadership frequently becomes looked upon as a quality of givenness apart from the group, almost a spiritual overlay put on top of the group, as though you pick up a leader and then the leader leads the group. The common result in the church today is leadership which doesn't really belong to the body of Christ: it manipulates it, directs it, pushes it, and decides for it, in many instances.
There was a long time in my own life when I struggled even to think, "My heavens, ought I to lay down my life for all these people, my brothers and sisters? Don't I have some rights of my own? Can't I reserve for myself the right to turn off the telephone between 5 and 7 p.m. so that I can at least digest my meal? Don't I have that kind of power to quench what comes toward me?" I was exercised a great deal by those things, thinking that I had some rights in the body and that others ought to respect me and my needs. But even going beyond that, ought I to lay down my life for the nations, for the world?
I think it was at that point that the power of God came to Christ. The real authority that Christ had came from the twofold thrust previously mentioned: his identity and union with his Father, and his laying down his life in obedience for the nations. There, at the place where those two lines met, was the authority which God gave him. I believe that's the power he gives to us, if we also are conformed to this twofold thrust of our identity as a suffering servant community.
An individual cannot live the life of the body of Christ by oneself. That life has been given to the body of Christ by the Spirit. In my view, there is not very much evidence in the New Testament that the Spirit given at Pentecost was given so much to individuals who together make up the group as it was given to a group which was made up of individuals. The fruit of the touching of the Spirit for any individual is his or her life in the body. And if, in fact, a person who is moved on by the Spirit of God does not become incorporated into the body of Christ, then I would say that in the New Testament picture the life being experienced by that person is a breach of normal birth.
The fullness of the gift of God is not complete without community. I am not saying that an individual person will be unable to experience the life of God in any sense; rather, I am referring to the suffering servant mission of God's Christ upon earth. God has placed this mission, I believe, in the community of faith. Something happened at Pentecost which had never happened before in a group of people, ever. It was the impartation of the life of the suffering servant of God himself to that group of people, so that they then undertook to fulfill the mission that he came for and gave them the authority to continue.
The authority that we have as the body of Christ is the authority of the suffering servant of God still in this world, in such a way that the community, the church, is so bent upon doing his will, so identified with him, so perfectly united with him, and so given in sacrifice for the whole world that we bear the same authority as a community that he did. All his claims to authority and to power are ours when we are in that position. If we don't make the same response to God and don't carry out the same mission in the world, then we don't have the same authority that he did.
To the extent that we are really given in laying down our lives for the world, to the extent that we really are obedient to God, and to the extent that we really are a community--to that extent the authority and the power that we have access to within the church is the very same that Christ the suffering servant of God had. It is that life he gave to the community of his people.
Graham Pulkingham was a contributing editor for Sojourners and one of the leaders of the Community of Celebration in Cumbrae, Scotland, an international center for promoting church renewal, when this article appeared.
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