Friends, we commence Ordinary Time. This is the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. Last week we celebrated the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This is the first weekend when we turn to these more ordinary readings after the Christmas season. Our First Reading is taken from the middle section of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and it introduces us to the mysterious figure of the suffering servant. This figure will be presented throughout 49 and the following chapters up to 53. Who is this figure? Well, the scholars have debated for centuries about this. At times it seems to be Israel itself. Israel as a people but at other times it seems to be a particular person. Maybe a particular figure who sums up Israel.

In chapter 49 of Isaiah as the servant introduces himself, saying, “The Lord called me before I was born. He made my mouth like a sharp sword. And the Lord said to me, you are my servant Israel in whom I glorify.” Like the prophet Jeremiah to whom the Lord said, ‘before you were born I knew you’. You see the whole identity of Israel, the whole identity of this servant is summed up in the Lord. The servant isn’t resting in himself but he is saying I am valuable only in the measure that I become the servant of the Lord. And that his mission is to bring Jacob back to himself the scattered Israel. This figure (the suffering servant) will first of all gather the scattered nation. How central this theme is in the Old Testament? Two great exiles took place in Israelite history. What the servant is talking about here is the brokenness, the scatteredness, the division of Israel. And his job is to bring Jacob back to him (Lord). The suffering servant is the person who will knit the nation back together. And then the Lord says, “I will give you as a light to the nations - that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” This revelation found in the middle section of Isaiah is the moment when Israel realized its deepest purpose; not merely to serve itself, not merely as a single nation gathered to the Lord, but rather to be a Lumen Gentium - to be a light to the nations.

With this in mind, in our Second Reading, we see Saint Paul, an Israelite from the first century who has fully appropriated the message of Isaiah. Paul introduces himself as the one who is called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Paul introduces himself in the passive voice as one who is called. He introduces himself as an apostle. He is been called and sent. How? By the will of God. See how he totally belongs to a higher power just like the suffering servant of Isaiah. Your whole being becomes to you about the Lord. Paul recognizes that this Jesus as the one whom Isaiah foresaw is the fulfilment of the prophecy of the suffering servant. Paul has taken for himself that Jesus is the suffering servant of Yahweh, who precisely through his suffering has emerged as the victorious King of Israel. Paul says, I preach one thing, that is Christ, and him crucified. He never forgets that Jesus is the suffering servant but precisely through that suffering he is emerged as the King of Israel. Therefore, the gatherer of his own people and hence the gatherer of all the tribes of the world. Paul sees that in the dying and rising of Jesus the great story of Israel has come to its climax. Every promise that God made with Israel has found its yes in Christ and that’s because Jesus has emerged as the Lumen Gentium.

And so when Paul established the Church in Corinth to which he is writing and us. He addresses them as people who have been sanctified and called to be holy and thereby become a light to the nations. Just as Israel is the bearer to the world you and I (the Church) has to become the bearer of Christ message to the world. We are like Paul, apostles – people who have been sent for we belong to someone else and called to live in a distinct way the message of radical love and reliance upon God. And if we are not different we will make no difference in the world. We receive our true missionary identity like Saint Paul, like the suffering servant, when we mirror Christ crucified.