Chosen, Blessed, Broken and Given | Dr. Rev. Carol Kerr | March 7, 2010

The passage which we read this morning from the prophet Isaiah is one in a series of 4 poems that introduce for the first time in the Bible the idea of the suffering servant.

The suffering servant is the servant of God whose unique ministry is the salvation of the people of Israel and through them the salvation of the whole world. The way he is to provide this salvation is through suffering. The people who scorn him are the people he in fact saves. An ironic, sad, and deeply loving gesture of God’s and of the servant’s.

500 years before it happened, Isaiah here foretells the very heart of Jesus’ ministry. We are particularly mindful of this in the season of Lent. As we ponder Jesus walk to the cross.

We can only stand in awe as we turn to the passionate and mournful love of God that the suffering servant lives out. Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.

The great mystery is that all of this suffering is not just accidental, but the central part of Jesus’ ministry. It is that which saves us. Isaiah says, Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; …. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.

When we share the Lord’s supper we remember the words of Jesus that night. He took the bread and said, This is my body broken for you. Then he gave thanks and blessed the bread. When ever you eat of this do so remembering me. Then he breaks the bread and gives it away. He is the bread of life.

As Christians Henri Nowen says that our lives are also about being taken, blessed broken and given.

At first we are taken as the bread in communion is taken. The bread is picked off of the table as special. In one passage of the suffering servant it says, The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother the Lord named my name. The suffering servant was chosen by God as special. We are chosen by God. As we were knit together in the darkness of our mother’s wombs, even before our mother’s knew we were there, God knew. As our mother’s blood pulsed intor our veins, God called us his beloved.

This is the starting point, to be chosen. Ironically, most Christians have the hardest time with this starting point. They don’t truly believe that they are chosen by God as the beloved. Many people feel fundamentally rejected. It could be rejected by their parents, or their loved ones, or their work, or themselves. Most people are like Charlie Brown who once said in a cartoon, I was born onto the stage of life and they took one look at me and said, ‘Not right for the part!’

God has named you and that name of yours is “the beloved one.” Henri Nowen makes the point, that we are called to refract God’s love through our unique histories and lives as no one every has and no one every will. We are chosen like the bread off the communion table.

After the bread is chosen, then it is blessed. We too are blessed. The word blessing in Latin is benediction. Benediction means saying good things. In one of the suffering servant passages of Isaiah the servant was blessed by God, You are my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified. What better benediction, blessing, could there be than for God to say in effect: Good things will happen to me as God because you are around! And that is God’s blessing to each of us as Christians.

After the bread is taken and blessed, it is broken. This is what happens with the suffering servant and with us. We all know what it is like to be broken. We all have been through it. A person’s father is dying but the son can’t seem to say to him “I love you.” A mother is shocked by how uncontrollably angry she got with her child. We may steal, we may lie. Yes, we are all broken.

There is a litany that I ran across once it says, “Go tell the strong that they shall become weak, and the weak that they shall become strong.” At first I thought that this is crazy! No one will want to come to church if we go and tell them the strong will become weak. Our society hates to talk about being broken. We hate to admit we are broken. Yet, it is true that we are broken countless times in our lives. Desperately we insist that we are happy instead. Happy, happy, happy al the time. Happy go lucky! Happy hour! We and the society rejects suffering. WE don’t like to talk about it because it is weak, it is painful and it is ….. intimate.

So when suffering comes upon each one of us, which it does inevitably, we then think that we too are rejected. We think that something is wrong with us because no one else seems to be suffering. What did we do wrong that we got cancer, or lost our wife died, or have gone bankrupt, or divorced.

The mystery of suffering is this: If you embrace the suffering and put it under the blessing of God instead of under the curse, then the suffering will become holy, it will become whole and heal.

At the Center for Grieving Children before the children leave the center after they finished their grief work, the are given a little bag of stones. Three of them are made smooth and round. The fourth stone is left rough, pointed and jagged. For children who have lost their brother or sister, mothr or father, or both, it is this rough stone that they always hold on to and cherish the most. This is the stone that they carry around with them in their pocket. They don’t’ have to be told what it represents. They know automatically. It is their suffering and they cherish it, hold it in the little fists. As such they are able to put it under the blessing.

The fact that Jesus suffered for us is God putting our pain, our sinfulness, and our brokenness under the blessing instead of the curse. Jesus holds each one of our lives, not the smooth gems, but the rough rocks. He grasps the jagged edges in his hand so hard that it hurts and he feels the pain too. Thus, Jesus puts the pain under the blessing for us.

The bread is taken, blessed, broken and finally, the bread is given. “I will give you as a light ot the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” God says to the suffering servant in Isaiah. Once we are able to put our suffering under the blessing instead of the curse we will then be able to give ourselves to the world.

Jesus says, “be fruitful” he doesn’t say, “be successful.” To be fruitful one must ripen then let go and die to seed the earth. We must lose our lives in order to save our lives.

This is the Christian journey that we are reminded of in this season of Lent, as we contemplate Jesus’ journey to the cross. Evil is overcome by good when we are chosen, blessed, broken and given. Just as Jesus the suffering servant is. Because of Jesus we are put under the blessing instead of the curse. The one who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.

This is what we remember every time we come to the communion table. After Jesus takes the bread, gives thanks, blesses it, he breaks it and says, “This is my body broken for you. Whenever you eat of it, do so remembering me.”