From the Service of the Word we take our First Testament text for this week. Isaiah 50:4-9a is the third in the series of four "servant songs" attributed to the work of Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55). Much of Second Isaiah's soaring elegant poetry speaks optimistically of a return from Babylon for the exiled Israel. Probably composed around 547, Second Isaiah and the exiled Israelites both took encouragement from the rising strength of Persia under the powerful rule of its new king, Cyrus.

The four servant songs played a different, haunting, and not altogether welcome melody for the Israelites. The well-known "suffering servant" theme spoke of a role to be played, either by an individual or by all of Israel, that understood degradation, humiliation, abuse, abandonment, and even death in ra…