Other Scripture used:
Ecclesiasticus 10:(7-11)12-18
Hebrews 13:1-8
Luke 14:1,7-14
Psalm 112
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
A Baptist was visiting Rome and decided to tour the Vatican while he was there. Standing outside St. Peter’s Basilica, he noticed a long line of people stretching from the courtyard into the church doors. So he asked on of them what the line was for.
A woman in line told him they were waiting to see a priest for the sacrament of reconciliation. The Baptist asked what that was, and the woman explained that they would kneel down in a small darkened booth, confess their sins to a priest who was behind a partition, and the priest would then grant them absolution from God, forgiving their sins.
It sounded interesting, so he got in line. Two-and-a-half hours later, he was finally at the front of the line. He entered the confessional, a short while later he came out smiling and said, “This is great! My sins are all wiped away! I’m as pure as the day I was born! Totally sin-free!”
Another priest nearby heard him and said, “Pride! Get back in line.”
Pride sneaks up on us. It leads to other sins, and tempts us to view it through other filters such as self-esteem or confidence. It’s really an insidious tapeworm of a vice. It works its way into our soul and sucks the goodness out of us.
The devotional, “Our Daily Bread,” describes pride as “… the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the one who has it.” (December 1986)
Mac Davis, an actor and songwriter, recorded a top-ten hit song in 1980 poking fun at pride. The lyrics of the chorus are:
Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble
when you’re perfect in every way,
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
’cause I get better looking each day
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man.
Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble,
but I’m doing the best that I can.
We all know someone that song describes, but few of us will admit to seeing ourselves in those lyrics.
We may not externalize it as drastically as Mac Davis did, but there’s a part of us that believes God owes us something for creating us; that we’re entitled to go to Heaven when we die; that he needs to listen to and accept our rationale for the things we’ve done during our lives. Otherwise, he’s a cruel and unfit God, and not worthy of our devotion anyway.
Think about most of the excuses for our behavior:
• God made me this way, so it can’t be a sin
• God gave me these desires, and he wants us to be happy
• God will understand
These statements are typical of the way we try to rationalize doing what we want to do instead of what God wants us to do.
We decide as individuals to behave a certain way, and then demand that God accept that behavior. We decide as churches or denominations to authorize behaving a certain way, and then “prayerfully” demand that God bless that decision.
One of the worst characteristics, or symptoms, of pride is that it feeds off others in order to fill its host. Pride builds us up only by tearing others down.
In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes, “If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride. It is because I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive — is competitive by its very nature — while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”
We don’t always think of our pride as requiring others to be worse off than us. How we view others is contingent on how we view ourselves. If we’re full of ourselves, there’s no room for anyone else, including God.
If we’re truly humble, seeing others do well gives us joy. Few of us have reached that point in our journey with the ultimate servant leader, Jesus Christ. We may convince ourselves that we’re already at that point, but most of us, including me, still need to empty ourselves a lot more to make room for God to transform us into true servants.
Walker Percy, in his book Lost in the Cosmos, describes a scenario that can help us be a little more introspective. Imagine you’re bringing your garbage can out one evening. You roll it down your driveway, out to the street and you see your neighbor, John.
You say hi, and he says hi.
Then he says there may be a little more traffic and more people parking on the street for the next few weeks because he’s going to be selling the house.
He says, “Jane and I are moving back east.”
You say something like, “It’s been good having you as neighbors. We’ll miss you.”
Then John says, “Yeah, we won the lottery last week — $64 million. So we figured we get a bigger house back east.”
You notice your jaw getting a little tighter as you say, “That’s great news, John. Congratulations.”
He says, “That money will really come in handy.”
You say something like, “I bet it will,” and start walking back to your house. You notice that your teeth are now clenched.
Then your neighbor calls your name again and says, “A few weeks ago, we noticed some moles on Jane’s arm and had the doctor run some tests. They came back positive for cancer. Would you keep us in your prayers?”
You say, “Yes, of course I will. I’m sorry to hear about that.”
John thanks you and walks back into his house. As you start walking toward your house, you realize that you now feel a little better.
That’s our pride. It gives us misery in other people’s joy, and joy in their misery. Even our prayers may display our pride.
In Chapter 18 of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells this story (v 10-18):
“Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don’t cheat, I don’t sin, and I don’t commit adultery. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Whenever I see that Gospel passage, I’m reminded of the Sunday School teacher who told that story and then said, “Now children, let’s bow our heads and thank God that we’re not like that Pharisee.”
Throughout the Bible, God warns us against pride.
Around 583 B.C., during the destruction of Jerusalem and the first Jewish temple at the hands of the Babylonians, the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah warned of the destruction of Tyre, Edom, Assyria, and other places because of their prideful joy at Judah’s destruction.
Proverbs 11:2 says, “Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.”
Proverbs 29:23 says, “Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor.”
The Prophet Isaiah tells us in 2:17 that “Human pride will be humbled, and human arrogance will be brought down. Only the LORD will be exalted on that day of judgment.”
The Prophet Ezekiel in 33:28 tells of God’s reaction to Israel’s pride, saying “[The Lord] will completely destroy the land and demolish her pride. Her arrogant power will come to an end.”
Through the Prophet Zechariah, God says (9:6), “Foreigners will occupy the city of Ashdod.I will destroy the pride of the Philistines.” And also (10:11), “… The pride of Assyria will be crushed, and the rule of Egypt will end.”
The Apostle Paul describes us in his second letter to Timothy (2 Tim 3:4): “They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.”
And the Apostle John says in his first letter (1 John 2:16), “For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.”
The Bible is very consistent regarding God’s view of pride. We know that God does not like it. But we don’t deliberately set out to tick off God, so how does pride start?
It starts small, almost insignificantly, and then snowballs into an avalanche. Our first lesson today tells us in verse 12 that “The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.”
We stop looking to God for guidance.
We start to believe we can do things on our own, and even convince ourselves that God’s wants us to do that — even though he tells us continuously in the Bible that we can do nothing without him.
We think that God wants us to try something on our own first, and then come to him in prayer for help only after we’ve worked at it and can’t figure it out. We hear the saying, “God helps those who help themselves” and think it’s true. Many people even believe it’s in the Bible. It’s not. It actually comes from Greek mythology.
A man is pushing his cart along a dirt road and it gets stuck in the mud. He sits down on the ground next to the cart and asks the gods to free his cart. Hercules appears say, “Get up, man, and put your shoulder to the wheel. The gods help them that help themselves.”
This focus on doing things ourselves without asking for God’s help leads us to believe we actually did them without God’s help, which in turn grows to our believing we don’t need God’s help.
And if we believe don’t need God’s help, we can easily believe that we don’t need him or his rules. We start doing our will instead of God’s, and the more we do it the more prideful we become. Our pride causes us to focus on our will which in turn makes us even more proud of ourselves. It’s like a self-licking ice-cream cone.
So we’ve identified the symptoms and the cause of pride, but where do we find the cure?
Well, we look in the same place: The Bible. God’s Word to us. Our Psalm today (112) tells us in verse 1, “Hallelujah! Happy are they who fear the Lord and have great delight in his commandments!”
Proverbs (9:10) tells us that “fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom.”
This doesn’t mean we should be scared of God. Our Father in heaven loves us dearly. Fear in the biblical context means reverence. Deference, admiration, and respect are all synonyms for reverence.
Often, we show more of those qualities toward our earthly bosses out of fear of losing our jobs, but we consider it too humbling to act that way toward the creator of the universe.
Recognizing that God is in charge, and that his commandments guide us toward righteousness and eternal joy with him, is our first step in following Jesus.
Until we accept that we’re not in charge, we can never be content with letting Jesus lead us. We can’t follow from the front.
The author of Hebrews tells us stop focusing on the distractions of this world, so we can be content with Christ. We should look at those who lived as Jesus lived and did what Jesus did as examples and role models. All the faithful followers of Jesus Christ in the New Testament were humble. That doesn’t mean they were all poor. They were humble. They let God, not themselves, be the focus of their lives.
They didn’t look for praise or celebrity status. Their aim was to someday hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
For many years, I’ve worked in public affairs for the military, including at least a dozen admirals. At any luncheon or dinner for them, part of the painstaking process that their protocol officer has to endure is arranging the place cards.
What should be a simple task becomes convoluted because each guest is assigned a seat that is a certain distance from the admiral based on his or her rank or importance. Should the chief of staff for the Norwegian Navy be seated closer or further away than the German Defense Minister? People really get bent out of shape over that stuff, and often they’ll have a staff member try to switch their place card to get a more important position.
So our Gospel today, rings just as true 20 centuries later. We still let our pride get in the way, as we try to show others how important we are. Pride is replaced by humility, and humility is far less painful when self imposed.
We develop humility by serving God through serving others. Jesus gave us the example of true servant leadership at his Passover Supper when he washed his disciples’ feet. Taking the lowest place at the banquet means not being above anyone else.
We can bring people to Christ only through humility. The humble carpenter who died on a cross for our sins reaches our hearts through the hands of his servants, like Mother Teresa, who dedicated her life to loving the hopeless in Calcutta, India. In showing Christ’s love, she brought them hope. People would crawl for miles just to die in front of her. Yet she was the most humble woman of our time.
Francis of Assisi dedicated his life to helping the poor, giving up all his wealth to live that example of Christlike devotion to others.
God doesn’t call us all to poverty, but he does call us all to help others who are in need. Our labor for others keeps us humble and is a way to worship God.
The Hebrew word, Avodah, appears often in the Bible, and has two distinct, yet intertwined meanings: Worship and work. Our labor for the Lord is a form of worship, and the Hebrew word, avodah, reinforces that biblical truism.
How fitting that on this Labor Day weekend, we should encounter the Gospel message that service to others is worship of the Lord. That by humbling ourselves, by letting go of our own false pride, God will fill us with joy and exalt us.
A friend of mine in seminary used to joke that of all his spiritual gifts, his humility is the one he’s most proud of.
Humility is a fundamental gift, but it’s elusive. If you know you have it, you’ve lost it.
Amen.
