On 20 December 1940 the first comic book edition of Captain America went on sale. In the first edition, Cap had a shield shaped like, well, a shield. But that made him look too much like The Shield, so in the second edition his shield became round, and has remained so throughout every incarnation of Captain America ever since. The creators of Captain America, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were quite clear that their character was consciously political. They supported US involvement in WWII and wanted to advocate for US intervention in the unfolding war in Europe (this was before Pearl Harbour). So the first edition featured Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in the face. A subtle message.
Captain America is a fictional character who has embodied a version of the United States ideal. Between the hundreds of millions of comic books, the TV series and the more recent movies, Captain America has come to represent an idealised version of the American Dream, integrating a particular set of perspectives on patriotism and morality and helping them to become normative in (white) American culture.
In the UK, the character of King Arthur played a similar role in the 19th century and through to the present day. I don’t want to shock anybody, but the fables around King Arthur are all made up. There might have been an historical King called Arthur (or something) but all that twaddle about round tables and quests for the grail is legend. In the nineteenth century, the renewed popularity of the Arthurian legend saw its peak with the publication of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idyll’s of the King. In that set of poems, Arthur is portrayed as the ‘stainless gentleman’ who embodies a gentlemanly chivalry, and whose romantic life is marked by the conventions of courtly love. Tennyson’s Arthur is a Victorian-era icon, who is suitably reserved, but gallant in battle, fiercely loyal but also forgiving, and most importantly who understands the separate and distinct roles of men and women. The England we know today was shaped by Arthur, just as the USA was shaped by Captain America. The power of the fictional character to shape the common life is enormous.
The reason I’m talking about Cap and Arthur is to introduce this week’s useful fact from the Book of Isaiah. Today’s useful fact is this: Second Isaiah created a fictional character called The Servant to inspire and shape the culture of the Judeans in exile.
Let’s imagine what things were like for the Judeans in exile in Babylon. Firstly, we should imagine who was there. Not every Judean was marched off to Babylon, which is in modern day Iraq, and they didn’t all go at once. After 587 when King Nebucchednezzar finally destroyed Jerusalem, various influential Judeans were carted off to Babylon to join others who had been taken there previously. The Babylonians focused on the elites, those who had civil and commercial power. The ordinary citizens weren’t taken away, but the story figures so heavily in the Jewish narrative because all the literate people were taken to Babylon. While they were there, living in a foreign land, speaking a foreign language and intermarrying with foreign people, it became crucial to preserve the sacred texts and practices. It was during the fifty or so years of the exile that many texts were compiled, redacted (edited), drafted, re-drafted and re-arranged. One imagines that the texts we call First Isaiah were either preserved in written form somehow, or people’s recollections were used to capture the spirit of Isaiah. A person or a group of literate people drafted the texts we call Second Isaiah in the style of the prophet Isaiah, and in so doing created this character called The Servant, who was a kind of hero or icon of the nation they had left behind.
In the four Servant Songs, this character’s attributes are described. The Servant is an agent of justice, and of proper religious observances. The Servant was chosen before birth, and will be a light to the whole world, including the Gentiles. The Servant is wise and helps those who are tired. Then, in the final glorious song, known as the Song of the Suffering Servant, we meet a character who suffers. He is despised and rejected by others, a man of sorrows, he carries our infirmities, the Lord lays our iniquities on him, he is led like a sheep to the slaughter but does not open his mouth. He is buried among the wicked in a rich man’s tomb. He bears the sins of many and intercedes for those who have harmed him.
The Servant is Isaiah’s superhero, a character who is good and wise and just, but who also suffers. The Servant is not necessarily promised glory and wealth in return for faithfulness, but is faithful nonetheless. It is a sobering view of the future for the Judeans, offering hope tinged with sacrifice and uncertainty.
We read Isaiah 42 today, on the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, because when the voice from heaven in Matthew 3 says ‘This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’ it is a direct reference to ‘Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights’. Later in Matthew, the first four verses of this song will be directly quoted to rationalise why Jesus told his followers to keep quiet about him and not make a big fuss.
When the early Christians, all Jews, needed language and imagery to explain Jesus they found everything they needed in the Servant Songs in Isaiah. You can imagine the lightbulb moment when they had the epiphany that Jesus embodied everything about Isaiah’s hero. So the language and ideas were borrowed and applied to Jesus, sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly. Sometimes this gives the impression that a prophet (like Isaiah) predicted attributes of Jesus, and Jesus amazingly fulfilled them. But this is a rather unsophisticated way of viewing the text. Rather, the gospel writers took their literary and theological cues from prophets like Isaiah, and drafted their narratives in a way that was comprehensible and inspirational to their Jewish counterparts.
The original ‘comic book character’ of The Servant arose during the exile, and helped the Judeans make sense of a faith that was removed from their homeland. Not all the Jews went home, and Jews continued to live outside the homeland for millennia to come. But Second Isaiah helped them to see their identity as something that transcended a particular location or civil structure. The Servant helped Jews to be Jews wherever they found themselves, and whatever injustices or sufferings they faced.
The characterisation of Jesus as the Suffering Servant had a similar effect. Jesus became the iconic hero of the alternative reality that we call the Kingdom of God. Despised and rejected, yet offering forgiveness and wisdom. The gospel portraits of Jesus provided a ideal to which we might aspire, and reassurance for when we fall short.
In an age of surging nationalism, where fidelity to one’s country is often stridently demanded, and anything resembling a lack of patriotism is attacked, we who are citizens of the Kingdom of God would do well to look to Jesus as our model, our hero and our icon. He has no shield of Vibranium, nor a sword distributed by a strange woman lying in a pond. He is the suffering servant, and by his wounds we are healed.
The Lord Be With You