A Light for the Nations

A tiny clay lamp sits on a shelf. Its wick is nearly burnt out. The flame flickers, smokes, almost dies. Most people would pinch it out and throw it away. But someone is leaning over it, cupping his hands around it, breathing on it gently, until it glows again.

These words come from the part of Isaiah spoken to God's people in a dark time, when they were far from home in Babylon, or soon would be. They felt forgotten. Small. Useless. In these chapters, God speaks again and again about someone called my servant. Sometimes the servant is the whole people of Israel. But Israel often failed. And in some of these passages, the servant is a single person, someone God will send to do what Israel could not. Christians call four of these passages the Servant Songs. Today we hear the first, from chapter forty-two, and a line from the second, in chapter forty-nine.

God speaks, like a king presenting someone to his court. “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my Spirit on him. He will bring justice to the nations.” Chosen. Upheld. Delighted in. Filled with God's Spirit. And his job is enormous: justice for the nations. Not just for Israel. For everyone. You might expect someone like that to arrive with trumpets and armies, shouting orders in the streets. But listen. “He will not shout, nor raise his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street.”

“A bruised reed he will not break. A dimly burning wick he will not quench.” A reed by the river, already cracked and bent. A flax wick in a lamp, barely smoking. Things that most people would snap off and throw away. The servant won't. He is gentle with the weak, the hurt, the nearly-giving-up. And yet he is not weak himself. “He will not fail nor be discouraged, until he has set justice in the earth, and the islands will wait for his law.” Gentle, but unstoppable. Then God, the Creator who spread out the heavens and gives breath to every person, speaks to the servant directly. “I will hold your hand, and will keep you, and make you a covenant for the people, as a light for the nations; to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon.”

In the second Servant Song, God says it even more strongly. To restore just Israel, that is too small a thing. “I will also give you as a light to the nations, that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth.” God says, “Behold, the former things have happened, and I declare new things. I tell you of them before they come up.” Centuries later, an old man named Simeon held the baby Jesus in the temple and called him a light to lighten the Gentiles. Matthew quoted this very song about Jesus when he quietly healed crowds of sick people: a bruised reed he will not break. And when Jesus' followers carried the good news to the nations, Paul and Barnabas quoted chapter forty-nine. I have set you as a light for the Gentiles.

The smoking flax is a picture from every home in Isaiah's world. People lit their houses with small clay oil lamps, shaped like a saucer with a pinched spout. They filled them with olive oil and laid a wick of twisted flax fibre in the spout. When the oil ran low or the wick was poor, the flame smouldered and smoked. Archaeologists have found thousands of these lamps across Israel.

A light for the nations. You'll find it in Isaiah chapter forty-two, verses one to nine, and chapter forty-nine, verse six. A servant gentle enough for the weakest, and strong enough for the whole world. So here is a question to carry with you. Is there someone who feels like a bruised reed, cracked and tired, whom you could treat gently this week?