In the words of Isaiah 53 we hear of the Suffering Servant who (as Girard notes) dies at the hands of a community mimetically united against him. God is not doing this to the Suffering Servant - this is what we do when we are taken up into the violence that has gripped us from the beginning.
Isaiah 53
Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?2For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.3He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.
4Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.5But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.8By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.9They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.11Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.12Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
The one who comes to be with all - to be with the forgotten and the abused and the discarded and the rejected is with them all because that is what it is to be truly human. Maybe we could say 'when the Messiah comes' this is how s/he comes. And when s/he comes - because the Messiah will not take sides or make sides but will be for all without condition - this servant will suffer at the hands of a world that does not know the ways that make for peace. Did God cause this suffering? No. God brings forth the servant (that can be Israel, the prophets, Jesus, the followerwers of Jesus) as the embodiment of God's reconciliation and forgiveness that is a contrary way to the "evil power of mimetic contagion - disease" that rules us all. In this kind of world, the servant will be cast down and crushed - by us. I want to comment on verses 10-12 tomorrow.
Connection: In, with, and under the run of history, our God brings vision and life that is oriented toward God's peaceable Reign. Throughout history this is what God does. God patiently waits for us to turn and be a part of its arriving and expression. And yet, we need only look around - no way. But more than that, we need only hold up a mirror and take another look at ourselves and how we hang onto the disease of a violent contagion. When we begin to use the Enneagram at Redeemer it is my hope we will each enter an adventure through the darkness that is us and the light that also shines through the darkness.
As you walk with us, O God, remind us of the ways of the servant - the truly human one that is available and present even as we look away or throw stones. Amen.
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