When our first son was two or three years old, we had
a small basketball hoop, about three feet high, and a ball to match. He would
walk up to the hoop and try to put the ball through it. When he succeeded, we
exulted, “Well done!” When he missed, we made sure that he wouldn’t feel upset
by saying excitedly, “Almost!” Pretty soon, he was trying to miss to get the
“almost”, and we had to start over, praising only success.
That little vignette sticks in my memory as an
example of our society’s pre-occupation with self-image. We praise our children
so that they will know they are unique and special. We want them to feel good
about themselves. A good self-image is worthwhile (although, as psychologist
Jean Twenge observes, the best self-image is based on self-discipline, not on praise
for not succeeding at a task), but it can lead to a basic problem in our
society. Canada and the United States have many people who think that they are
each one special, almost beyond belief.
[I have overstated the case. Praise
is good – what counsellors call “unconditional positive regard”. I’m talking
about the obsession we have with making everyone the best at everything.]
I could have started with a different memory, of going
to college and discovering that most people were not interested in my Climenhaga
family pedigree. They took me down a notch when I would start to talk about my
Dad, or my Uncle, or my grandparents or great-grandparents. The flip side of
our cultural pride is the sense that the boaster needs to be taken down a
notch. Like a friend of mine whose mother would tell other people when she was
proud of the sermon he preached, but would never tell him, lest it lead to his
own pride.
You would think, then, that our aversion to people
boasting about themselves (“don’t toot your own horn!”) means that we are a
humble people, but the truth is that we are proud – a proud, proud world.
That’s one reason we don’t like other people’s boasting; it detracts from our
own sense of self-importance.
What do the Scriptures that we heard this morning say
to us, in the context of a world in which each of us elevates himself-herself?
What does God call us to be in a proud, proud world?
1 Samuel 2:1-10
You remember Hannah’s story. She was barren and
pleaded with God for a child. Hannah sings her song of celebration and praise
when God answers her prayer and gives her a son. She names him Samuel – God
heard me, and she sings about how God exalts the humble and brings down the
proud. This song serves as the model for Mary’s song of celebration in Luke 1,
when she sings of her joy as the birth of the Messiah, God’s Chosen One, draws
near. This theme – that God exalts the humble and brings down the proud – is
basic to the gospel that the Messiah brings to the people of Israel.
Go through the passage with me.
- The Lord delivers me and gives me joy.
- God is unique and strong and holy.
- Our pride turns to nothing in God’s presence.
- The warriors’ weapons are broken, and the fallen are exalted. (Note that the passive tense indicates God’s action, not our own.)
- Everything is reversed – the poor are rich and the rich poor; the barren (like Hannah) have children and those with many children now have none.
- The Lord gives life and death.
- The Lord makes the poor rule the world.
- The world belongs to God.
- We prevail by God’s strength; our own strength is worth nothing.
This point is so obvious that we wonder why I would
even bother repeating it, but I say it because we do actually take the credit
for our good fortune all the time. When someone thanks me for a good sermon, I
don’t say, “Actually I didn’t do anything.” I say, “Thank you”, and I remember
the time and effort I put into it. But in fact, any good thing that happens here
this morning comes from God.
So, we turn to Hebrews 10:11-25
Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish-background believers,
who were beginning to doubt their embrace of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. The
writer quotes the prophet Jeremiah, from Jeremiah 31: God has written his law
on human hearts, so that we can live according to the hope God has placed in
us.
This quotation is given within the description of how
the OT Law worked, with priests making sacrifices in the Temple. A basic theme
throughout the letter is that Jesus, and his new covenant, are superior to the
old covenant represented by the sacrifices described in the Law. Whether the
priests knew it or not, they were pointing the way to God’s Law written on the
human heart so that each one of us can know the presence and power of the Holy
Spirit. This active Spirit in our lives helps us to live well, and to encourage
each other to live well. This new covenant is at the centre of our worship this
morning.
We put these two passages together: Just as Hannah
celebrates God’s great work of exalting the person at the bottom – namely,
herself, so the writer to the Hebrews lets us know that God has lifted all of
us up and made us God’s children. We can rejoice and celebrate with Hannah as
we acknowledge God’s work in our lives.
Mark 13:1-8
In the gospel reading, the disciples are admiring the
majesty of the Temple that Herod had built. Jesus responds by prophesying the
destruction of the Temple and the end of all things. When they had a chance,
Peter, James, John, and Andrew (who seem to have been a sort of inner circle)
ask when the End would come. Jesus replies that we are called to live God’s way
in the present, knowing that the End is not far away. The climax of the passage
comes in verse 11 – that Christians are to be ready to respond to any accusation
against them with the words that the Holy Spirit will give them.
Synthesis
The basic idea that comes through these passages is
clear enough: The message that the Holy Spirit gives us is the message of God’s
love demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus, which results in
God’s Law written on our hearts. God’s law is now written within us – God’s
command to love and to live according to God’s love, which lifts up those who
are hurting and gives to them joy.
Why do I call this “living humbly”? Is not this the
way most Canadians want to live, whether they believe in God or not? Don’t most
people want to be caring and considerate of other people. We see ourselves as
polite and considerate to a fault. Consider the movie, “Canadian Bacon”, which
portrays three Americans on a mission, running through a crowd of Canadians
gathered around the CN tower in Toronto. They bump into many people in their
rush, knocking them flying in different directions. As they do so, you hear the
repeated word, “Sorry!” Not of course from those brash Americans, but from all
the polite Canadians who just got pushed over.
So, am I simply reminding us to be good Canadians? I
don’t think so. I was at the Human Rights Museum this past Wednesday evening to
see the Mandela exhibit. We also walked through the levels above the ground
floor – all six of them. Near the top, there is a video playing of PierreTrudeau responding to the separatists in Quebec. You remember the events in
October 1970. Two members of the FLQ kidnapped the deputy premier of Quebec (Pierre
Laporte) and a British diplomat (James Cross). They ended up killing Laporte
and negotiating Cross’s release.
Pierre Trudeau responded by implementing the War
Power Act, suspending some civil liberties in the process of rooting out the
violent revolutionaries within the FLQ. According to Wikipedia (quoting a 1970
Gallup Poll) 89% of English-speaking Canada and 86% of French-speaking Canada
supported Trudeau’s action at the time.
Does this make us proud? No. My point is simpler than
that. When people run into us, we fight back – whatever the movie “Canadian Bacon” suggests. In this respect we are actually like the Americans, and the
British, and the French, and the Chinese, and Japanese, and the various
countries of Africa, and Arabs, and any other group of people you wish to name.
Human beings are proud in precisely this sense: What we think is good always
starts with what benefits or hurts us. We are self-centred, as individuals and
as a nation.
This is not an entirely bad thing. A proper sense of
pride is necessary for healthy individuals, for healthy groups, and for healthy
nations. My father used to quote the lines from Sir Walter Scott, “Breathes
there the man with soul so dead,/ who never to himself hath said,/ This is my
home, my native land!” Having lived in four different countries, I take pride
in each of my homes, and I value the good that is in my home here in Canada.
Although such pride is not necessarily bad, it is in
tension with the humility God calls us to. In 1 Samuel, Hannah reminds us that
God gives us all that we have, and that we rely on God for all that we are and
do. The reading from Hebrews reminds us that we depend on God for our knowledge
of how to live, and that we depend on each other for the encouragement to live
that way. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit within us speaks
and acts through us.
What does Humility look like?
So, what does this kind of humility look like in
practice? I referred earlier to my friend whose mother didn’t want to
compliment him directly lest he become too “full of himself”. He found out what
she really thought when another friend of his told him that his mother really
liked the sermon he preached in our church. Isn’t this what humility looks
like? Well … no.
Remember, pride is not thinking you’re good at
something. I like to play chess. I am a reasonably good player, what they call
a “good club player”. I could go down to the chess club and enjoy playing in
their weekly gatherings. (I see from the Web that the Rudolf Rocker Chess Club
meets in the Winnipeg Millennium Library on the first Saturday of the month
from noon to 4 pm, with casual meetings at the same time and place on other
Saturdays of the month.) Chess discourages people from overstating their
ability. You win or lose pretty much by what you do over the board. Paul’s
words apply: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather
think of yourself with sober judgment.”
If you are good at something, proper self-awareness
acknowledges that. If you are bad at something, proper self-awareness says that
too. So, pride is not saying that you’re good at something. Pride isn’t even
saying you’re good at something when you’re really not. That’s just lack of
self-awareness, and most of us have blind spots about our own abilities. Pride
is something else again.
Pride is a focus on oneself to the exclusion of
others. Another word for pride is “egocentrism”, or more simply “egotism”. In a
baby, this self-centeredness is natural and good. In an adult,
self-centeredness can become destructive and bad. At its worst, we say that the
proud person is a narcissist, unable to see what is good for the larger group
and aware only of what he/she experiences at the centre of their consciousness.
Humility, in turn, is a focus on others. We focus on
ourselves appropriately – as Jesus put it, we love each other the way that we
love ourselves, but we do not focus on ourselves to the exclusion of others. We
see, as Nelson Mandela (and many others) put it, that my freedom and the other
person’s freedom are bound up together. What is good for you is also, in the
long run, good for me. Our world says, “Look out for number one.” God says,
“Look out for each other.”
Concluding Thoughts
This is a lot harder than it sounds. We can agree
without difficulty to look out for each other, but when it comes to daily life,
we find that self-interest and others-interest run up against each other. The
solution is not to give up, but to refocus on the people around us. It takes
practice. You notice the needs of a neighbour and try to help. You realise that
our personal habits in Canada may hurt people in another part of the world, and
we try to find alternatives.
Embracing humility turns out to be a kind of
spiritual self-discipline. Our automatic reaction in every situation is to
think of how it affects us – and may hurt us. In place of this automatic
reaction, we learn step by baby step to think of how the situation affects the
people around us. As the learned response becomes habitual, we become what I
have been describing as “humble” – focussed on each other, on other people’s
needs in general.
We can see this point through two illustrations: one
is a preacher’s story, and the other is a quote from C.S. Lewis. The preacher’s
story. A man had a dream in which he found himself in a hallway with two doors,
one labelled Hell and the other labelled Heaven. An angel standing there asked,
“Would you like to see what’s behind the doors?” “Sure”, he replied. The angel
opened the door to Hell, and he saw a group of people sitting around a table
piled high with wonderful food and drink, a rich banquet of delight for anyone
who would eat. Each person was confined to his/her chair, with a long spoon
chained to their wrist – too long to eat with. They were trapped in an eternity
of delight that they could never savour. The angel took him to the second door
and opened it. A similar scene met his sight – the wonderful banquet, the
restriction of the spoon too long to feed themselves with, but here each person
was feeding someone else. An eternity of joy and delight in serving each other.
C.S. Lewis describes it this way in Mere Christianity:
Do not imagine that if you meet
a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will
not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of
course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a
cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If
you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who
seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will
not be thinking about himself at all.
The “really humble man” is not thinking about
himself, because he is really interested in you. The truly humble woman is not
thinking about herself, because she is thinking about and listening to God. How
do we live humbly in a proud, proud world? We give ourselves to God, and we
take fare of each other. Simple really, and harder than it sounds.
Grace Bible Church
18 November 2018
Texts
1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-25
Mark 13:1-8
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