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Just who are the teachers and who are the students in this quickly shifting paradigm? What could possibly prepare us for change of this magnitude? Can we trust in God when certainty of any kind is no longer possible? Given that change has always been an inevitable part of life, is this the same story that we’ve heard for hundreds of thousands of years, or is it really all that new, different, and shocking?

I guess it depends on your perspective. If one embraces change and all things new, now might be a fabulous time to be alive. If one is fearful and prefers to keep things just the way they are, it may be too scary to even think about what colossal leap could happen next. But listening closely, I think we can hear the voices of friends throughout our faith history that will help us during times like these of seismic change.

One such voice comes to us through the third “servant song” in Isaiah. As Isaiah speaks through the voice of God’s servant, most translations begin with something like: “The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher.” However, a correction in the Hebrew may shift the focus a little bit. Some scholars propose that it should read, “The Lord has given me the tongue of those who have been taught.” So does the servant of God speak with the tongue of a teacher or the tongue of a student?

Though I may have actually been chasing an unimportant linguistic nuance, I couldn’t help myself, I found this too interesting a question to ignore. Who exactly is this servant of God? If it is a teacher, teachers speak, frequently with authority. They know the “right” answers. They tell us the rules. They arm us with knowledge, and test our abilities. But in today’s world, keeping up with information alone would be mind-boggling. I’m not sure that with knowledge alone, one could sustain the weary with a word, and I’m not sure that by instruction alone our ears would awaken with clarity to hear God’s voice. Teaching even what were once thought to be straight-forward subjects now come attached to multiple methodologies, and keeping up with the ongoing revisions in science and technology seems frankly impossible.

That’s why it intrigued me to think of God’s servant instead as a student – as one who can be taught, who chooses to grow and adapt to his or her environment. To speak and listen as one who is teachable, now that can offer both strength and humility. Having been taught both by those who thought of themselves as “experts” and those who thought of themselves as “learners,” I’ll take the “learners” any day. Those who speak as though they have been there do offer comfort and sustenance to those who are weary of the world’s ever-shifting ways. They are capable, not only of hearing themselves talk, but of listening to others and maybe even hearing at times the voice of God. The perpetual students are far more comfortable in uncomfortable circumstances. They can refrain from rebelling when their enemies insult them and spit in their face. They can endure trials of all sorts without shame and stand up with others against mighty adversaries. In tough and uncertain times, they know, without a doubt, that it is the Lord God who will come to their aid.

Though the prophet probably had other things in mind when writing these elegant servant passages, we who have the benefit of knowing Jesus Christ, can look back on these words and connect them to God’s servant who taught through love and humbly washed his disciples feet. The change that came through Jesus’ life and ministry was profound, but it wasn’t the random, rapid, and exponential kind of tecnhical change that is happening now. Instead, it was adaptive change, the kind of change that transforms people from the inside out. One day, you’re going along the world’s order is just fine with you, then you meet Jesus and the next day your eyes refocus and the hate and greed all around show the world’s ways as vulgar and wildly unjust. Jesus didn’t change the speed of travel, or show us how to communicate with one another through electronic filaments thinner than a human hair. Jesus taught with the tongue of those who have been taught. He learned God’s ways, more fully than anyone who came before him and more fully than anyone alive since. He taught us those ways sometimes gently and lovingly, sometimes with the ferocity of a mama bear protecting her cubs.

The world doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, we may be forced to live at an even faster pace. The availability and location of jobs will continue to fluctuate. Towns and cities and neighborhoods will shift from one socio-economic bracket to another and back again. Nations will continue to make or break alliances over money and power. Maybe the gurus are right and it is only a matter of a couple years before an ordinarily accessible computer has greater computational capability than the human brain. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. But one thing hasn’t changed. No matter how strange it all gets, the Lord God helps me. We are able to stand in this together because God is our strength and salvation in an “all too crazy” world.

So as Jesus turned his sights on the city of Jerusalem and approached the seat of religious power and cultural influence, his triumphal entry was tinged with both his personal humility and his followers’ hypocrisy. It wouldn’t take long for cries of “Hosanna!” to turn to shouts of “Crucify him.” He taught, not with lectures or standardized tests, but he taught his disciples through the way in which he lived and the way in which he laid down his life for all of us. He was, after all, an eager student of the human condition. Thanks to Jesus’ example… We learn from the story of his impromptu parade that following Jesus is easy when the crowd is sympathetic, but far harder when the resistance comes. We learn from the gathering in the upper room that God’s love is not embarrassed to wash the grime off your feet, but in our own embarrassment, we can turn on God with our betrayal and denial. We learn from Jesus’ prayer in the garden that we sleep through most of our own prayers. We learn from his trial that we too are quick to hang the innocent for our own guilt. We learn from the crucifixion that we run away from our pain and the pain of others. We choose death over life. We lose our trust in God and hang our heads, forsaken.

Thankfully, this is not the end of the story – Jesus continues to teach us from an empty grave – but that’s a story for next week. For this week, we learn our own trials and temptations. We can say, simply but surely, the Lord helps us. Life is overwhelming, but God is with us, Emmanuel, God is with us.

Amen.