HUMBLE AND CONTRITE
June 5, 2005
Texts – Isaiah 66: 1-2
Matthew 5: 3 - 11
He stands third in the line of succession. It is a line that stretches out over two hundred and thirty years of tumultuous history.
Israel, unified and prosperous under the reign of King David, had devolved over time into two separate kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom (which called itself Israel) was the first to lose political and cultural independence; it was annexed by the Assyrian empire in 721 B.C.. Judah, the second kingdom, was in the south. Its capital was Jerusalem. It was here, around 740 B.C., that the first prophet named Isaiah began to speak.
Standing proudly and self-consciously in the tradition of Amos and Hosea (two prophets from the Northern Kingdom), and of Micah who was his contemporary and compatriot in the south, Isaiah railed against the social injustice which was rampant in his homeland. Over the course of some fifty years, he pleaded with his contemporaries to place their trust in God and to lead public and private lives which reflected God’s righteousness. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before (God’s) eyes,” he cried; “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” [Isaiah 1: 16-17] His words fell on deaf ears. The Northern Kingdom was destroyed twenty years after Isaiah began preaching; it’s twin to the South met a similar fate one hundred and thirty four years later when the Babylonians decimated Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and forced her people into exile.
Time passed. Around 540 B.C. a second man began to speak. He also called himself Isaiah, invoking thereby the spirit and the message of his predecessor. Whereas the first Isaiah’s message had been one of warning and admonition, however, this second Isaiah spoke of a new day. “Behold, the former things have come to pass,” he said; “and new things I now declare . . . . Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old,” he went on; “Behold, I (God) am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” [Isaiah 42: 9; 43: 18-19]
God has forgiven us our sins, this Isaiah proclaimed, and is giving us a new beginning. Just as the Almighty used the Assyrians and the Babylonians of old to punish us, so now God is using a man named Cyrus to deliver us. So he preached, and so it came to pass. Babylon fell in 539 B.C. to the armies of Cyrus, the king of Persia. One of his first acts was to set the exiles from Jerusalem free, and to order them to return to their homeland and to rebuild it, including the great temple which had once embodied Israel’s faith and glory.
Time passed. The generation that had languished in exile and which had then been miraculously set free passed away. The temple, gloriously restored, became the focal point not just of a renewed faith community but of the nation’s self-identity. Ah but, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” And so a third man began to speak around 520 B.C.. He too called himself Isaiah, honoring and invoking the wisdom of his predecessors, but bringing with renewed force their message into the present.
“Thus says the Lord,” he began. “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me?” he asked. Yes this temple (which we know was rebuilt by 515 B.C.) is magnificent, he said, but don’t lose sight of the deeper purposes God has for us.
These are the very things our ancestors were warned about by the first Isaiah, and which they neglected to their sorrow. “This is the person to whom I will look, says the Lord; one that is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word.” [Isaiah 66: 1-2]
Three men . . . three very different times . . . one voice speaking through them all. The Master of the Universe – the One who controls history and “brings forth new things” – honors a “humble and contrite spirit” . . . one who has been “washed clean” and who has “learned to do good and to seek justice.” Can you hear in that Micah’s voice – “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God”? I can. So, I’m sure, could Isaiah. It is a message that fell on many deaf ears in the days of the 8th and 6th centuries B.C., but it was not forgotten.
Many many years later another prophet arose. They called him John the Baptist precisely because he challenged his contemporaries to “wash themselves clean” of their old ways . . . to repent and become “the new thing” God would bring forth . . . to be “humble and contrite in spirit” and “to do good and to seek justice.” Like Isaiah before him, John failed to get his message through, but many did hear and heed it. When he was arrested and thereby silenced by the king, a carpenter from Nazareth picked up his mantle and carried it forward. “The time is fulfilled,” he said, “and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” [Mark 1: 15]
This is the foundation upon which we stand as we approach the baptismal font. Yes it is a wonderful moment of personal devotion and sacred consecration. Yes it is a ritual cleansing and a liturgical moment of rebirth. Yes it is right and proper that we celebrate God’s amazing grace symbolized by this water of blessing. But do not miss, my friends, the powerful message of warning hammered out over twenty eight hundred years of time which is also present here.
This ritual, this liturgical moment . . . like the great and magnificent temple of Jerusalem twenty five hundred years ago . . . means nothing if it is not accompanied by a humble and contrite spirit sincerely and forthrightly committed to doing good, to seeking justice, and to walking humbly with God. It is not a spiritual vaccination against the wiles of human sinfulness. It is not a magical anointing with supernatural power. It is, instead, but a step on the way toward a life acceptable to God . . . a life Jesus called “a blessing” . . . a life characterized by seven attributes:
$ genuine poverty of spirit,
$ sincere mournfulness of sin,
$ meekness of obedience to God’s will,
$ hunger and a thirst for nothing less than God’s righteousness,
$ mercy given and received,
$ purity of heart and mind, . . . and . . .
$ commitment to peace even in the midst of persecution.
Finally, note it well – this voice, which first spoke through the prophets named Isaiah, speaks to nations as surely as it does to individuals. We ignore it at our peril. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before (God’s) eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” All who are baptized – and there are many in our land who claim to be so – are absolutely commanded to give themselves to this message. For the one who speaks is the One who makes all things new . . . who in former times brought to nothing the dreams of empire so cherished by the people . . . and who will not rest until the kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.