The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint. -Isaiah 50: 7
There is a British TV series
called, Time Team. The Team, is a group of people from different fields who
work together as an archaeological team. They arrive on a site – often a field
or someone’s backyard- to investigate an archaeological query and have three
days to find and process their archaeology. The sites are from various time
periods: the Middle Ages, the Saxon period, the Roman period, or older like the
Iron Age or Neolithic. I amazed by the number of finds found on the surface of
fields. A common find is flint; flint used 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years
ago. Flint is a quartz stone that was used to make stone tools and start fires.
One of the Time Team members
likes to recreate an item that they find using the traditional means of making
that item. In a number of episodes he
practices chipping flint into various types of tools. Flint breaks into
sharp-edged pieces, and with skill can be chipped into useful blades for
knives, spearheads, axes, and other cutting tools and weapons. In the process of making flint blades there
is often bruising and blood. It is not
as easy as it looks.
This is what came to my mind when
Isaiah proclaims of the Teacher -the Servant:
I have set my face like flint...
This passage is one of four poems
referred to as Servant songs. The four texts are complex and speak on many
levels and of various people, including: the prophet, the people, the Messiah, God-followers.
Here the Servant is identified as a Teacher.
Counter to last week where Isaiah
spoke of streams bursting in the desert, this passage tells of a time where
water is lacking and the deserts dry to become wasteland; a time when the skies
are clothed as if it was night without stars or moon. The context of Isaiah’s
time is a community grappling with understanding and dealing with unhealed
wounds from their exile in Babylon. Into parched land, desolation, and shadow,
the Prophet – the Teacher- is to proclaim ‘words to sustain the weary.’
I have set my face like flint...
sharp and edged to cut through cries
of desperation; pointing purposefully forward to describe what can be; hard and
durable to survive the struggle and responsibility of carrying oneself and others
through weariness. To be this Prophet,
this Teacher, is not for the faint of heart.
Which brings us to the conversation between Jesus and the disciples. Jesus
asks the disciples, Who do you say that I am? And in a flint-like moment
of surprising clarity and courageous vigour the disciples identify Jesus as the
Messiah. And it is then that Jesus sets his face like flint , to prepare
and build up the ability -the stamina, the courage, the power - to fulfill his responsibility
as God’s servant; moving towards the ghastly end point of his earthly ministry,
to be hanged on a tree, crucified.
This is also the turning point
for the teachings the disciples hear. Jesus’
words turn to flint after their proclamation of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus – the
Teacher- teaches the cutting apart of cultural constructs, the sharp-edged expectations
of what a follower is, and the hard truths of where being Servant and Teacher
lead.
Jesus began to teach them, “if
any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow me.” Jesus could have added,
“Set your face like flint.”
“God knows that you will need to
do so. I have and you will.” Be flint – because
the cross you bear is across parched wasteland under cloudy skies; where cries
are full of desperation, memories are unhealed festering wounds, and hearts are
weary. And now we have moved from Jesus’ words to the disciples, to the
Babylonian exile of our own time.
Set your face like flint...
how else is it that we can be
God’s servant -the Teacher – those who have the ability to sustain the weary
with a word. Consider the depth of exile
the world finds itself in? Relationships are severely broken and pressured by
polarization of left and right, racism, sexism, hard core refusal or inability
for discourse. God’s creatures are displaced and ungrounded, even unhinged, and
the environment is lashing out with
powerful force. In the parched wasteland, be flint. Set your hearts and minds to
envision the future -full of hope, cooperation, life- and proclaim it – be the Teacher- who teaches
and practices kindness, forgiveness, steadiness, compassion, mercy, humility,
reconciliation, sacrifice, courage; speaking
hard truths, breaking oppression, healing trauma and wounds that have festered
for far too long, and of course, standing together with others especially those
who have no one to stand with them.
On Chebucto Road, a few blocks
from the church, there is a small park.
Currently it looks like a camp for an archaeological team. 20 small
tents are tucked side-by-side in a small village. There is a path and then on
the outer and upper area 2 large site tents – one with provisions and a place
to serve food, the other for community neighbours taking turns to watch out for
and protect the residents of the tents while they sleep and guard their
tent-homes from removal by city authority during the day. Together the
neighbours have set their faces like flint – passion, purpose,
sacrifice, courage- to protect the vulnerable and marginalized. In this there
is no shame.
As Isaiah proclaimed,
I have set my face like flint,
and I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up
together. Isaiah 50: 8
Jesus’ words to the disciples are
anything but easy to hear. Jesus is on a
tear and his words are not an ointment to instantly heal everything, but rather
act like sap stirring up a frenzy of hornets. His words -this cross bearing
idea of working in the wasteland to transform it and redeem it to a place
abounding with steadfast love and hope- is crazy, dangerous, and shameful
because to die by crucifixion was to be reduced to a pile of dung; well that
was the rhetoric in Jesus’ time. Through
the centuries Jesus’ death on the cross has been sanitized. So too has the
command to pick up one’s cross and follow. The hard edge of having to set one’s
face like flint has been lost along the way.
Black theologian James Cone’s,
last book was called The Cross and the Lynching Tree. James comments
that few have preached and drawn comparisons between what happened to Jesus -who
according to the book of Acts, was ‘hanged on a tree’- and the 19th/20th
century practice of lynching, being ‘hanged on a tree.’ In North America, the
power of the image – Jesus was lynched – far better reflects the feelings and
thoughts to be garnered about Jesus’ death. Shame, injustice, sacrifice,
courageous. Jesus was lynched.
Sobering ... and it doesn’t sit
well at all.
As Jesus practice was, Jesus set
about upsetting conceived notions and ideas. Jesus challenged held beliefs and
attitudes. Jesus flipped shame; shame was not to be found in sacrificing and
dying (by hanging on a tree) for daring to heal the weary with a word. In the
wasteland Jesus -the Teacher- brushed shame off, teaching the possibility of transforming shame from shackle to freedom.
Although the powers of the time told the enslaved, the exiled, the people
pushed to the margins, that crucifixion was the ultimate shame ... it was not.
Jesus taught that the whole self is not wrong, defective, unacceptable, or
damaged beyond repair... but rather taught the opposite. You have purpose - created good, acceptable, and
whole; pick up your cross and follow me – drop the shackles, embrace freedom.
The Lord God helps me; therefore
I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I shall not be put to shame; he who
vindicates me is near. Who will contend
with me? Let us stand up together. Isaiah 50: 7-8
May this be so, Amen and Amen.
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