Homily for Sunday, October 27, 2013

                                               Humility or Righteousness? 

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“If you want peace, work for justice.”

Those words appear on a bumper sticker, and the words are fundamentally true.  Most disputes between nations, most wars, have as their root cause some unjust act (or perceived injustice) on the part of another nation. Sometimes, as in Syria today, the injustice happens within a country, between opposing factions. The Hague and Geneva conventions have been in place for well over 100 years and have evolved into the bases for the prosecution of war criminals and the settlement of reparations where injustice has occurred.  Justice has to happen before there can be true peace.

            Jesus’s words  in today’s parable about two very different men praying in the temple speak to a very personal kind of peace—the peace we have within ourselves which usually translates into peace with our neighbors.  Jesus shows us very clearly that the peace he wills for us is the peace that comes from humility.

This parable also illustrates something pretty surprising—righteousness is less important in Christ’s eyes than humility.  The Pharisee in the story obeys every rule of the law; he knows he is both right and righteous and his words reflect the arrogance his righteousness produces. The arrogance that results from that self-righteousness of the Pharisee is clearly a grave sin in Christ’s eyes.  The Pharisee “exalts” himself, and by exalting himself, he sees the tax collector as contemptible. No love can be found in self-righteousness that puffs itself up at the expense of others.

Jesus’s exact words are, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  What does it mean to be “exalted”?  The dictionary says that to exalt is to acclaim, to venerate, to elevate, to worship. If we think of Jesus and his life as the true model for our own lives, we will clearly see that Jesus never exalted himself.  In the poverty of his life and his debasing, horrific death, Jesus was an exemplar of true humility. Yet we know him as the Lord of all, God incarnate, and the author of mercy, love, and justice.  Jesus was the humble one who has been and continues to be exalted.  But we are none of us like Jesus Christ, who was perfectly humble and perfectly righteous. Like the tax collector and indeed like the Pharisee, all of us are sinners in one way or another.

So how do we live the kind of humility Jesus asks of us? And how will we be exalted by that humility?  The traditional interpretation of this parable is that the tax collector’s humility will exalt him into heaven. He prays what has come to be known as the Jesus prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” He won’t even raise his eyes to heaven because he knows he is unworthy of the mercy he seeks. God, who is always more loving and forgiving of us than we are of ourselves, hears that prayer and forgives.

            I think that when Jesus says “the humble will be exalted” he means more than just the reward that awaits us when we die. I think Jesus is saying that our humility will exalt our spirits, lift us here and now into a state of grace, and give us inner peace. Accepting that we are sinners and far from righteous will lead us, as it does the tax collector, to seek God’s mercy. Focused on our own inadequacies, we will not succumb to self-righteous contempt for anyone else. Knowing ourselves to be loved by God in spite of our shortcomings and accepting that we are no better (or worse) than our neighbors draw us closer to both. We experience God’s love more fully, and we learn to love our neighbors and live with them in true peace and harmony.

            Yes, if we want peace, we should work for justice. But if we want the kind of peace that allows us to feel at one with God and with our neighbors, then we need to work on humility. It’s more important than being right!