READ Isaiah 42:1–4
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
MEDITATE
To grasp this startling (you’ll see why momentarily) passage of Scripture, you may need a primer in Bible history, complete with dates, which you need to read backwards, since they are BC (or BCE)15 rather than AD. Judah escaped the animus of Assyria by the skin of its teeth (701). The empire of Assyria fell to Babylon (609). Babylon reduced Jerusalem to ruins and forced its people into exile (586). That’s the easy part; the hard part is trying to comprehend the essence of despair, the totality of grief after the fall of Jerusalem in 586. The prophet Ezekiel recorded the people’s grief: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (37:11). One ancient poet agonized, “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). Utter despondency. Complete despair. Desolation.
Enter a person of unlikely hope called simply the servant. The Spirit inspires this servant to imagine a magnificent vision of justice. What is unsettling, however, is that this imagined world, suffused by justice, costs the servant dearly. Anguish peers through the line “he will not cry or lift up his voice.” The verb cry out refers to cries of anguish, to expressions of grief (Isaiah 19:20; 33:7; 65:14). The servant refuses to give outward expression to his anguish and suffers in silence for the sake of his message. He will not scream in pain “until he has established justice in the earth.”
Despite the silent suffering of the servant, he won’t stop speaking words of hope for the nations. Just as profound is the sort of speaking the servant does. The Spirit doesn’t inspire him to scream or rant or rave. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” He—she, as well—will not speak loudly enough to blow out a candle. The servant’s word is an inspired whisper.
I can’t read about the servant without being reminded of many souls whose vision of hope led to silent anguish—people like Janusz Korczak, a Warsaw pediatrician and author of children’s books who founded an orphanage in 1911. When the Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto, the orphanage’s ranks swelled to 200 children.
Korczak, deeply optimistic, believed in a vision of society without race or class, even in Nazi-dominated Poland. He could have left Poland—twice he visited a kibbutz in Palestine, and he rejected multiple offers of forged papers that would have assured his freedom—yet he always returned to the children in his charge.
In July 1942, the Nazis resettled the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto. On August 5, the children were transported to the Treblinka extermination camp in windowless boxcars. An eyewitness from the ghetto saw the extraordinary drama and survived to describe it:
Forced into tight formation, body against body, driven by guards wielding whips on all sides, the solid mass of humanity was forced to run toward the train platform. Suddenly the Commandant ordered the Secret Police to pull back.… At the head of a thin line was Korczak! No, how could it be? The scene I shall never forget. In contrast to the mass of humanity being driven like animals to slaughter, there appeared a group of children marching together in formation. They were the orphanage children walking four abreast in a line behind Korczak. His eyes were lifted to heaven. Even the military personnel stood still and saluted. When the Germans saw Korczak, they asked, “Who is that man?”
Another eyewitness recalled, “These children did not cry, these innocent little beings did not even weep. Like sick sparrows they snuggled up to their teacher, their caregiver, their father and their brother Janusz Korczak, that he might protect them with his weak, emaciated body.”16
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
I can’t even pronounce this man’s name, but I know he embodied the essence of inspired leadership. Like the servant who lived 2,500 years ago, he embraced an expansive if unpopular vision by suffering in silence, and by bringing, step by step and inch by inch, God’s teaching, God’s justice, God’s Torah, to people on the margins. It won’t be easy. You know this by now.
REFLECT
PRAY
Holy Spirit
teacher
care-giver
father and mother
brother and sister—
You are my silent partner in promise
my quiet companion in hope
In anguish accompany me
in weakness walk with me
Until justice floods the earth
and knowledge drenches the coastlands
Until sick sparrows finally fly
and dimly burning wicks blaze fiercely Amen
