This text is not an easy passage-at least that’s the general gist of scholars and commentators that I’ve broached. What is confusing is the identity of the servant. At times throughout Isaiah, the servant seems to be Israel (cf. Isaiah 42 and 49:3), but at other times the servant is clearly subsumed into a individual persona (Isaiah 49:5) which nearly resists identification with the nation.

• How do we navigate this confusion? The easiest maneuver: delete “Israel” from verse three of this lesson-“And he said to me, ‘You are my servant in whom I will be glorified.’ ” Such a cut-and-paste attempt does make it seem that an individual is being referred to. But such a move creates its own problems: historically speaking, there is no support for this excision. Such an exegetical move may also be counterproductive to authorial intent: maybe the writer/s meant these passages about the “servant” to be ambiguous, elusive, and fluid.

Doesn’t the phrase, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword,” trigger another place in Scripture where such an image is used? The concordance will bring you to the book of The Revelation of John, where such a description is posited of the Christ of the Apocalypse:

- 1:6 - from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword

- 2:16 - make war against them with the sword of my mouth;

- 19:15 - from his mouth comes a sharp, two-edged sword with

which to strike down the nations

- 19:21 - killed . . . by the sword that came from his mouth

• Other references to the word/sword analogy: Hebrews 4:12 and 13. Here, again the reference is ambiguous, almost a play between word and persona:

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden . . .

• Then John’s Gospel, of course, uses the same analogy of Word (logos) and identifies such with the person of Christ. Divine speech.

• There is an unmistakable universal perspective that can be heard in the first part of this magnificent chapter. Israel is up to her neck in her own troubles, so we might expect that the prophetic word would somehow be directly specifically at shoring up a wounded Israel. Yet remarkably, the piece of text is clearly rooted in God’s vision for the world, not just one piece of global real estate. Throughout Isaiah 40-55, the theme of God as creator is prominent, and this theme keeps the spotlight away from any single nation.

• A proclamation point: Epiphany functions in a similar way. It keeps the focus away from just me and mine, but compels us to think outside ourselves to contemplate God’s intentions for the whole world, for all peoples.

• This question, what is God doing with the “peoples from far away” and “all flesh” is also picked up by the NIB:

It is too light a thing, God tells the servant, for Jacob/Israel to reunited with Zion, brought back from all compass points, or displayed before her for the very first time. The servant is to be a “light to the nations.”

. . . To be a “light to the nations” does not mean going out and converting “peoples from far away” by word and thereafter associating with them on equal terms. Instead it means bearing affliction and hardship-brought about on account of obedience to God-and precisely thereby conveying the knowledge of God. To witness to the God of Israel is not to share information with others but to be faithful to God in such a way that confrontation will occur but will not be an end in itself. The witness leaves the final accomplishment to God, assured that affliction and hardship will be the means through which “my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth” (49:6).

So in the homily you may want to be honest with the difficulty within the text of identifying the servant. Suggest several ways that we can understand who the servant might be. Then, the proclaimer can examine ways in which our Christian faith posits Christ as reflecting something of the servant description.