Here is another tasty quote from Jesus and Politics In discussing the Messiah and the suffering servant,

 

Yet more difficult is the idea that the king can also be a suffering Servant. Deep in this great book [Isaiah] is a radical understanding of sin and injustice, a deconstruction of human autonomy and power, a knowledge of love and mercy, and a pervasive sense that God is with us. It requires the self-referencing attitude of the state and politics to be discarded in recognition of their accountability before God. Above all, it requires a complete rethinking of the idea of victory. Throughout sinful human history, conquest has been domination, self-will, glory, and control over others. Such thought forms are endemic to presidents, prime ministers, kings, and people through the centuries. Yet here in Isaiah a different fulcrum is intimated. To win is to fight for the other, the weak, the sick, and even the enemy. To win is to lose, even one’s life, steady in love. By his wounds we are healed. The deliverer is led like a lamb to the slaughter, and he bears our iniquities (is 53). No-one can be sure of the actual incarnation of Isaiah’s meaning in the Suffering Servant. But here is the prototype for the great hinge of political history in Jesus. It all swings on this. (page 103-104)