Text for the Week: Transferring the Disease

Scripture: Isaiah 53:4-12

⁴ Surely he has borne our infirmities
    and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
    struck down by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.
⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
    Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people.
⁹ They made his grave with the wicked
    and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
    he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
¹¹     Out of his anguish he shall see;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
    The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out himself to death
    and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet he bore the sin of many
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

Questions

1. What does it mean to me that the servant bears not only sins and guilt, but infirmities and disease and that we fail to recognize that fact?
2. The servant is said to prosper but we also see that one of the afflictions he takes on is being counted among the rich, how are we to look at wealth and prosperity within this passage?

Background

Related Scriptures: Matthew 25:31-46; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 5:1-10

Isaiah 52 sets us up to expect God’s salvation but to expect it to come through overwhelming force not through suffering and seeming defeat.

Isaiah 52:13 begins the section on the suffering servant with the idea that he will be wise and strong enough to do things in the proper way to accomplish his purpose.

There are a number of difficulties in understanding the details of this passage and these lead to uncertainty in some of the specifics and how they fit together but the general theme that an individual is taking on the suffering of humanity and is thus in a unique relationship with God is unmistakable.

Reflection

Isaiah 53 has become for many Christians a favorite and oft quoted passage, it is an incredibly peaceful message that Christ takes on our afflictions and infirmities. I think the reason so many find this passage so comforting is because we think of the end of Jesus’ story, and so we are not hit by the disease, suffering, and death in this passage because we know Jesus rises. But that is not what Isaiah wants us to think about, Isaiah does not have a picture of the Resurrection in this passage. Isaiah only wants us to focus on what we have done, how our sin and disease have impacted this innocent man. Isaiah wants us to consider what we have done, how we have wronged this servant of God. I think back to March of 2020 and listening to people talking about how they would feel if they spread COVID to an elderly or immunocompromised parent or friend. That is what Isaiah wants going through our heads when we read this but the difference is that we are to think that the servant took on our illness so that we would not be ill. And worse than that, like a Picture of Dorian Gray, this man takes on our illness and afflictions while we remain oblivious to it. Isaiah’s picture is of a situation where our sin is transferred to this individual and we are ignorant of it and despise him because of his grotesqueness which we caused. When we plug Jesus into the picture that Isaiah is creating we see a servant ready to take on our sickness and affliction and we are seen as people who distance ourselves from him because we recognize his plight but fail to see our responsibility.

I think this is why Jesus discusses eternal life in terms of taking care of the sick and afflicted in Matthew 25:31-46. It is when we care for the sick and afflicted that we can begin to come to terms with how our own sins and transgressions have impacted Jesus. When we notice the pain and suffering of others we begin to empathize with what we have put Jesus through. We cease to be Dorian Gray living the playboy lifestyle while the portrait takes all of the abuse, and we begin to recognize the what the consequences of our sin are and work to remedy the problem.

I do not say this to bring undue guilt or shame on any of us, but so that we understand what it means to be God’s servant. We are each trying to be Go’s servants and so in one limited sense this passage is true of each one of us, taking on the affliction of others so that they might have freedom this is the message of Matthew 25.Yet, the reason this passage is true of us is because it is even more true of Jesus and we are living lives emulating his own. We are called to recognize how our sin and suffering has impacted Jesus and how we have even shied away from him because of what we have done to him. Isaiah wants us, like Dorian Gray, to stop and take a long look at the portrait standing before us and think about how we have contributed to its grotesque nature.

Several negative emotions might come to the surface when we recognize how our sin and affliction have impacted Jesus, while we have remained whole. It is easy to feel shame and guilt and desire to run from Jesus and hide. These negative feelings of shame and guilt are precisely why when Paul draws attention to Jesus’ descent in Philippians 2 and Hebrews proclaims Jesus the high priest they highlight how Jesus did/does these things from love. Jesus takes the strife and disease because of his love for us and as we grow to understand his actions and what they mean we begin to understand how love works. It is when we begin to understand how Jesus’ love works that we cease to shy away from thinking he will be mad at taking our sins but rather realize that it is his joy. And as we grow in receiving Jesus’ love we can begin to recognize the joy in emulating his love for the world around us. And as we learn the joy of demonstrating Jesus’ love for a diseased and stricken world we begin to live out the command we find in Matthew 25 to love those around us who are in need. And in this we move from being Dorian Gray, careless transferring our disease and hurts onto another, to the picture of Jesus bringing restoration and life to a world full of hurt.