We do not have to be on guard with Jesus
When I was a boy, my family went to a dentist I learned to fear. He was a thickly built man, with meaty, strong hands. When he worked in my mouth filling cavities or on one or two occasions pulling a tooth, he worked with the sort of force you might imagine a car mechanic uses when turning a stubborn bolt. He pushed that needle into my gums, he pressed that drill into my tooth, or he wielded dental pliers on a stubborn molar and twisted and pulled till it gave way. His work was done forcefully and effectively; and if pain happened to me in the process, well that’s just the way it is. He got things done in my mouth with directness and dispatch. He was a healer—but a rough healer.
When you have experiences with a dentist like that, you learn to appreciate gentleness. My next dentist was the opposite of the first. He was as gentle and kind a man as you will ever know. And he redeemed dentistry in my eyes. He spoke gently. He was aware of what I was feeling. And he was clearly concerned to make the experience of healing as painless as possible.
Gentle Savior
It is good news when Jesus tells us he is gentle. He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30 ESV).
Gentle means not rough, harsh, or violent. Gentle means aware of the pain others might experience and trying to relieve or minimize it. When a gentle doctor must inflict pain, he seeks also to bring comfort.
Matthew 12:20 says of Jesus, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.”
Where my family lived as I was growing up, our house was one lot away from a small wetland full of reeds and cattails. The reeds grew three to five feet in length. We played with those reeds. They had a natural stiffness to them that enabled them to grow tall and sway in the breeze without breaking, but if you bent them hard enough they could certainly break and fold over, as we discovered when we used them as whips or swords. They could also be bruised or slightly bent or dented, and weakened as a result. A bruised reed could be broken more easily. You could look out over the wetland and see the tops of thousands of reeds standing tall and elegantly curved, while others were bruised and slightly bent over, while still others were broken and fully bent over upon themselves.
Jesus was not one to walk through the wetland and take strong hold of the top of a bruised, weakened, bowed reed and snap it so that it would fully break.
A bruised reed
Luke 7 tells the story of a woman who was a bruised reed. She was bruised because of her own sin, and no doubt the sins of others against her. Luke describes her as “a woman of the city” and “a sinner.” Somehow she heard the teaching and works of Jesus and became a believer. And when she heard that Jesus had come to the home of a Pharisee in her city, it triggered in her a desire to express her love and appreciation to the one who had changed her life.
She quickly grabbed a jar of expensive ointment and went to the home of the Pharisee. The event was apparently held in something like what we might call today an open-house format, so she was able to get in and come right to the place where Jesus reclined at the table for the meal. There with overflowing emotion she wept tears that dripped on the feet of Jesus, and she wiped the tears with her hair and anointed the feet of Jesus with the ointment.
For Jesus this must have been an awkward situation. Yet he did not put an end to it, but let it go on for 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes. I base that on the words of Jesus when he admonished the Pharisee, saying, “from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet” (Luke 7:45), and on the fact that Jesus told his parable to the Pharisee as she went on with her display of gratitude. This means Jesus let her actions continue, rather than chastising her, or telling her to stop and go away.
No, he was gentle with this broken reed. He let her be and let her do. Finally after concluding his instruction of the Pharisee, he turned to the woman and said, “Your sins are forgiven…. Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:48, 50).
So Jesus was gentle with an irreligious sinner, and if you come to him as this woman did, in humility, faith, and repentance, he will be gentle with you.