The Reed He Will Not Break

We know what to do with a thing that is almost broken. The reed at the edge of the pond, bent and split by the wind—we snap it the rest of the way and drop it. We finish what the wind started because, deep down, we believe usefulness is what makes a thing worth keeping.

Isaiah 42 sets that instinct beside God’s chosen Servant, the one on whom he has laid his Spirit, who will bring forth justice to the nations (Isaiah 42:1). We might expect such a figure to arrive with volume and force. Isaiah says the opposite. “He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street (Isaiah 42:2).” And then the two lines people hold onto: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench (Isaiah 42:3).”

Any practical person would do both. The Servant does neither—and not for lack of force. Ten verses on, the LORD goes out like a mighty man, crying aloud, laying mountains waste (Isaiah 42:13–15). The roar is real, but never aimed at the reed. The Hebrew ties the two together: he will not break the bruised (ratsuts) reed or quench the dim (kehah) wick, because he himself “will not grow faint (yikheh) or be discouraged (yaruts) till he has established justice in the earth (Isaiah 42:4).” The same two words, now describing him. He can bear the dim and the crushed because he will not be dimmed or crushed. I had always read the gentleness as a limit on the power, the part that keeps it safe, until Keller turned it round: his gentleness is his strength, at work.¹

Matthew reached for these verses to describe Jesus (Matthew 12:18–21). Here was power that did not need to break people to prove itself—the Messiah who stopped for the woman who touched his cloak and tried to vanish (Mark 5:27–34). This is what his justice looks like arriving: a healer moving toward the people the strong step over, sent “to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon (Isaiah 42:7).” Eleven chapters on, the same prophet draws the Servant again—“he has borne our griefs (Isaiah 53:4),” pierced for our transgressions. He can bear with the bruised because he was bruised himself; and what he bore there was not our frailty but our sin.

I began as though we were only ever the reed. We are also the wind, and the hand that finishes what the wind started. He is gentle with the bruised, and he is gentle with the ones who do the bruising, which is harder to say.

So if we come to him this morning more smoke than flame—the prayer we can barely form, the faith down to its last thread—that is not a disqualification here. He will not break the reed; he will not quench the wick; and then he does what neither refusal promised—he bends down, even now, over the bruised to bind them up.