Isaiah 42:1-9 Commentary

Illustration

As a matter of visuals in the sanctuary or maybe as content for a children’s message, consider bringing in a bouquet of flowers in a vase, but bending one so that it sticks out at a strange angle.  Perhaps consult with a florist in your congregation on methods they can use to support a bruised stem. Similarly, you might use candles and then lanterns or hurricane lamps to demonstrate how vulnerable the flame is without protection.  Invite the kids to try to blow out the candle when it is on its own versus when it is encased in a glass globe.  The promise of God in Isaiah—perhaps an especially poignant one at the start of a new year with many unknowns—is to come around us like a hurricane lantern or to place us where other flowers can prop us up.

Commentary:

Emerging from Advent’s flickering candles to Christmas morning sunshine reflecting off a layer of fresh, white snow (at least in the Northern Hemisphere.), we now turn our focus, in Epiphany, to the growing light of Christ, the fulfillment of Advent’s promises and Christmas’ joy. Just as we waited for Jesus to be born, we are still waiting, watching and driving into the on-going promise that Jesus who was born is coming again:

To mend everything that is torn,

To set right all that is upturned,

To make justice where there has been only injustice

To bring peace:

real peace that sorts it out rather than ignoring it.

To wipe every tear from our eyes.

But until He comes again to make all things right, we live on His promises, particularly those articulated in the first four verses of this week’s Lectionary text from Hebrew Scripture.

A bruised reed he will not break,

and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

Now that is a PROMISE.

Have you ever felt like a bruised reed?  Or a flower with the stem bent, not broken … yet … but almost? I’m imagining like in a bouquet of flowers you’re the one poking out awkwardly at the side? Different. Vulnerable. Not-quite-where-or-how you are supposed to be. Maybe know the bruised reed feeling.  You are all too well acquainted with the experience of life as a smoldering, sputtering wick.  And the promise of this text for you is that, though you may be bruised, you won’t be broken. Though you may be a smoldering, flickering flame today, you won’t be snuffed out.

Like the Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 4: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

The problem with promises, though—especially the really good ones – is that it is easy to doubt them. God knows that’s how we are. And God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – came up with a plan to put a downpayment on the promise, to ensure that, while we might doubt, we will also always have ample reason for hope. A hope that grows like light itself, in the lengthening days of January.  A hope that grows like Light itself as Epiphany turns our attention to the life, work and teachings of Jesus Christ.  Hope that came for us at Christmas.  Hope that God does not stand at a distance, at arm’s length from our pain, distant and untouched by our sorrow, our wounds. We have hope because our God was born in a stable – squalling, and so very dependent. He was bruised. The light of his wick flickered and dimmed with human vulnerability. Just like us in every way except sin.

And when he died for us and for our sin, when he died under the weight of unjust state-sanctioned capital punishment, when he died abandoned by almost all his friends, denied by another and betrayed by yet another. When he was pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. When he suffered the worst of it, do you know what he wasn’t?

He wasn’t broken. Hard-pressed. Perplexed. Persecuted. Struck down – sure. But then, listen to this: “Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.”

He died for us, forgiving our sin, reconciling us to God and to one another. And he did all of that as a bruised reed that was never broken to confirm God’s promise: “A bruised reed I will not break. A smoldering wick I will not snuff out.”

And then, after three days in a borrowed tomb, he rose again to newness of life so that where he is—and as he is—we might also be.

All that is wounded, healed.

All that is torn, mended.

Everything upturned set right.

In Epiphany, we focus our attention on all that transpired between the wooden slats of a manger and the wood beams of a cross. We fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the fulfillment Isaiah’s promises to give sight to the blind and to release the captives. The CEB Study Bible affirms that this Christological connection is both faithful to the original text and important to those of us who read it as Christians. “The context of these passages shows that the servant was a model for returning Israel for Second Isaiah’s earliest readers. Since Jesus also lived as a model Israelite in his time, it makes sense to understand him in terms of these passages without excluding the earlier understanding of the prophet’s readers.” One example of this double interpretation comes in verse six in which, according to The CEB Study Bible, “God doesn’t simply make a covenant with the servant, but makes the servant the substance of that covenant.”