Humility

Homily for August 28, 2016            Graves Chapel

  

Who does he think he is?  He hangs around with all the worst sorts of trashy people. Just get a look at those friends of his.  Fishermen and tax collectors, women with bad reputations.  Just who does he think he is? I’ve heard his father is a carpenter. A carpenter of all things! And there is also that story going around about his mother being in a family way before she married his father. Who does he think he is? Just the other day, he said that a bartender—a bartender—knows how to pray better than I do.  Where does he get the nerve to lord it over me—my family has always been of high social standing! I have studied with all of the first-rate scholars, and he never went to college. I know my scripture forwards and backwards, and yet he has the nerve to correct my teaching. Just who in the heck does he think he is?

Like the Pharisee, we may ask such questions.  Why did God, the Lord of the Universe, decide to send his own Son, the long-awaited Messiah, into the world in such a humble way?  Why, of all things, did he have to be born in a stable, have a manger for his first bed? Why did he have to grow up in a poor family and be executed in such a demeaning way, hanging on a cross between two thieves?  In some ways these are the most fundamental questions all of us should ask about Jesus. God certainly could have sent Jesus as a king if he chose.  The great king, the one God clearly loved and blessed and forgave over and over, King David, could have returned to rule his people. God can do that kind of thing, after all. The prophecies about the Messiah all said that he would be a descendant of David and would come to rule his people. It is no wonder that the Pharisees were perplexed to find the son of a carpenter preaching with such authority.  He defied their understanding of propriety.

If you have heard me preach before—and some of you have kindly listened to many of my sermons—you have probably noticed that I often speak about LOVE. I admit that the Lord’s admonition to us to love our neighbors as ourselves is my favorite Biblical theme. Since Jesus called this the second part of the “Great Commandment,” connecting our requirement to love each other to the rule that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, then my conclusion that LOVE is of the utmost importance seems correct.

The lessons for today, from Hebrews and Luke, suggest that only humility makes it possible for us to express Christ-like love in a way that makes it acceptable to the ones we love.  If we love others from a position of equality with them, and not authority over them, they find it easier to accept the love we offer.

Jesus says in Luke 14, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  How and why do we find ourselves in situations where we “exalt” ourselves?  Ahh…one of those questions (and indictments from Jesus) that makes me squirm.  Sometimes I just need to be able to feel good about myself.  Life can throw a lot of things at us, after all, that can make us feel very low. I don’t think I am the only one who has suffered wounds to my ego from time to time, and wounded egos need reassurance. We want to know that we are okay, that others believe us to be respectable. Isn’t it lucky for us that Jesus has been there, too? Jesus understands that our wounded ego wants to be seated at the head of the table, that it can be hard for us to accept a lower position. But Jesus also understands that, in the long run, we will feel better about ourselves when we manage to be humble.  I wonder if that is why Jesus was thirty years old when he finally began his ministry—old enough and wise enough to have experienced many wounds to his ego and to understand the necessity of putting our egos—ourselves—last.

The mystery of humility is the way we are actually blessed by it. Beloved priest and theologian Henri Nouwen had these words to say about today’s lesson from Luke: “The poor have a treasure to offer precisely because they cannot return our favors. By not paying us for what we have done for them, they call us to inner freedom, selflessness, generosity, and true care. Jesus says, ‘When you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind: then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you, and so you will be repaid when the upright rise again.’  The repayment Jesus speaks of is spiritual. It is the joy, peace and love of God that we so much desire. This is what the poor give us, not only in the afterlife, but already in the here and now.”

Love is a spiritual gift because it is intangible. Love is both an emotion and a behavior, something we know when we encounter it, but cannot really define. Love for one another is required from us by a God who embodies love.  But it is humility that provides the stance, the posture, from which love is properly extended to others. When someone says, “I love you,” from a position of power, out of a need to control us, does it feel like love? When an act of charity is performed, say of giving a few dollars to a beggar, and it is made from an attitude of condescension, does it feel like love to that poor beggar?  I quite often hear complaints about the “attitude” of a homeless person, and I wonder if the offending attitude may have begun in the manner the gift was offered. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, Jesus tells us that our job is to govern our own behavior with humility and not concern ourselves with the behavior or attitudes of others.  As the writer of Hebrews says in today’s lesson, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that, some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  Wouldn’t it be just like God to send us a grumpy and unappreciative angel to test our willingness to be generous—and humble?

On the evening of the Last Supper, when Jesus gathered all of his disciples together for the Passover, the very last time he would have an opportunity to be with them before his death, he illustrated to them the true importance of humble service to others. It was a lesson the disciples found very disconcerting. Jesus knelt before each one of them and washed his feet. To the disciples, it seemed very wrong for their Lord and master to perform what seemed to them to be a humiliating task. That was precisely the Lord’s lesson for them—and for us. Jesus wanted all of his disciples to understand that humility and humiliation are two very different things. An act of love, performed in true humility, makes all involved feel whole and worthy. An act of humiliation is something done to us by another who behaves toward us as our superior and who wants to make us feel inferior. Humiliation wounds our ego—and that is its purpose.

To return to my earlier supposition, then, is it true that only humility on our part makes it possible for someone to accept the love we offer?  I believe so. Love of this kind is love exchanged between equals. We call this kind of love unconditional.  Sometimes we say that only God is capable of unconditional love. Only God can put up with the bad behavior of humans and still love them. God is clearly the expert, but God also asks us to emulate his love.

Our trying to be like God, to love in God’s unconditional manner, sounds like an impossible requirement.  Richard Rohr explains the radical nature of God’s expectations of us by showing how scripture teaches us what he calls “four moral equivalencies.”  Rohr says that the first of these is the moral equivalency Jesus makes between himself and other humans: “Whatever you do to others, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). The second moral equivalency, according to Rohr, is the one Jesus makes between himself and God: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).  The third moral equivalency is the one between any person and God: “The Spirit is within you” (John 14:17). Throughout the Gospels and on his final departing, Jesus promises the eternal presence of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, within each individual. The fourth and final moral equivalency, then, is the one Jesus makes between any one of us and every other person: Jesus tells us, “In everything you do, treat others exactly as you would have them treat you” (Matthew 7:12).

Accepting that, in God’s terms, we are equal to every other human being, even those we dislike, requires humility. In God’s eyes, we are no more and no less worthy than any of our neighbors. Accepting that God the Holy Spirit dwells equally within each of us is both reassuring and challenging—and also humbling. We are called to recognize that the indwelling Spirit of God extends love to others primarily through us, through our actions. Accepting that we are God’s hands and feet on this planet, that we are required (as today’s beautiful collect says) to bring forth the fruit of good works calls us to humble service.

The four “moral equivalencies” define unconditional love. In any mathematical equation, an “equals” sign offers the guidepost.  Whatever we place to the left of that symbol must be, in some way, exactly the same as whatever we place to its right. How can this be possible when we say we are equal to each other, equal to Jesus, equal to God?  I guess the answer to that question can only be—with great love and great humility. 

In every equation of human moral behavior, the grace of God is the equalizer.  On that we can put our faith.  AMEN.