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“Behold, my servant shall act wisely;he shall be high and lifted up,and shall be exalted.”The Exaltation of the Suffering ServantAbout seven-hundred years before the time of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a servant of God who would be exalted, before whom kings would shut their mouths. But when we read the text of Isaiah 52 and 53, we see no ordinary exaltation. What do we see?His appearance was marred beyond human semblance, his form beyond that of the children of mankind. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement, he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living?What kind of exaltation is this?Friends, there can be only one answer to this question. It is an answer that the Apostle John knew very well and referenced frequently in his Gospel: ‘"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die"’ (John 12:32-34).In a word, this exaltation – so contrary to all expectations - is the exaltation of the cross of Jesus Christ. And it is fair to say that this type of exaltation was – and remains – a mystery and a great shock when we consider it.Those of us who have walked the Stations of the Cross already this morning have heard of Christ’s suffering. We see it too in the book of Isaiah and in our Passion reading. How he was betrayed, arrested, beaten, spat upon, scourged, nailed to the cross, and finally crucified, dying slowly in agony, suffocating almost to death as his legs gave way under the pressure of his own weight, and eventually pierced in the side with a Roman spear, so that blood and water flowed from the wound.What can we say to these things? How are we to make sense of them? The Song of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah helps us.We see in this passage that the suffering of this servant was not without purpose. It was not just bad luck or a cosmic accident but it had an end in mind. We find it here, in the heart of the passage. We may even call this the very heart of the Bible itself.“Surely he has borne our griefsand carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,smitten by God and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;we have turned – every one – to his own way;and the LORD has laid on himthe iniquity of us all.”Isaiah 53:4-6This passage tells us about ourselves: that we are full of grief and sorrow, that we are not at peace with God, and that we are in this condition because of our iniquity and transgression. The other way of putting this is to say that our sin has separated us from God who is the source of all life and goodness. We are far away from him and we need him, yet we cannot know him as he intended because we have rejected him through our sin and lawlessness.The suffering of this servant, then, is for us, that this situation might be changed, that we might be brought to peace with God and reconciled with him. And the servant does this by carrying our sorrows, by being pierced for our transgressions, by being crushed for our iniquities, by having the iniquity of us all laid upon him by the LORD.We see here a clear vision of the cross, and we understand that the suffering of Jesus was undertaken out of love for us. He was indeed pierced by the nails that fastened him to the cross. He was crushed under his own weight as he was crucified. He did not open his mouth when he was led away, but conti