“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.
It is almost impossible for us, as Christians, to read or to hear these words from the 53rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and not to think that they are describing Jesus’ crucifixion.
After all, at every Good Friday service, and in countless hymns, and paintings, and poems, these ancient prophetic words are placed alongside the story of Jesus’ suffering and death.
They are powerful words.
But today is not Good Friday and, as such, it can be good to read these words apart from the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and, perhaps, to hear in them other dynamics, other nuances, other emphases that we may otherwise overlook.
In order to do so, it is good to keep this passage in its original context.
The prophecies of Isaiah were first delivered around the time of the Babylonian exile, and it was a very difficult time. Although they had been living in the Promised Land for hundreds of years, things had not gone entirely smoothly over the course of that history.
A series of judges, and then a series of kings had been selected and placed in positions of authority over the people. But both the judges and the kings had failed quite miserably.
The kingdom was eventually divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The people of northern kingdom were conquered by the Assyrians; while the people of the southern kingdom were eventually conquered and carried into exile, and found themselves wondering where God was, and why God had abandoned them as they languished in Babylon.
But what was interesting was that those exiles knew the old stories – of covenants that had been established with God, in which God had promised that blessing would be poured out upon the people as long as they, in return, kept covenant faithfulness to God.
And the people were asking the obvious question.
If the covenants were to be believed, if they were true, and if God was perfect and faithful, then something had obviously gone very, very wrong on the people’s side. They were in Babylon, cut off from their land, from their beloved Jerusalem, from the Temple, perhaps even from God. Someone must have messed up.
So who was to blame?
As they reflected back on their history, there were lots of candidates for blame.
Was it the judges and the kings who had abdicated their responsibilities? Had those in positions of political authority acted in unjust and unwise ways and provoked the anger of God?
Or was it the priests whose religious leadership had failed the people? Had those in positions of religious leadership acted unethically or unfaithfully, allowing the worship of other gods, other idols to seep into the spiritual life of the people, thereby poisoning their relationship with the one true God who had promised to bless and protect the faithful?
Or perhaps it was the presence of foreigners – and particularly foreign women such as the many women that Solomon and the other kings had married – who had imported the worship of other gods and idols into their communities, thus breaking covenant with God. In many books and stories of the time, there is indication that there was a lot of blame being levelled against the presence and idolatrous influence of foreigners, and particularly foreign women.
The books of the Bible that were written or compiled or situated around the time of the Babylonian exile – books such as Isaiah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Obadiah and Ezekiel — are filled with reflections on this question of who should be held responsible, who had sinned, and who should bear the blame for the calamity that had befallen the people. The politicians? The priests? The women? The foreigners? Who needed to be held accountable? Who was to blame?
Lest we think that this tendency to seek to attribute blame, in times of difficult, was somehow confined to the poetic and prophetic ramblings of ancient times, it can be good to realize that it is a dynamic that is as present today as it ever was.
After all, consider how much of our time is spent trying to assign blame for the various challenges that confront us. In the church, in wider society, in the world, in the media, in politics, in so many parts of our lives, there is a lot of fingerpointing going on.
We see it in the stark and striking partisan divides between leaders in positions of political authority, divisions which tear governments and nations apart; we see it in the scandals amongst religious leaders, and have clearly seen indications that blame, and consequences, are being assigned to individuals in the very highest levels of authority in the churches and communities in which those scandals have occurred; in still other parts of our society, we see others attributing responsibility and blame to men for various social ills, to women for other social problems; to the immigrants and foreigners among us, or to the established and privileged in our midst; to those on the left, to those on the right, to the rich, to the poor, to social elites, to ignorant masses.
In one way or another, almost every news story, these days, seems to include someone attributing blame for some real or perceived social ill.
And we all do it.
But, sadly, what actually ends up happening is that so much energy is consumed by the insatiable patterns of blame and recrimination that the problems, themselves, often go unresolved, and the fabric of community is never really restored.
But think again, then, of the words that Isaiah posed to his people so long ago — “all we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way”.
We have all turned to our own way. The words accept responsibility rather than attribute blame. This is not a verse that points the finger, or stirs up the already boiling pot of resentment and rage.
The prophet was inviting those who would listen to stop pointing the finger at one group, or one individual. Rather, the prophet was saying, look, we’re all in this together. All we like sheep have gone astray.
So you’re in Babylon? So you feel that your life is a mess?
So you’re feeling disconnected from those places of comfort, of security, of stability that you once held dear, and that you thought were going to be yours forever?
And you want to find someone to blame for how things are?
Well, maybe all we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.
But what is truly transforming, and completely unexpected, and historically significant about these words is what comes next. Yes, all we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way. Fair enough.
But the prophet was suggesting that God was choosing to intervene – not by choosing sides, but by sending someone to bear the consequences, for everyone – by sending a suffering servant, an innocent scapegoat, to shoulder the burden, so that we could all find the pathway to a restored community by escaping the cycles of recrimination, by ending the blame game.
Yes, all we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.”
But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
There are consequences for human brokenness – but meting out vengeance or punishment born in blame and recrimination will not solve the problem.
It is obvious why such a passage was interpreted in the light of the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth. His story, by itself, is the story of a suffering servant, an innocent scapegoat who ran afoul of the law and suffered for it.
But his example is an intriguing one for us to ponder in this world in which the cycles of blame and recrimination go on. What if we were to accept, if even for a moment, that Jesus actually bore the consequences not only of our sin and brokenness – each one of us is included in the phrase “all we like sheep” – but also that he bore the consequences of the sin and brokenness of the “other” that we would prefer to blame and point the finger at?
And what happens to our animosity towards the “other” if we view them no longer as an enemy to be defeated, but as an equally beloved child of God for whom God’s suffering servant also paid the ultimate price so that we could all come back into a harmonious community together?
One of my favourite articulations of this type of transforming vision is offered in the closing pages of Corrie Ten Boom’s book “The Hiding Place”. Corrie Ten Boom, as many of you know, was a young Dutch girl whose family hid Jewish people from the Nazis during the Second World War. The hiding place in the Ten Boom home was discovered, and the Ten Boom family was separated and taken to Nazi concentration camps. Corrie was fortunate that she was not separated from her sister Betsie, but their experiences in the concentration camp were not easy. Nonetheless, they survived.
Following the war, Corrie Ten Boom was often asked to speak, in churches, about her experience. And it was at one of those services that the following story was set. She writes,
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, a former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” He said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggles to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
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.
And it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
