On Being Humble

Homily for Sunday, October 30, 2011

Lessons:
Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107: 1-7, 33-37
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12

You may be familiar with the work of T Bone Burnett if you are a fan of the soundtrack of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. Not only is T Bone a successful producer of popular recordings, but he is also a gifted singer-songwriter as well. In one of his songs, he has this to say about humility: “As soon as you think you’re being humble, you’re no longer humble.” Achieving humility is a really tricky thing, as T Bone tells us. It is also an attitude and a behavior required of Christians and modeled for us by Jesus. I’ve heard humility defined as “being in a proper relationship with God, acknowledging that all of our goodness comes from Him.” Every gift we possess and any righteous act we perform originates with the Lord. As today’s collect says, “It is only by your gift, Lord, that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service.” Pride, therefore, has no place in the Christian heart.

In the Old Testament lesson, God enables Joshua to put on a big show, as He had done with Joshua’s predecessor Moses. Joshua is to prove his power and leadership ability to the people by parting the Jordon River and making a dry path for the people to cross over, as Moses had done with the Red Sea. God stops the flowing of the river and Joshua says, “By this you shall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites: the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. So now select twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.” Note that Joshua doesn’t claim this power for himself; he gives all the credit to the Lord, who had told him, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.” If there is any exalting to be done, God does it. Still, when you have been exalted by God, as were Joshua and Moses, it must be difficult not to want to flaunt your power just a little bit. Indeed, Moses struck the rock at Meribah to release the water for the people without calling on the Lord first—as if the power to bring forth the water was his alone. For that one prideful act, God barred Moses from entering the Promised land with the people.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul seems to be succumbing to another form of human pridefulness: self-righteousness. He says, “You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers.” Isn’t there a definite whiny tone to that speech? I have to admit here that self-righteousness is a sin way too familiar to me. I find it very hard to try to be good every day and not give in to feeling superior about it, particularly when there seem to be a lot of people out there who don’t even try. Paul, who suffered punishment and imprisonment for his faith and good works, may feel justified in claiming his righteousness, but he ultimately does not give in to it: he rightly gives God the credit and gratitude for his accomplishments when he says, “We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.”

Paul’s case is a useful one to consider as we examine the sin of pride. Once a well-respected Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, Paul was a man motivated by deeply-held convictions and proud of his work. Only sudden blindness and the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to him could radically change the course of his life and cause him to join the church he had once set out to destroy. Other than by God’s grace, how could Paul have integrated two such disparate versions of himself? How did the new Paul forgive the old one? Only by grace must be the answer.

Pride, classically known as hubris, is said to be at the root of all sin. Had they not wanted to be like God, knowing what he knew, Adam and Eve would not have eaten the forbidden fruit. Theirs was the original example of pride “coming before a fall.” But I think there is something else underlying human pride that we ought to contemplate. Don’t all of us experience things that wound our egos? From being called ugly names as a child to suffering rejection as an adult, we can probably all name a time when our pride was deeply wounded, when we felt shamed in some way. Our wounded egos need a little pride to bolster them, and we may have felt we had to exalt ourselves in some way. It’s painful to be humble when we’ve experienced humiliation. On the other hand, even false humility (“Oh, this old dress—I just wear it when I don’t care how I look”) is truly egotistical. How do we navigate the treacherous waters separating pride from humility? As old T Bone said, “As soon as you think you’re being humble, you’re no longer humble.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus uses the example of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees to make a point about pride. He says they do not practice what they teach, that they do all their deeds to be seen by others. The Pharisees are very concerned about their outward appearance, the trappings of pride, making “their phylacteries long and their fringes wide.” But Jesus does not tell his followers to disrespect or judge the scribes and Pharisees; in fact, he says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it.” No, Jesus tells his followers to be aware of the damning pride of the Pharisees and to remember that humility will be the source of their security and their future reward: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted."

So, it seems that humility is really about being so comfortable in our own skin that the pride (or just plain bad behavior) of others doesn’t affect us. Trusting completely in God’s love for us, our wounded egos can be healed. Knowing that it is only by God’s grace, as Paul did, that we can call ourselves either righteous or humble, we can let go of self-consciousness. It isn’t our job to make ourselves look good. Only God can accomplish that for us!

In this season, with All Hallow’s Eve approaching and All Saints Day to follow, I was thinking of the saints as I wrote this homily. I don’t think anyone makes it to sainthood without possessing a good measure of humility. Knowing themselves as both indebted to and connected to God was fundamental for the saints. I like to imagine them living most of their days, anyway, with such strong conviction of their faith that they experienced true inner peace. Maybe that is what is meant by this lovely quotation on humility: "Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, or irritable, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing that is done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.”

We can remember the words of Isaiah 57:15: “Thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” When we are content to inhabit our own inner space, the Spirit is pleased to join us there—and to exalt us when the time is right.