In Isaiah, You Should Look at Chapter 53, the Fourth Song of the Servant of The

In Isaiah, you should look at chapter 53, the fourth song of the Servant of the Lord, a famous and powerful text quoted in the New Testament and in Handel's Messiah as a prophecy of the Christ who redeems by suffering. The specific reference to him (or to the whole Jewish people) as "the Righteous One, my Servant" is in verse 11. Here is the RSV text of the whole chapter; I am sure you will recognize many of the phrases, although the unchurched among your students may not:

Isaiah 53 [1] Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? [2] For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. [3] He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. [4] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. [5] But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. [7] He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. [8] By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? [9] And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. [10] Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; [11] he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the Righteous One, my Servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. [12] Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

In the New Testament, the term "Righteous One" as applying to the Christ who will suffer is picked up in the warning message from Pilate's wife to her husband as he sits in judgment over Jesus (Matthew 27:19): "Have nothing to do with that Righteous One, for I have suffered much over him today in a dream." In St. Peter's first sermon in the Temple (Acts of the Apostles 3:13-15): "The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Author of life, whom God has now raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses." And in St. Stephen's confession of faith before his martyrdom (Acts of the Apostles 7:51-52): "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."

St. Paul picks up the theme of the Righteous One in his letter to the Romans but applies the term "righteous" not just to Jesus, but to every Christian justified and living by faith in him. There are also numerous references in the Old and New Testament to righteousness as the sign of the nation's salvation; for example, in Zechariah's prayer, the Benedictus, upon the birth of his son John the Baptist (Luke 1:68-75):

Luke 1 [68] "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, [69] and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, [70] as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, [71] that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us; [72] to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, [73] the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, [74] to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, [75] in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life."

Of course, as the passage about Stephen's martyrdom suggests, true righteousness is not a matter of just obeying the commandments, but of having the Spirit of the Lord in your heart and acting accordingly. Jesus himself declared this when he quoted Isaiah 61 in his home-town synagogue at Luke 3:16-19. Here is that resonant text of Luke all the way down to verse 24, in which I think Solzhenitsyn would have recognized himself and Matronya both:

[16] And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; [17] and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, [18] "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, [19] to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." [20] And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. [21] And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." [22] And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth; but they said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" [23] And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, `Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Caper'na-um, do here also in your own country.'" [24] And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country."

Solzhenitsyn affirms, through the character of Matronya, that what is needed to save Russia is not Orthodoxy but Orthopraxy - living the gospel that sets the poor and the oppressed free.