The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 2, 2007

Proper 17 C

The Rev'd Lloyd Prator

New York City

Today, both the gospel and the first reading, from Ecclesiasticus, speak to us about humility and the problem of pride. Ecclesiasticus is one of the books of the Apocrypha, which we do not often read. The book is also called “The Preacher” since the writer is presumed to have been a skilled homilist. Pride, according to the preacher, is not the purpose for which God created us. Pride, the preacher goes on, is at the root of all human sin. Which seems right to me. A sense of putting self first, a sense that one is better than others, seems to be at the heart of most of our problems.

In the gospel, Jesus takes up the same theme. He tells of a banquet and how the guests sought the best places for themselves. And how, when guests of greater distinction arrived, they were forced with very red faces to take the less desirable seats in the dining room. So, the readings today seem to call us away from pride and toward a posture of humility toward God and our brothers and sisters.

It is easy to misunderstand the virtue of humility. It often does not seem a very good idea. Who wants to be—or to be around —Uriah Heep characters, full of inauthentic, tiresome modesty, eager to put themselves down, perhaps neurotically afflicted with negative self image. At least in its less attractive aspects, most people suffer from too much humility, or at least, too much phony humility. How do we reconstruct or rehabilitate that virtue we know as humility.

It is going to take some effort to rehabilitate the virtue of humility. In the OT, humility generally refers to poverty, affliction, and a general sense of being one down on the world. But in the NT, that word is used differently. Notice in the gospel, Jesus does not assume that the people invited to the dinner had anything wrong with them. They dimply did not know their place—precisely. So, humility begins to mean something like knowing honesty who we are and where we stand in the order of creation. Chiefly, it means understanding that we are not God, we are creatures, not the creator, we are good, but not perfect, we are in the image of God but that image is not yet perfected. It is an image—but not an exact likeness. Humility does not mean putting ourselves down, it means understanding who we are.

Humility also means that we do not automatically grasp the best for ourselves. We gain our authority or our prestige by something other than our own claims. Look at the last character in today's gospel. When he was told to move up to a better seat, Jesus does not have him say “Aw shucks, Lord, I really don't deserve it.” He stepped up and took the place. He allowed others to see and proclaim his worth, he did not grasp for acclaim on his own.

The writer Thomas Hardy, I am told, became so famous and esteemed throughout England that virtually any publisher would gladly publish anything he wrote. Yet the story goes that even after is skill assured his fame, he continued to send, along with every work he sent to a publisher, a self addressed stamped envelope in case the work was not wanted. Genuine humility is not self denial, but allowing ones good qualities to be proclaimed by other.

The humble person is also a person of the earth. An odd thing to say, maybe not even very helpful, since so many of us feel like dirty anyway, but the words for humility in English and in Greek are both related to the words for soil. So, maybe a humble person might be an earthy person? Perhaps. Maybe in a couple of ways.

The earth is what we walk upon, what supports us. Maybe the humble person is not one who can be walked upon, but may be one who supports, who gives assistance in helping another to stand, one who provides a foundation. Maybe the humble person might be seen as the one who is earth for another when the world seems shaken and security seems to be only shifting sands and unstable ground.

The earth, too, is where seeds sprout. The humble person might the one who helps another to be creative, to achieve new life, or to nurture growth. Christians are called, I think, to be intellectual companions for one another and in that way; we are good soil for the ideas of another. Response, reactions, disagreements, dialogue, all these are ways in which we are, for one another, the good earth.

So, today, we have humility. Not self-abasement, but honest assessment of who we are. It is allowing others to be the ones who praise us. It is honestly accepting that praise, but not always putting self forward. The humble and health person is one who is of the earth, one who is willing to be the support of another, one who engages another persons ideas that they may take root, grow, and come to fruition.

The humble person is in the long run the strong person. Maybe not strong in the worlds terms of money and power and media acclaim, but strong in the self of self, strong in integrity, and most of all, strong in the connection with Christ who is not only savior and redeemer, but also example, companion, and friend. And today, he calls every one of us to a very special table, saying to each one, “Do come up higher.”