Isaiah 42:1-3; Matthew 3:17; (Mark 1:7)

Living Faith and Keeping Faith

The Hippocratic oath that physicians are supposed to take, I am told, states:”First do no harm.” That may be a good way to approach the lectionary passage in Isaiah about the expected One. This expected One will bring justice, so He is supposed to have some earthly power and influence.  But on the other hand there is image of gentleness and compassion and those are the verses I want to emphasize today:”A bruised reed He will not break and a dim wick He will not extinguish.”  It is simple yet beautiful imagery.  A reed has been stepped on or has been hit by something and water isn’t going to make its way up to the top that easily anymore. One more injury and it will be done, rendered useless.  With all the problems churches have with their candles, we certainly can imagine a dim wick.  If you lose the flame you may not be able to get it going again.  Neither wick nor reed are crucial to us, but they were for people in the ancient Middle East in a time of limited building materials and no electricity.

But of course, friends, it is a metaphor.  The text speaks of maintaining and holding on to something that is at risk of being lost. It could be a land, it could be the people, it could me a memory, it could be a people’s spirit.

In an interview on Hard Talk, forensic novelist Patricia Cornwell recently shared her fears.  She said she agreed to come for the interview because she wanted to answer the hard questions. Although she is wildly successful with her novel about a woman detective and she even travels with an entourage, she is still haunted by her past as an abandoned and abused child in North Carolina.  She thought she was worthless.  But one thing she found out she was good at was that she could tell stories really well. She could tell stories, especially scary stories, so well in fact that she could make a whole bunch of boys cry on a parking lot. This empowered her.  But she says she is haunted by her past and things she has seen in the process of her crime research.  Also like many people fears what’s under her bed and in her closet late at night. I don’t know her and have never read any of her books and I am not much of a hugger, but I wished I could have hugged her.  She told me that one of the few people who really embraced her as a child was Ruth Graham, the wife of Billy Graham.  Ruth really reached out to her. A bruised reed you shall not break and a dimly lit wick you not extinguish. Ruth got that. That’s what we should do when we are following Jesus. But there was hurt to come, because when she came out as gay and flew up to tell Ruth Graham first, Ruth just waved it off as impossible.  That was hard on Patricia.  But she understood that within everything Ruth had learned in the Southern Baptist universe in her life time, there was no room for that.  A bruised reed you shall break and a dimly lit wick you shall not extinguish.

Cornwell said something interesting. She feels that her writing is a way of healing people. I suppose this is so because the crime is solved and evil is exposed.   But she admits that she is never healed.  She says:”you can only heal yourself by healing others.”  That is beautifully said, but theologically it’s a bit problematic. I don’t if we can heal people really. We can help, but isn’t in the end God’s grace that does the healing?  And isn’t good helping ultimately empowering people?

There are two foreign movies coming out with the same actor: Isabelle Huppert. One is called

“Elle” and the other “Things to come.”  In the first she is the child of a serial killer who is a successful video game developer who suddenly has to face violence.  In the other she is a philosophy teacher who is betrayed by her husband.  Both movies, judging from the interview with her (with Charlie Rose), are about empowerment of a person who is bruised emotionally and at risk of being snuffed out.

Friends, perhaps Cornwell is right: we can only heal our bruises and our near despair when

we reach out to the ones with bruises who are dimly lit.  On the other hand maybe we can only help the bruised and the dimly lit if we too can face our bruised self and acknowledge the lack of light in us.

The verses are powerful in their simplicity.  The One Who is baptized by John and recognized by God , the One Who will save is also the One Who sees the vulnerable, walking as He were a cat on a table full of porcelain, never breaking anything that should not broken.  In our baptism we officially become part of the Messiah’s family and we commit to trying to walk, gingerly and full of attention and care, through life and among the people. May God help us to do so.