Somewhere along the way, as the Jesus movement took hold, people began to see in the passage we read earlier this morning from Isaiah 42 something that looked like Jesus. “He will bring forth justice to the nations.”  “I have put my spirit upon him.” “I have given you as a covenant to the people and a light to the nations.” The promise to “open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness,” are reflected in the very first sermon Jesus preached when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

  That has led some to believe that this passage from the prophet Isaiah, written several centuries before the birth of Jesus, was always intended to be about him, a foreshadowing of the life and ministry of the Messiah. Others argue it’s okay to let the text stand on its own for whatever purposes it was originally written, and use it as a model for the ministry and mission Jesus adopted.

  However we get to this passage, there is something compelling in it that reminds me of what I read about Jesus in the gospels. And the phrase that has been particularly standing out to me lately is the one that says, “a bruised reed he will not break.”

  At first, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Who cares about a bruised blade of grass somewhere along a river’s edge. But, of course, there is something much deeper going on here. The Servant that Isaiah writes about is one who notices the vulnerable, who goes out of his way to make sure he doesn’t make it any harder for those already having a hard time.

  Jesus paid a lot of attention to the most vulnerable, and not only refused to make things worse for them, but his mission was to make things better for them.

I have been thinking about all of this a lot during the current presidential campaign. There has been a real race to out Christian each other, though Rudy Guiliani has declared himself a non combatant in matters of religion when it comes to the political wars. And as all these candidates stress their Christian credentials there has also been an increasingly ugly race to see who can be the hardest and harshest when it comes to illegal immigrants. It seems like an awful lot of candidates are trying to fight off accusations that they are soft on illegal immigrants, and going out of their way to sound as tough on illegal immigrantion as they can.

  Who is more vulnerable than illegal immigrants? What bruised reed is easier to crush than that one? Yet so many of these presidential candidates, who are vying for the title of most Christian Presidential candidate ever, are not only willing to crush this bruised reed but they want to yank it out of the soil, stomp on it, burn it, and make sure they have television crews recording every minute so they can make a commercial out of it.

This is not the way of Jesus. But it is the way of Herod who sent his soldiers out to kill those baby boys after the travelers of the East failed to come back and deliver the coordinates for the attack Herod was going to launch against Jesus. We know how vulnerable babies are, but Herod went after them anyway for the sake of the nation.

  It’s a political ploy that dates much earlier than Herod. Pick on the most vulnerable and call it leadership. When you are going after babies or illegal immigrants, who you say represent a dire threat to the nation, you don’t have to talk about real dangers like lack of health care, a war machine that is out of control, an economy that performs only for the wealthy, growing poverty, a failing education system, attacks on civil liberties, a housing crisis, or global warming.

  The person now designated at the front runner for the Republican nomination, the Rev. Mike Huckabee recently said the most dangerous threat facing our nation is illegal immigration. It’s not terrorism, it’s not environmental degradation, it’s not swelling budget deficits, it’s not the lack of health insurance for over 50,000,000 million Americans, not bridges falling into rivers, not nuclear proliferation, but illegal immigration. Let’s batter the bruised reed. I mean, isn’t that what Jesus would do?

  And this battering of bruised reeds has bipartisan appeal. Before he was first elected in 1992, Bill Clinton cut short a campaign trip so he could return to Arkansas to deny clemency for a mentally retarded man who was then executed. And before his reelection, President Clinton told us that children in welfare families were getting too many benefits, and he gladly supported a bill to make life harder on the already battered and bruised.

  Republican and Democrat alike were falling all over themselves the past couple of election cycles to be tough on gays and lesbians. There is not a bruised reed that many a politician since Herod’s day has been willing to pass up.

  The thing is that it doesn’t seem like Mike Huckabee is the kind of guy who really wants to beat up on illegal immigrants, or that Bill Clinton is a really ardent capital punishment supporter. But they think, I guess, that’s the price of power.

On Epiphany though we celebrate the coming of Jesus into this world who like the one spoken of in Isaiah 42 would not break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. Rather, ‘he will establish justice in the earth.’ The King of the Jews that the Wisemen sought did things a different way, understood power to be something you use for the sake of the powerless, the bruised reeds.

  Do you see why we celebrate his birth with light? The travelers followed the light of that star. These Gentiles were willing to proclaim this newborn Jewish king as ‘a light to the nations.’ If only the nations would get it, see the light, and stop crushing bruised reeds.
 
  If I read the Revelation correctly, though, the nations never really get it, or not until it’s too late. That’s why the seer in the Revelation was not overly impressed by the Roman empire with all its might, and all its wealth, and all its death. John put his money on the church, even though there were plenty betting that Rome was going to obliterate that bruised reed before it could further annoy the empire. Funny thing, though. The Roman empire is long gone, as are several of its successors, and the church is still here, and it still needs to be annoying the empire.

  That, I think, is the larger point of Epiphany. It’s not simply as the beginning of John’s Gospel put it that the ‘light has come into the world,’ but that ‘the darkness has not overcome it.’

  This light that Jesus brought into the world was not meant to live and die with him. It was Jesus, who looking at his followers one day said, ‘you are the light of the world.’  Like so many things in the Bible we realize that Epiphany has something to do with us. This light is not just about Jesus, it’s not just about God, it’s not even just about these really religious people we imagine we could never be like. It’s about us. And it’s about us particularly as the church.

  The Book of Revelation also tells us I believe, it’s always time for the church to stand and be the church, to come into its own no matter what the empire is up to. We, the church, are here for the sake of the bruised reeds. That is how we bring light into this world. And that’s why church is worth our time and effort and money and commitment. It’s an Epiphany movement that has been put in our hands.

  And we know what it means to be that bruised reed. We know our own vulnerabilities as individuals. If someone wanted to come after us, they could break any of us pretty easily. That’s why we stand for the most vulnerable, because those illegal immigrants, for example, are just like us. They want what is best for their children, just like we do. They want to live in peace, have a roof over their heads clean water to drink, and food on the table. ‘Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Those are not the words of the empire. That’s what Jesus said.

  So if politicians come along and talk about the hymns their mamas sang to them, the prayers their papas prayed for them, the Bible studies they have gone to, the church camps they have attended, or that Jesus Christ is their personal savior, that’s all fine and good. But when they ask us to join them in crushing bruised reeds we just have to let them know that we are voting for the church and the ways of Jesus, thank you. Because that’s where the light is, and the darkness of your political pandering will not overcome it.

  With the travelers from the East we celebrate the light that has come into this world, The One who shows the nations what justice is. And he celebrates with us, asking us to remember him by being the light he knows we are.

  There’s not a bruised reed he will break, not a guttering flame he will extinguish. That’s what the King of the Jews is about. I wonder if one of the political parties will put that plank in their platform? It sounds pretty good to me, and it’s something that Christian presidential candidates, and all the rest of us, would do well to remember.