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Sermon on the Virtues: Humility

SERMON ON THE VIRTUES: HUMILITY

TEXT: LUKE 18:9-14

 

INTRODUCTION
With this sermon, we are starting a new series. We began the church year asking the question, "What are we doing here? Why do we come to church?" The answer to those questions was an exploration of the values and virtues of a church community. For the next few weeks, we will turn to the values and virtues of individual Christians. How does the church form us as people? What makes a good Christian.
St. Augustine wrote, "Should you ask me what is the first thing in religion, I would reply, "The first, the second, and third thing therein is humility." He goes on the say that without humility, all the other virtues are mere pretense. So it seems appropriate that we begin this series with a sermon about humility. The Gospel of Luke has Jesus telling a deceptively simple story on this topic.

SCRIPTURE: LUKE 18:9-14
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy?

Yeah, it seems easy for us to answer the question. Pharisee/bad. Tax collector/good. That's a problem. Our biblical literacy gets in the way. We've been educated about the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and we know that the Gospels position them as his enemies. We've learned to make the word Pharisee interchangeable with hypocrite. But that's not how Pharisees were viewed in Jesus' time. When Jesus told the parable, it would have been much more edgy.

People would have admired the Pharisee, the respected religious leader who was unstinting and faithful in his observances, just as we admire people who fast and pray and go on mission trips and give generously to the church. This guy was the much revered pastor or church leader.
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Tax collectors were another story. They were despised. They were Jewish collaborators with the Romans, collecting taxes from their own people for a repressive regime and making sure they added a portion to skim off for themselves.

THE PHARISEE AND THE TAX COLLECTOR RETOLD
The first time I ever preached on this text, I rewrote the parable in a way that I hoped would recapture the shock value it had in Jesus' time. I offer it again. The parable in a contemporary setting:

Two women dropped into Pilgrim church to pray. One was a Sunday School teacher who had come by to pick up her curriculum and the other a thirty year old woman addicted to cocaine who dealt drugs to support her habit. She just wanted to use the bathroom as she wandered by on her way from Diamond Middle School where she had just made a sale of Oxycontin to two eighth graders. But she noticed the sanctuary door was open and she stepped in.

It was a coincidence that both women came into that Lexington church at the same time. They couldn't help noticing one another and their eyes met briefly as they moved apart in the sanctuary.

The Sunday school teacher took a seat near the front and opened the pew Bible. She read it with concentration and then sat quietly and raised her eyes to the cross.

Her heart was filled with thanksgiving as she breathed this prayer, "O God, I am grateful that I have the inner resources to be a helper. I am glad that I can be of service to you-to be in church each Sunday, teach my class, and contribute financially to the needs of the church.
Thank you, God, for my strong faith which helps me deal with the difficult moral issues that surround me and my family every day. Amen."

The young woman stood at the back and leaned against one of the quilts on the wall. She slouched over and squeezed her big canvas handbag to her chest. Tears made dark splotches on the green fabric, her stringy hair fell over her face, and her whole body shook as she prayed, "O God, I'm sorry, I am so screwed up."

JESUS TESTS ACCEPTED NORMS
Can you imagine Jesus saying, "I tell you, this drug addict went to her home justified rather than the Sunday school teacher."? I have a hard time imagining that myself. I'm sure you've noticed before that Gospel doesn't always follow the rules of logic. The first will be last, the sorrowful will be happy, the humble exhaled.

I also find it hard to draw a moralistic lesson about humility from this story. It is just too much. Too profoundly contradictory to what seems to be normal human behavior. Too much an indictment of my own way of life-the self-satisfaction in being cast as a helper and role model, the public quality of ministry, the "specialness" of all this.

HUMILITY BEFORE GOD MORE IMPORTANT THAN GOOD WORKS?
Andrea and I have just preached a sermon series on "What's good about the church" and along comes Jesus with this story which seems to say, "Oh give it a rest!" All that piety? It's nothing. All those good works? To no effect in winning God's approval. Just bow your heads with total humility, recognize that you're a sinner, and cast yourself on the mercy of God.

I'm conscious of how this kind of message can be and has been distorted. It is often the powerful who insist that the weak should be humble. This is what we'll be talking about in our discussion of white privilege this afternoon.

But when Jesus preached humility, it wasn't to grind down those who were already defeated, but to challenge those who believed in their own righteousness, those who were convinced they had won salvation by their own good deeds. It was to the people who felt they were in control. To people like Benjamin Franklin who famously said, "If I ever achieved humility no doubt I would become very proud of it."

THE PHARISEE AND TAX COLLECTOR IN EACH OF US
But parables are imaginative stories that can open help us see in new ways. This isn't a literal tale about two guys at the temple. But two types. In fact, two types that can reside in each of us.

The story is told about a judge who was an active member of church. His church started a mission church in a rural area. It became their custom that once a year, around Christmas time, the whole congregation of this small mission church would come into the city and worship with the downtown church.

When it came time communion, the judge was seen kneeling next to a man from the mission church, a convicted robber that the judge sent him to prison. In prison the convict had become a Christian and started attending the mission church when he got out.

A friend of the judge commented, "Isn't it a miracle what God has done in that man's life."

The judge replied, "That may be so, but it's a greater miracle what God has done in my life."

His friend was puzzled. But the judge went on, "I was raised in a loving home. I never went without anything, I had the finest education that could be provided. I think it's a greater miracle that God could get through to me and show me that I stood in need of a savior as much as that robber." (Adapted from a story by William Barclay.)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMBLE?
Humility. In Jesus' parable we see his condemnation of the self congratulatory, the proud, the righteous. We see compassion for the depurate, the lost. And we see his call to humility.

What does it mean to be humble? If we were to try to attain the virtue of humility this week, how might we behave?

1. Listen without judging. Truly attempt to hear another person's point of view. Be open-minded and willing to learn.

2. Abandon suspicion. Ascribe good intentions to the people we encounter.

3. St. Paul says Christians should not consider themselves better than others. Assume you are on an even spiritual and moral footing with every person you encounter-the clerks and baggers in the supermarket, the kids at coffee hour, all the presidential candidates of every party.

4. Recognize that you are a small part of a large enterprise. Don't insist on getting credit. Be grateful when your team, your family, your business, your church achieves its goal.

5. Admit your mistakes. Apologize.

Offering that list appeals to me, the practical person. But it also slightly undermines the whole concept. Echoes of Ben Franklin. If I manage to practice humility with some success, will I be proud of myself? Lord have mercy.

WALK HUMBLY BEFORE YOUR GOD
Lord have mercy, indeed. The "Jesus prayer" made its way into popular culture in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zoey. It is an ancient medieval formula that reminds a petitioner constantly of his or her dependence on God. One prays it continually, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It's the prayer of the tax collector in the parable, the prayer of the monks in their cloisters, and the prayer of humble Christians who know that they are not perfect and who turn to God for strength. Marcus Borg says a better translation of the N.T. word for "mercy" is "compassion." Perhaps this is a better way to open our hearts and to cultivate the virtue of humility. Pray the prayer daily and expect that it will humble us and also make us know that we are loved.
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have compassion on me, a sinner."