Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes to us from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah and it’s a puzzling reading: “The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering. If he offers his life in atonement, he shall see his heirs, he shall have a long life and through him what the Lord wishes will be done.” Mark’s Gospel doesn’t make it any easier. James and John approach Jesus with a request: they wish to sit on Jesus’ right and left hand in his glory. Jesus tells them that they have no idea what they are asking. He tells them that this is not his to give, but it is reserved for the Father. He then tells them that the pagan rulers exercise their power while his followers who seeks greatness must serve their followers.

Let’s face it: if you want to be a Christian, if you want to follow Jesus, you’re going to need to deny some of your basic ambitions. Our history as humans shows us that several ambitions rule: we seek power over others to either be or choose our leaders. If you’re smarter than someone else you have the ability (and the right) to cheat him. Might makes right. There is no value in being right if someone else ends up with the treasure. The golden rule means that whoever has the gold makes the rules.

But the reading from the prophet Isaiah runs in opposition to this. Here God crushes his servant. It’s a harsh reading but it makes an important point. Our greatest victories, our proudest accomplishments, our best wins, may work here among our peers but they don’t get us closer to the Kingdom of God if they don’t serve others.

This reading comes to us near the end of the book of Isaiah. The Israelites fell into sin, were defeated and exiled by the Babylonians, and were eventually restored to their home when the Babylonians were themselves conquered by the Persians.

I’m uncomfortable with the first reading in the sense that God caused suffering to his servant. Many will look at the phrase “By his sufferings shall my servant justify many” and assume this is a foreshadowing of Jesus. Maybe, but maybe not. It’s too easy to assume that every Old Testament reference to a servant who suffers is really Jesus.

Did Isaiah believe that God caused the suffering? Clearly Isaiah did, and that’s how this reading has been taught through much of our history. If you mess with God, if you disobey God’s commands, watch out. But it’s equally possible that the cause of the suffering isn’t God, but that God chooses to use that suffering to teach an important lesson. Before they were conquered and exiled there is a great deal of evidence that they had become complacent in obeying God’s laws, but they were also complacent in their own defense. Simply put, they were defeated by a nation that was stronger than they were.

Given that, I like to believe that while God may not have chosen to use the Babylonians to “teach a lesson,” God did give the Israelites the opportunity to look on their exile as an opportunity to soul search, to see what went wrong and to make necessary corrections.

That said the servant does well. He chooses to “see the light and be content.” He recognizes that his suffering will benefit others, perhaps even others he won’t know. This servant knows that his sufferings will serve not only as a lesson of what can go wrong, but also how to do what is right.

This may well be the hardest lesson we need to understand as Christians. Those who surround Jesus in Marks’ Gospel are obsessed with ambition and the desire for power. They seemingly did not learn from the suffering servant in the first reading. Jesus, who may have been full of indignation or amusement, tells them that they have no idea what they are asking for.

Regardless of James’ and John’s motivations in asking to sit next to Jesus, it was a pretty dumb thing to do. They may have felt that once in power they were best placed to do the most good.

Many years ago I was reading about the administration of President Richard Nixon (he was US President from 1968 to 1974). There was a feeling among many of his supporters that Nixon was the best person to be president, and therefore anything that was done to ensure his election was justified. Of course we know in hindsight that it wasn’t true. That dangerous belief caused some members of his campaign to break into the offices of his opponent and plant listening devices. They were caught, the whole scheme unravelled, and two years later it led to Nixon’s resignation. As a nation we learned two lessons: nobody is the only person who can lead, and using unscrupulous means leads to a bad end, however noble the intent may have been.

My point is this: striving for power in the belief that we will use that power only for the good does not work. When Jesus tells James and John that those seats of power are not for Jesus to give, but instead they belong to those to whom they have been allotted he is telling them that positions of power are the reward for goodness, not the starting point.

In other words, do not seek power in the belief that you will do good, but seek instead to do good in the belief that you will be given the power and authority to do what you seek. The seats on the right and left hand of Jesus belong not to those who ask, but to those who best serve the people Jesus calls us to serve.

And finally, to bring this back to the servant in Isaiah, If we don’t see him as a foreshadowing of Jesus, we can still see him as a good person. He is, we can see, a servant of God. In light of the Gospel, perhaps he is someone who wishes to serve God, but does it by acquiring power. His suffering then tells him he is on the wrong track, and when he chooses service over power, he “shall see the light and be content. By his sufferings shall my servant justify many.”

I write this here in California against the backdrop of a presidential campaign. Thirteen months from now I, along with millions of others, will enter a polling place and cast my vote. I’m certain I’m not the only one who looks with disillusionment. So many of those running tell us that they should win because they are the most powerful, the ones with the greatest number of victories in their win columns. Candidates who seek to serve and wish for the power to do so appear much less common.

Let us seek them