“The Exalted and Startling Servant of God”
Dawn Service
December 24, 2020 5:00 AM
UCCP Maasin City Church
by Frank J. Hernando
Isaiah 52:13-15
13 See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. 14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him-- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness-- 15 so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.
John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
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1. Introduction
Good morning sisters, brothers and children of the loving Creator God. Maayong buntag mga kaigsoonan. I thank God for a safe journey from Quezon City to this serene City of Maasin. I arrived Monday of last week the 14th and I was allowed by the LGU to come home as Authorized Person Outside of Residence (APOR) the other category of arriving persons in a local community. I thank the leaders of this church for allowing me to hold my required seven-day quarantine period in the guest room.
I bring warmest greetings from the Office of the General Secretary of our church, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. Serving as the executive secretary in the national secretariat is both a blessing and a challenge. It is a blessing in the sense that I was given the opportunity to use my professional skills in personnel and program management. It is a challenge because my term of office has been directly affected by the series of natural calamities, the pandemic of covid-19 and the human caused calamities.
I am grateful to UCCP Maasin City for their unfailing support to the conference and the general assembly through their remittance of the Wider Mission Support. Also, we thank the Southern Western Leyte Conference and the College of Maasin for their sustaining support to the nationally coordinated programs, specifically their financial recent contribution to the church’s relief and rehabilitation program in calamity stricken communities from Nothern Luzon Jurisdictional Area to the Southeast Mindanao Jurisdictional Area. I also admire your response to social concerns for your immediate community during this time of the pandemic by delivering food packs to the those adversely affected by the quarantine lock down. Especially in this season of Advent and Christmas, you are giving out food packs as while gift for the poor people.
2. Meditating on my chosen texts this morning, I ask, Why God’s people in captivity, if not God’s people in their restoration, with all their sufferings as exiled people in Babylon or the equivalent of social alienation is called a “servant”?
Ang “bagong bayani award” is an OWWA award given to outstanding OFWs for fostering goodwill among people around the world, enhancing and promoting the image of the Filipino as competent, dignified worker and for greatly contributing to the socio-economic development of their communities and country as a whole. It aims to provide proper recognition to deserving nominees, thus setting examples for others to emulate, and for the country to be proud of.
This program sounds noble in its intention, but I think this has too little to contribute to the depressing and precarious situation of millions of OFWs around the world. We know for a fact that the long historical development of forced labor migration has its attendant issues and problems and government laws and labor policies have not alleviated the labor arrangements between the Philippines and the labor receiving countries.
The tag “bagong bayani” is a contradiction in terms of articulation and efficacy. Could there be decent names or honorable titles for our OFWs? Regardless of the honorific title like the new heroes, the images of OFWs working in the dangerous, difficult, dirty jobs would take some time to change, as the phenomenon of modern day slavery seen in lopsided international labor arrangements are always at the advantage of the foreign companies that employ cheap and docile labor of Filipinos.
I have emphasized this, because millions of OFWs experience what it means to be, “servants” literally especially for women domestic workers in the Middle Eastern countries, in Western Europe and North America. The 6th century BCE prophet Isaiah, or known as the second Isaiah anticipated the liberation of the Israelites for Babylonian captivity and have witnessed the restoration of their nation as the People of God.
Prophet Isaiah used the word "servant" in a figurative sense. The "servant" usually refers to the collective nation of Israel as the chosen people of God. "But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen . . .you are my servant, I have chosen you . . .for I am your God" (Isaiah 41:8-9). The prophet continues to use this imagery other places such as in chapter 44, God promises the community of Israel, in the figure of the servant, forgiveness and a day of new things.
In chapter 49, the community speaks as a servant commissioned to bear witness of God’s deliverance "to the ends of the earth" (49:1-13; note v.3). In Isaiah 56-66, "servant," usually occurring in the plural, always depicts the restored community of God’s people who will faithfully follow Him (65:9-15). But the context suggests that the imagery is the same in these as well. The servant is a poetic symbol to describe the community of God’s people.
3. Furthermore, the Filipino people is God’s servant too. They may not identify with the collective identity as such, but they are a socio-cultural-religious identity gained in the process of integration into their churches or religious communities.
Majority of us Filipinos is Christian, whether adheres to organized religious services or not, Protestant of Catholic, we are Bible readers and listen to the doctrinal lessons from religious workers and leaders. I would attempt to allude that we, as Filipinos as believers of the God in Jesus who is revealed in the Scriptures are categorically “servants of God’ in the global community of Christians and religious peoples.
Have we not associated ourselves with programs of the churches that express diakonia or social service and have felt comfortable with the title as “servant of God”? Yes, we do. In our entire life as the people of God or as a Filipino nation is being judged by God with reference to the biblical moral and ethical imperatives. This means that we cannot do away with the basic ethical norms that set the standard of how should the Servant People of God should carry out its life in accordance with the covenant or pledges and commitments we have made to God and our fellow citizens.
At the beginning of the quarantine lock down due to Sars-2 Covid-19 pandemic in Metro Manila, I would not give in to fear. Me and my colleagues living in the staff house were issued a quarantine pass by barangay Project 6, Quezon City. I was at liberty to get my food supply from the supermarkets or in the Talipapa. One day I went out to get some cash from an ATM and I went to several ATM outlets but the BPI machines were running out of cash, meaning, the bank personnel were not refilling the supply of cash in the ATM machines. But I manage to get some cash from another bank’s ATM machine.
Even if there were only few vehicles running the highway of North EDSA, I couldn’t cross the road on the ground but has to walk up the overpass pedestrian bridges to cross to the other side. I took pictures of North EDSA in late afternoon and I had a mixture of feeling of what I saw, I felt sad, and felt remorse and questioning God, why would a pandemic like this, would make a big metropolis dead, lifeless and the pulse of civilization was at its lowest level. It looks like I was seeing scenes from apocalyptic movies where cities became uninhabited after a pandemic has killed majority of the people in the city. The city has become a howling wilderness and the few survivors were struggling to find the vaccine to overcome the disease and for them to live and save a remnant of humanity.
From the looks of North EDSA in March, April and May, the Filipino nation as God’s people was lost. Its remaining goal was how to survive from the pandemic, and we were told to stay indoors as a matter of policy and violators of the quarantine protocols were punished. Millions of families have suffered the impact of the long lock down of their communities and the health care system was overwhelmed in the months of June, July and August. The nation was in economic collapse for the last 8 months of the year, but the government would not dare accept it.
Many people were confused, the Churches opted for virtual worship and prayer services. We heard sermons on the internet-run social media platforms assuring us that God will help us overcome. Health workers called the “Frontliners” died due infection and complications of the virus. There were disruptions of food supply as entry and exit points of food delivery was controlled by uniformed personnel and by bararngay tanods.
The fact that people were consigned to stay indoors and workers have to stop working and joined their families at home, depended on the relief food packs delivers alternatively by the Barangays and the municipal or city government. Relief assistance delivery systems were tainted by favoritism and corruption. We got to know small time corrupt persons, but the bigtime corrupters were hidden from view.
The Filipino nation should have been better prepared for the worst situation in the occurrence of natural and human caused calamities. As a nation we have failed God and failed our fellow citizens. Our assent to God’s work of justice, that of treating our neighbors with equality, care for the weak, the vulnerable and supporting them just like our families or the inter-family and inter-city solidarity relations through social work have not been very active or has been forgotten. Selfishness pervaded the nation and greed overrun the process of fair-sharing and collective efforts to overcome dire economic and health situations brought about by the pandemic and the series of typhoons that visited the country.
Prophet Isaiah prophesied that the servant of God will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him-- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness. We as God’s people and those whole lives were put at stake during the calamity will assume a disfigured appearance, but God will exalt them, people will startle at seeing them.
Dennis Bratcher said, by all appearances the servant, the nation of Israel, had been humiliated and defeated (Lamentations 2:13-15). In exile in Babylon, the servant no longer appeared to be chosen by God. But appearances are not everything! Although the servant appears finished, the message of God is that, he will not stay down! God will raise the servant to a new position of responsibility before the very ones who had celebrated his end (v.15; NT writers use this contrast: John 13:12-17, Philippians 2:6-11).
We have witnessed past and recent events where persons were murdered extrajudicially, from the common people to the professionals, doctors, lawyers, religious leaders and rights defenders. They are members of the servants of the God who, in their genuine commitment to God’s mission for justice, fair-sharing and interclass solidarity, have been sacrificed by the members of the people of God who are obsessed with power and wealth. Collectively, we are accountable to God for our failure to live within the ambit of God’s reign in justice and shalom/peace.
4. Three days ago, many have witnessed the great spectacle in our solar system, the conjunction of the nearest distance of space travel of planets Saturn and Jupiter. NASA narrated, “What makes this year’s spectacle so rare, then? It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this “great conjunction.” I was enthusiastic to see a heavenly spectacle similar to the Christmas star that shone around at the birth of Jesus, our Lord.
Biblical theology or the understanding of the unity of the entire Scripture in terms of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ would make direct connections with the Isaiah’s imagery of the servant to Jesus’ mission and ministry. The challenge however is how to connect the prologue of the Gospel of John that describes Jesus Christ as the ‘living word’ in English and ‘polong’ in Visayan languages.
"In the beginning was the logos." Scholars believe that the original meaning of the word was "to gather." It later came to refer to human reason. By the time of Jesus, logos had come to mean the creative power of God and the kingship of God over all things. Philo, a first century philosopher, saw logos as flowing from God himself, and as the mechanism through which God created the universe.
John Petty, an exegete, further explains that Logos translates the Hebrew dabar, a word which commonly refers to God's self-communication, or the relating of God, who is unseen, to the created world. Logos combines the concepts of thought, deed, and power. For the author of the fourth gospel, logos is an expression of God's innermost nature which is present in the world.
So we associated with the work logos or polong or salita with the expression of disgust with persons who do not stand on their word, “wala kang isang salita,” which also means, you are not trustworthy. We have witnessed how the contest for the speakership in Congress pursued just over a month ago. We have heard of the very male oriented cliché “gentlemen’s agreement” is violated, or he has not gave into what was agreed upon.
After relating the creation of the world, the fourth gospel asserts: "In him was life and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it." Life, light, and humanity all appear at once. Then, the "darkness" is acknowledged, though not defined--yet, no matter what, it proves to be, it cannot "overcome" or "over-power" the light. Nor, it should be said, does the light "over-power" the darkness either--not yet, at least. The darkness cannot "win," but the victory of the light is yet to be established, added John Petty.
God’s servant has been made real in the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the epitome of the Servant, both as the God’s people and as the Servant who will save God’s people from their darkness, their disregard and disobedience to the covenant that bonded together God and God’s servant people. John’s profound description of the Messiahship of Jesus clears up the cloud of uncertainty in the relationship of Jesus Christ with God’s self. The unity of God’s self as God the Creator, Son the Redeemer and Sustainer, the Holy Spirit, assures us that in their united action will help us and support us in changing the course of history as a nation and as a global community.
Dear God, as we come close to Christmas day, we are getting aware of who we are as God’s servant people. May your compassionate love and abounding grace encourage and strengthen our wills to be truly God’s committed servants, consoling those in the dark abyss of life, the economically impoverishes, those who are treated unjustly and those who long to live in peace. We pray in the name of the great logos, Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
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