Pundits and news commentators will frequently evoke some memory of a previous period in American history to help explain the current situation. “This is like the time before the Civil War. This reminds me of the immigrants coming through Ellis Island.” We see evidence in the Bible of the first Christians doing the same thing. They looked at the story of Israel to help them understand the life and mission of Jesus. One of the texts they often turned to were those passages in the Book of Isaiah usually called “the songs of the suffering servant” and applied them to Jesus. It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations. Aha, those first believers would think, that’s what was going on with Jesus. This is a reminder that we too must fit what we are going through in the larger context of God’s presence and action in the world. Our story is a part of the larger mosaic of salvation history.
