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In Chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah, there are four passages known as the Servant Songs. One of them, quoted as today’s first reading, is about the “suffering servant.” One wonders what it was like to read about this suffering servant in Isaiah, where we hear, “It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain,” apart from an encounter with the life and death of Jesus. How were these verses understood, in which we are told, “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities,” before the disciples read them in light of Jesus’ passion and resurrection?

Some modern scholars have proposed that the servant in Isaiah might represent the nation of Israel or the prophets; others identify the servant with an individual, like the prophet Isaiah himself, the Persian king Cyrus or the future Messiah. As for the earliest disciples of Jesus, they were certain that the servant was the prophesied Messiah, who had lived, died and been raised among them. Jesus was the one who was crushed, who bore our iniquities and who “out of his anguish” saw “the light” in his resurrection.

Jesus’ suffering and death were not, as the disciples had initially feared, the destruction of their hopes, but the fulfillment of divine hope. This allowed for heightened reflection to take place on the life of the Messiah, who had walked among them as they read the Law and the Prophets. This reflection upon Jesus, in light of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the foundation of the New Testament.

The Letter to the Hebrews, for instance, reflected upon Jesus as both human and divine, as the perfect victim and the perfect high priest, “who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Because of Jesus’ humanity and his suffering on our behalf, we have a Messiah who is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses.” It is this sympathy, born of his incarnation and passion, that allowed Jesus to guide the earliest followers, the kernel of the church, into an understanding of the shared mission the apostles were to carry to the world.

Understanding was not always easy. When Jesus told his apostles that he must suffer and die, James and John find it the proper time to say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus does not respond by asking them if they had even heard what he said but asks them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” The brothers Zebedee want “to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Their answer establishes at least this much: They know Jesus is the Messiah, and they know he will establish God’s kingdom. The problem is one of misunderstanding, not just because Jesus has announced his coming death for the third time but because they desire glory without the suffering. They will not hear what Jesus has to say: The kingdom will come, but the Messiah must first suffer and die.

Jesus says to be a leader in the church is not to be a “lord” or “tyrant.” Jesus’ goal is not to replace Gentile lords and tyrants with new, improved Jewish lords and tyrants, but in the kingdom, or “reign” of God, rulers must be servants; and “whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” This is not empty language for the troops from a general who surveys the suffering on the battlefield from the safety of a mountaintop but from one who will suffer for them.

Jesus says that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” In this verse Jesus interprets his death as a sacrificial death. The language of “ransom” evokes salvation through purchase, freeing “many” from slavery or capture. “For many” is the language of Is 53:12, in which the servant “poured out himself to death…yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Jesus offers himself out of sympathy for our weakness, for the sake of humanity, which cannot save itself. I am this servant, Jesus says; are you willing to follow me and to serve me through service to all?

This article appears in October 12 2015.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.