The Suffering Servant and the Serum Relay: A Call to Endure

Text: Isaiah 50:4-10

The Winter of 1925 was terrifying for the residents of Nome, Alaska. After treating four cases of what appeared to be tonsillitis, the only doctor in town, Dr. Curtis Welch, came to a horrifying conclusion. It wasn’t tonsillitis, it was the extremely contagious and deadly diphtheria.  And without an antitoxin, the whole town of two thousand people was at risk.  In fact, already Welch had heard reports of several small children dying in the rural areas around the town.  Close to 10,000 Native Americans lived near the town and had no natural resistance to the disease.  If help couldn’t be found, thousands would die.   

The only hope was antitoxin.  Inoculate the people and things would be okay.  But the problem was the closest source of the drug was Anchorage, Alaska, which was one thousand miles away, and it was dead of winter—in Alaska!

The shipping ports had long been closed for the season, aircraft travel was impossible due to the weather, and worse, it was well-known that the diphtheria antitoxin could only last six days in the sub-zero temperatures of the arctic.   So even though the railroad was still open, it could only get the drug to Nenana, which was some 675 miles from Nome.  From there the only form of transport possible would be dogsled. But how could you make that distance in just 6 days? How could you keep the antitoxin warm enough on a dogsled?  It seemed hopeless. 

But because there were so many lives on the line, the math was done and it was figured that a relay of twenty teams each traveling approximately thirty miles could get the serum to Nome in time to save lives.  And so, it happened.  At fifty degrees below zero, the first dogsledder, Wild Bill Shannon, left Nenana with the thirty-pound package of life saving serum.

For even the most experienced dog-sledder, such cold temperatures would be brutal and risky.  It was January and that meant it was dark both day and night, winds were estimated at 65 mile-per-hour, men’s hands froze to their sleds, hands and faces sustained terrible frostbite, dogs died, and at times, the windchill would drop to a staggering 85 below. In addition, the dogsledders could only rely on the keen sense of smell and direction of their lead dogs, who somehow managed to keep the sled teams on the trail despite the ten-foot-thick drifts of snow and ice and gale force winds.

At times, it almost seemed miraculous that the mission was successful at all.  For example, it is reported that one team traveled more than 261 miles in the brutal elements, led by the amazing lead dog Togo; at one point getting lost, yet Togo somehow managed to navigate over broken ice floes for twenty miles in white-out conditions to find the trail again and carry on the mission. There was one dicey moment when the team became stranded on a particularly difficult ice floe. The quick-thinking dogsledder tied a lead rope to Togo, his only hope, and tossed the dog across five feet of water, to another sheet of ice. Togo attempted to pull the floe supporting the sled to bring the ice sheets closer together so that the sled could continue on, but suddenly the line snapped.  But, amazingly, this once-in-a-lifetime lead dog had the wherewithal to snatch the line from the water, roll it around his shoulders like a harness, and eventually pull the team to safety.  Truly amazing and miraculous!

And, so it was, that at 2 o’clock in the morning on the fifth day, the antitoxin finally arrived in Nome.  In the end, all the work and suffering was worth it. Thousands of lives were saved. And every year, these events are commemorated in the annual Iditarod Race in Alaska.

Can you imagine the bravery it took to volunteer for that relay?  What compels a man to risk so much to save lives of strangers he would never know?  Though, perhaps, most of us have never had to consider such things as severe as that, even so, for all of us, there are times in life when the path ahead looks dark and difficult.  There are times when it just seems hopeless. Times when we are unsure which direction we should take or whether we should take any direction at all.  In such times where do we find the wherewithal and strength to move forward? How do we respond when we feel burdened and overwhelmed by our circumstances? On whom do we rely to keep us on course? Where do we find the hope to endure? 

The Suffering Servant

Perhaps it’s when a series of medical tests or scans reveals a diagnosis that isn’t good.  Or perhaps it’s the pink slip at the end of a work day.  Or maybe it’s something more common and mundane; a time when you had so much to do that you didn’t even know where to start because you were so overwhelmed. Or perhaps it was the way others treated you; a time when someone who disliked you succeeded in making life miserable for you and you just couldn’t find it in yourself to rise above the pettiness.  You see, no matter the size or the cause or the context, suffering is a fact of life in this sinful broken world.

Consider our Old Testament reading today from Isaiah 50.  Did you hear the depiction of the Suffering Servant in this song? He shows up many times in Isaiah. He is the one who suffers, offering His back and cheeks to blows and doesn’t hide His face from mocking and spitting. Undoubtedly, this is a picture of Jesus, the Suffering Servant, who was beaten, mocked and spit upon, and yet, through it all never hid his face or turned away from the shame and suffering.  Isaiah says, “He sets His face like flint.”  

This is a picture of Christ encountering Satan during the temptation in the wilderness.  It’s Jesus in the days leading up to Holy Week as He sets His face toward Jerusalem and foresees the coming mocking, the beating, the scourging, the spitting, the terrible, hateful cross.  It’s Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying that the cup might pass, but after pouring out His heart to His Father as He sweats drops of blood, He finally gets up and looks into the darkness and cries “Not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 

Worldly Responses

How different this is from the ways of the world.  When we look to the world for help in the midst of our distress, how do we respond? The ancient Greek stoics taught, “Everything that happens is either tolerable and manageable or it’s not.  If it is endurable, then endure it.  If not, stop complaining.  Or perhaps we encounter the ancient yet very modern philosophy of the ancient Epicureans whose philosophy taught that you just shouldn’t get to attached to anything in life, because someday it will be gone.  Just live for today. 

But what comfort is there in this?  What purpose or meaning does this give life?  Ultimately it offers no hope and seems make life devoid of any joy. 

And sadly, sometimes even other Christians might tell you the answer lies in simply praying harder or trying harder or trusting harder.  They’ll say that we just need to find more strength in ourselves to get through whatever struggles we face.  Just buck up. 

But that wasn’t Christ’s approach. And it isn’t the cry of our hearts when we are in distress.  How often do we cry out, like Christ in the Garden? How often do we repeat those ancient words of our liturgy: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not a way from Thy presence and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.  Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.”  How often do we say with the Psalmist: “Why are you downcast O my soul, and why are you so quiet within me? Hope in God; for I shall praise Him, my Help and my God.”

How often do we pray in our inmost being: “Lord if frustrations arise in me from a rebellious and dissatisfied heart, forgive me.  If my restlessness arises from my failure to look to You for rest, teach me to come to You with my cares and lay them at Your feet. If those who dislike me succeed in making me miserable, help me to rise above this pettiness and be strong in You and in the power of Your might. Lord, if you are testing me, give me the strength to endure my test, for You have carried the burden of my sins for me. Help me to know the godliness and contentment that comes from You alone.  In short: “Not my will, but Thy will be done!”  

Our Hope in Christ, The Suffering Servant  

The Suffering Servant in our text from Isaiah—who is Christ, our Lord—shows us the way to have hope and strength and even joy in the midst of any darkness or frustration in life.  The Suffering Servant says, “He who vindicates me is near.” 

“To vindicate” means “to show to be right, to remove guilt, to be declared righteous.” 

Vindicate me, O God! That’s the cry of a righteous man who has been unjustly accused, of a truthful man who has wrongly been called a liar, of an innocent man who has been judged and condemned as a criminal. This is the story of Christ.

Men will usually get things wrong. But God sorts it all out and sees to it that the righteous are vindicated. The Gospel shows us this in that Jesus rose from the dead, no matter how unjust His death. Jesus was vindicated and victorious.  He was proven right.  He is the one true Son of God just as He said.  And there is indeed life in Him. His resurrection was proof of that.

This is our vindication, too.  When life seems unfair. When we wonder why things don’t go the way we know they should. When people disappoint us, hurt us, or ignore us.  When our own sin and our own desires lead us into all kinds of self-harm and self-made mess.  When our own tongues betray us as James mentions in in chapter three of his epistle.  When it all just seems unfair and unjust and our frustrations mount.  And when we fear that our standing before the Almighty God is in question, because deep down we know that our flesh is weak and our efforts feeble. 

The answer to all of this is not to try to justify ourselves, but to rest in the eternal vindication we have in the risen Christ.  For the day will indeed come when things will be sorted out.  We will stand in the resurrection of all flesh.  What was broken will be repaired. What was hurt will be healed. There can be no other peace for us—for that will be our peace–peace that surpasses understanding.

It makes me think of the book of Job.  Remember him?

We all know the way He suffered. And how unfair it all seemed. He lost everything. His children. His wealth. In Chapter 19, he even laments the loss of his skin! He’s suffering from this horrible skin disease, scraping his skin every day with broken pottery trying to find some relief.  This skin irritation is the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. He resigns himself to death. He knows that it won’t be long before his body will be in the grave and his skin will rot. 

Job may have lived over 4000 years ago, but like us, he knew what happens to the body after death. If the person hasn’t been embalmed, it only maybe 8 or 10 years for a buried body to decay down to nothing but a skeleton and dust, depending on the environment.  And this is the process Job knows is going to happen to him, and he’s almost halfway looking forward to it, but here’s the amazing thing: Despite his misery, Job doesn’t, at this point, simply embrace worldly philosophies like that of the Stoics or the Epicureans—you know, the “just endure it, get over it, don’t get too attached, nothing matters” nonsense—Job, instead, confesses something extraordinary. 

As he sits there in misery, lamenting all the pain, the brokenness and the unfairness of his circumstances, Job let’s out a visceral, heart-hurt cry, and declares, “…yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.” And then he sings that beautiful and familiar Christian anthem: “I know my redeemer lives.”

How amazing! More than two thousand years before Jesus walked out of the empty tomb, here you have an Old Testament saint finding sweet vindication in the hope of resurrection in Christ.

Indeed, AMAZING!!!!

And it’s our hope, too–even two thousand years after Christ’s resurrection. It’s our only response when the guilt of sin is overwhelming. We remember the Suffering Servant who rose from the dead. And when the diagnosis is not what we hoped for. We remember that “He who vindicates me is near.”  And When life and circumstances seem daunting, or when our wisdom fails us, and everything falls apart. Remember: “He who vindicates me is near.” 

For believers, this is the awesome culmination of what Christ has done for our salvation.  We’re going to live in the new heaven and new earth. One day all will be as it should be and should have been.  In the resurrection. That’s our hope. That’s our justice. That’s our vindication.

In Jesus’s Name. Amen.