Crushing the Servant

For many years of my life I detested the text of Isaiah 53.10,

“It has pleased the Lord to bruise the servant.”

So, I decided to go to the Jerusalem bible to see if the Catholics could help me out. They read it, ""It has pleased the Lord to crush the servant!” But then I’ve lived long enough to discover that the only people who have really made any difference in my life are the people who God has taken and sand-papered the cockles of their hearts -- until they could not walk by a hungry child, a crying woman, or a hardened man. It has pleased the Lord to bruise the servant. And I thank God for what is in many ways the ultimate maturity of the spiritual life. It‘s no accident that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and the song of the suffering servant is more quoted in the New Testament than any other single chapter of the Old -- and is half the text of Handel’s “Messiah”. Can you hear me? Submission -- that submission which understands that the gospel is bad news before it can really be good news.

May 13, 1986 [Preaching Conference, Arrowhead Springs]