Know yourself... or else you'll never know why Jesus had to come.

Scripture:Isaiah 42:1-9

I wonder how much we really know ourselves. On the surface that probably seems like a silly thought. Who could you possibly know better than yourself? But we played a little game with our Confirmation students—and I’m going to have you play it wherever you are in a minute. I want you to think about two things--to really think and pore over it--and, if you can, share them with somebody else. The two things are these: #1: What is something you are good at? And #2: What is something you need to work at or improve upon? Take as much time as you need to ponder.

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Was that easy? I think for most of us it’s a challenge, especially when we get to talking about what we need to improve. Most of us have stock answers to those questions: I really need to work on balancing my time better, or I really need to work on getting out more, or I really need to work on having a more positive attitude, but those answers are often only scratching the surface of what’s really going on with us. We have a hard time being introspective enough to know what we need to work on, because it’s scary to look at ourselves in the mirror so closely. In many ways our families and friends can answer those questions about us better than we can answer them ourselves.

Many of our societal problems are rooted in our unrealistic opinion of ourselves. As Bertrand Russell once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” To use biblical language, there’s a lot of pointing out specks in other peoples’ eyes and not a lot of acknowledging the log in our own. And what ends up happening in a world where we don’t know ourselves very well is that we get awfully defensive. Arguments escalate. Since we are not comfortable in the situation—since we aren’t very sure of ourselves—we overcompensate, and we become louder and brasher. We talk over others. We never listen. Listening is weakness, letting others talk is weakness, admitting there are things we don’t know is weakness.

The general rule of thumb is that the person who is loudest knows him or herself the least.

So we shouldn’t really be surprised that when God chooses his servant to bring justice to the nations he chooses one who, in the words of Isaiah, “will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street” (v. 2). “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice” (v. 3). God brings justice through the meek, the quiet, those who do not break things or extinguish the voices of others, who do not seem to do much. Nothing. That’s what God is looking for. God can do a lot with nothing. It’s when we think we are something that we become less useful to God.

The second half of this passage from Isaiah 42 shares a little of why this is the case. Listen again:

“Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them” (vs. 5-9).

The reason God uses the voiceless (the meek and the humble) is because they don’t have an ounce of pride. They are better able to proclaim God without distraction, to show that it is God who will give sight to the blind and free the prisoners from darkness. God does those things. Not us. Certainly not the loudest among us. God works through the least and the last and the lowly, not the brashest, the most brazen, or the bullies, because the lowly proclaim God’s handiwork and not their own.

Isaiah is writing this to a people obliterated by a conquering nation. It seems like so much of biblical history takes place in that context: a people who is on the verge of extinction in need of something—anything—to bring them hope. Even when Israel gets the Promised Land it’s hardly a blip in their history. Soon enough they’ll forget the covenant with God and be back in exile, which is where we find them in Isaiah. It seems like they’re always in exile, or in slavery, or somewhere on the margins. These are the people whom God chooses.

Strange.

Or maybe not. See, if God wants to work through people who know themselves, then he has to find the ones who have nothing. The oppressed always know themselves better than the oppressors, because they have no need to sugarcoat their consciences or turn a blind eye to all the larger reasons why they are where they are. The slave is always aware of his limitations; the conquered know that their natural abilities and hard work are blunted by circumstance. For those of us who have things—a job, good health, a family, a good life—it becomes increasingly more difficult to see the part of me that is not good enough; the part that the one who has nothing sees daily. Pretty quickly all of those things—job, health, family, and life—become rights. We feel we have a right to it all.

This is where politics and religion will forever diverge. Government says, “Yes, you have a right to those things.” As Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence, you have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Government works best when it protects those rights, but God is not primarily concerned with your individual rights. God reminds us that we don’t have a right to life; instead whatever life we have is a gift. God reminds us that we don’t have the right to liberty. The more free we are, the more glaring our mistakes, the more obvious our sin. And God reminds us that the pursuit of happiness is the surest excuse for putting ourselves before the people who stand in our way of the “good” life.

This is why we don’t much care for God’s politics. It gets in the way of pride and comfort.

God looks at us as we really are; not as we pretend to be. God knows us better than we know ourselves. The reason Jesus Christ came into the world was because we have no clue—absolutely no clue—about who we really are. At heart of “sin” is that letter “I” and at the heart of myself is an innate inability to really, truly know myself. I don’t. I can’t. I can’t know all the advantages that I was lucky to be born with… I can’t know the diseases, the birth defects, and the various tragic ends that I’ve dodged… I can only vaguely know my selfishness… and, conversely, I can only begin to glimpse the person I could be… I can never be the perfect creation I was created to be.

When Isaiah describes the kind of servant God is calling I’m sorry to say that he’s not describing you. And I only know this because Isaiah’s list of positive traits begs for something new and extraordinary. Isaiah is describing Jesus. It’s easy to forget this time of year, as we participate in all the typical holiday busy-ness, that something earth-shattering is coming. Traditional ideas of power are obliterated by the incarnation. As Isaiah closes today’s reading, “See, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them” (v. 9).

In this yearly season I hope you experience it as new, because new things are happening. Birth and death and birth again. It’s not the same ol’ Christmas story because we’re not the same people hearing it. We’re new and old; we’re changed, even as we might feel the same. Know yourself better than that. Know how you’ve grown and how you haven’t… know your strengths and your weaknesses… know that you need something more than money, more than security, more than family. You need something that only Christmas will give.