Preacher: Rev. Bob Hiller
Series: BELIEVE
Category: Humility
Keywords: humility , love neighbor , pride
Detail:
Well, it has finally arrived. Today we finish our Believe series! I pray this has been a fruitful and valuable series for you. Today we are finishing up with the last fruit of the spirit: humility. Now, this is a rather tricky virtue to talk about. One of the things that they teach you in seminary is that, in order to make our sermons more relatable, we should use personal illustrations from our lives that you could identify with. So, I’ve been running through my life and thinking of all these ways in which I demonstrate being humble. Turns out, I’m the most humble guy I know! When I was on my vicarage, my supervisor told the seminary that I scored very high in the category of “humility”…and I was all, You know, he’s right! I am pretty humble. So, I don’t like to brag about that, but, I am proud of my humility.
O, good heavens, I hope you know I’m joking here. Humility is a hard virtue to catch. I think it was CS Lewis who once said that humility is impossible to recognize inside of yourself because once you think you’ve got it figured out, you become proud, which is the opposite of humble. What is strange is how much the virtue of humility has gone by the wayside in our culture. Pride is disguised as confidence and humility is considered weakness, when, it should be that humility is the key virtue and pride is viewed as the chief sin. After all, it is the desire to be like God that drove Eve and Adam to eat the fruit. It is pride that prevents us from loving our neighbor and instead drives us to use them for our own ends.
In fact, we are taught to pursue greatness at all costs. We are told our job in this world is to make an impact, make a name for yourself, make your mark on the world. If the world doesn’t remember you, if you don’t achieve a certain level of fame and influence, your life was wasted. And though I’m not entirely opposed to the idea that we should be working to make the world a better place, this is something that is to be pursued for the sake of the world, better said, for the sake of my neighbor and to the glory of God! Not to make a name for myself. That is the sin of pride.
Christianity, on the other hand, does not exalt in human pride. We confess it as a sin when we say, “I have lived as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most” or “I have not loved my neighbor as myself.” Paul say, Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but to the interests of others. Again, CS Lewis says that pride is not just a matter of looking to live a good life, but it is looking to live a better life than your neighbor. He says its like the dude who is jealous that his rival is getting married to a beautiful woman. The dude seeks to woo the woman away, not because he loves her, but because he wants to be greater than his rival.
And, if we are honest with ourselves and God we must confess that much of how we live is driven by such pride, by seeking to prove ourselves to the world, to justify our existence as one greater than Joneses. We don’t want to keep up with them, we want to be better than them!
Such pride has no place in Christ’s church. It is certainly not found in the heart or work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. There is perhaps no more shocking, and wonderful, picture of this than in our reading today. Here we find Jesus on the night of the Last Supper, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God rose from the table, got down on his hands and knees, and began to wash the disciple’s feet. Now, you have to understand something, Jesus, knowing full well that He is God over all creation and that the Father had given Him authority and power over all things, exercises that power by wiping mud and cow presents off of the feet of the apostles. He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but took on the very nature of a servant.
You see, shockingly, this is the God we worship. We always think of coming to church and worshipping as things we are offering up to God. But, such a view is completely backwards. I am here to give my best to God. We are like Peter. Lord, you wash my feet?...You shall never wash my feet! We want to understand God like every other earthly power where we offer up our service because we, in our pride, want to receive accolades and praise. But, that is not how God relates to us at all. In worship, when we come here, the main thing happening is God coming down, humbly tying the towel around his waist, and washing away our filthy sins. The main thing in our worship, the main thing in our relationship to God, is that it is one where God graciously, and humbly condescends to serve us. He is in the word forgiving you, He is serving you the meal of His body and blood for your forgiveness. He serves us. And we just won’t have it because His moves here graciously destroy any room for pride or boasting we might have. His grace is not a reward for you showing, up. It is Him, silencing the pride of you and me and Peter who want to get in the way of His work, forgiving our sins, and setting us free.
See, our God is best known, not in His power and majesty, but as a nursing baby who is laid in a manger, as poor, traveling preacher with no place to lay His head, as a naked, shamed sacrifice on a cross for the sins of the world. Even in His resurrection glory, He is best known as a God who doesn’t exalt the proud and mighty to gain an advantage, but who loves the weakest and lowest of sinners. Sinners, like you and me!
This humility of love gives shape to the way you and I then live out our faith. We begin to resemble the One we worship. The Spirit begins to conform us to the image of Christ. And Jesus, who is Lord and God over all, doesn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, like Adam and Eve did. Instead He says, If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you and example, that you also should do just as I have done for you. Now, we hear this as good, Americans full of aspiration who want to make a name for ourselves, and think, “Ah! Now, how can I serve in the lowest place? How can I become like Mother Teresa? How can I start a foot washing program that will change the world.” And you see how we treat Christ’s command to love and serve with entrepenuer pride?
But, Jesus isn’t calling us to go out and begin a massive foot washing movement. His servanthood gives shape to you where you live in your calling. Jesus hasn’t called you to become great! He’s called you to love your neighbor with the gifts you have been given where you are. So, the Christian life doesn’t necessarily aspire to change the world, but to change the babies diapers, to change your depressed spouse’s day into something joyful surprising them with a date, to change your stressed out co-workers day by buying them lunch. You don’t look to make yourself greater than others. You look to make others great, full of joy.
Christ, the greatest in the Kingdom of God, is found serving us in the humility of the cross. He comes to you today, not in an expensive feast, but in a mostly stale wafer and a sip of wine. He comes to your neighbor through your hands to serve them with no concern for your reward. Why worry about that? You have all you need in Jesus who loves you and gave Himself for you and to you to serve. You are blessed as you do these things, because you do them as one loved and served by Christ himself. AMEN!
