HUMILITY

Joel 2:23-32, Luke 18:9-14

October 28, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

One of my favorite movies with a religious theme is the film Dogma. For those of you who have not seen it, I need to warn you before you run out to rent it that the language in this film is pretty salty and there are some quite violent moments as well. The story is of two fallen angels, Bartleby and Loki (played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon). They are trying to go through a theological loophole to get back into heaven. On their journey to a Catholic church in New Jersey that is being re-consecrated, they weave a substantial path of damage and death. At the end of their journey, after he has killed even his companion, Loki, Bartleby comes face to face with God (played by the singer, Alanis Morrissette, who remains silent in this role). When Bartleby sees her, you can see on his face that he suddenly is clear not only on the fact that God is God and is so far above loopholes, but also Bartleby’s eyes tell us that he sees clearly all the terrible things he has done and feels the pain of them to the depths of his being. This bold, tough guy begins to weep, falls into her arms, and says simply, in a strained voice, “I’m sorry.”

It is Bartleby’s face I see when I read this story of the tax collector in prayer. I wonder what might have brought him to the Temple that day? Did his wife threaten to leave him? Did one of his children fall ill? Did he lose his job? Or had he just gotten so sick of the moral compromises he had to make day to day to do the work of collaborating with the occupying Roman government?

Whatever the reason, in this moment of prayer, he looked deeply into his life, seeing it as clearly as God did, and knew he was lost. He was drowning, and the only solid ground he knew was God, the God of mercy he had read about since he was a child. In a moment of pure honesty, he reached out for that ground, and Jesus said, he found it. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, Jesus said elsewhere, so I imagine a person like this would have left the Temple freed from the burden of shame and guilt and all the hard work it took to pretend everything in his life was just great, thank you. He looked clearly at his life and he knew who he was. He was afraid God would turn away; just when he most yearned for that deep embrace, he felt unworthy of it. But the embrace of God waited for him, which is what it means to leave prayer “justified,” another way of saying “reconciled with God.” It was the tax collector’s willingness to be humble that made that reconciliation possible.

We use the word “humility” in so many different ways. A “humble abode” usually means a poor, simple house. Sometimes we talk about people being humble as though it is a synonym for weak or passive. But that Latin root of the word is humus, the ground. Not dirt, as in people being described as “dirt.” But earth, ground, so that being humble is being grounded, and, for a Christian, it means grounded in God, in truth, in trust, in mercy.

I would so much rather come to God like that Pharisee did. He was a good man, as were most Pharisees. He read the Bible and studied it often; he understood that living a godly life happened not just at worship but every single day; he gave 10% of his income to the work of the Temple! Like him, I’d like to come to God saying, “See all the good things I did this week? Look at my Resume and see how productive I have been in my life so far. I haven’t done all those awful things that so many people have done. Aren’t you proud of me?” But God meets me with a magic mirror. Instead of showing me as the “fairest one of all,” the mirror shows me that I am both broken and responsible for brokenness in the world, both close at hand and far away. If I choose to look in the mirror, there is the possibility that the truth will set me free, and that, with God’s help, I can work for wholeness when I get off my knees. If I choose not to look, I may go away without tears, but I will remain deluded, and separated from God.

God does not call us to humility in order to beat us up. Please hear that. One of the most damaging acts of the churches throughout the centuries has been to portray God as this great judge just waiting to catch us in some sinful act and rain down on us punishments of all kinds. So many people believe this, which is why I still sometimes hear people say after a family tragedy or a difficult medical diagnosis, “What did I do to deserve this?” That’s the same kind of theology that led the late Jerry Falwell to say that the destruction of 9/11 was God’s punishment for our nation’s immorality. Who could ever love a God like that? It would be like living with an abusive father or mother who thought he or she could beat the badness out of their child.

No, the call to humility, to honesty about ourselves, is not a call to fear or to paralyzing shame or to any of the ways of self-destruction, from anorexia to cutting to suicide. The call to humility is an invitation to become grounded and whole and to receive the mercy and love God wants to offer. If we are convinced, as was this very good Pharisee in Jesus’ story, that we are self-sufficient in our goodness, then we don’t think we need the mercy and love of God. If we don’t make mistakes, we don’t need forgiveness. One translation I found of the beatitude that usually reads “Blessed are the meek,” reads instead like this, “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” If we are convinced that we are, in ourselves, a blessing to the world, then we do not need blessing, or, perhaps even God, or rather, we think we don’t. In the end, my friends, it is blessing God longs to give, not punishment. Jesus said that God does not “rejoice in the death of sinners, but that the sinners turn from their ways and live.”

Today we join with many churches around the world to celebrate Reformation Day. It used to be a day when many Protestants would say, “I thank God I am not like Roman Catholics.” Martin Luther, the great reformer we celebrate this day, would roll over in his grave. The last thing he is reported to have said before he died was, “We are all beggars; this is true.” The great, triumphant hymn we sing for Reformation Day is Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” In the grandeur and victory of the words of this hymn and the fabulous music that accompanies it, we might forget who the subject of this hymn is. “Did we in our own strength confide,” Luther wrote, “our striving would be losing.” But the promise is that “The Spirit and the gifts are ours,” through Christ, who is on our side.

We are all beggars; this is true. Just like that tax collector. But when we look down deep into that mirror and see what we don’t want to admit even to ourselves, we will find the hand of God tipping our chin up, up, to see the immensity of the riches of the mercy and love of God. The movie Dogma ends with a song by Alanis Morrissette, still in her God persona. The song is called “Still,” which includes these words:

I see you averting your glances

I see you cheering on the war

I see you ignoring your children

And I love you still

I see you altering history

I see you abusing the land

I see you and your selective amnesia

And I love you still

I see you holding your grudges

I see you gunning them down

I see you silencing your sisters

And I love you still

I see you lie to your country

I see you forcing them out

I see you blaming each other

And I love you still

And I love you still.

Amen.