Humble (and Proud of It!)
Commentary
Frank Fowler tells this amazing story: during World War II, fifteen hundred international noncombatant prisoners of war were held by the Japanese in a prison camp. Three hundred were Americans, 1,200 were of other Allied nationalities. The American Red Cross sent 2,100 “care packages” to the camp, each with some necessities and some conveniences.
The Japanese decided that since these came from America, each American should get three packages, and all of the non-Americans would get one package apiece. But the Americans protested; as a group they demanded that they each get seven Red Cross packages, and their non-American allies get none!
Self-centeredness dies slowly in the human heart. We are born frail and helpless, but spend our years asserting our importance. When the French philosopher Auguste Comte was about to die, he murmured to those at his bedside, “What an irreparable loss!” Similarly, as Nero, the mad emperor of Rome, prepared to commit suicide, he wept for himself, crying, “How great an artist dies here!” And the German philosopher Hegel took this parting shot: “Only one man ever understood me. . . And he didn’t understand me!”
Humility is part of the Christian gospel. We are not the best. We cannot make it on our own. We have no boast in ourselves. Sometimes that can engender a bit of bitterness toward those around us who seem rather self-accomplished and self-fulfilled. Asaph spoke that way in Psalm 73. “I decided at one point to stop training my children in the ways of the Lord,” might be a paraphrase of what he says in verse 15, “since godliness kept them from enjoying life!” And David seemed to feel the same way when he wrote in Psalm 10: “Why do you let others get away with so much, God?”
Simon Darcourt expressed similar sentiments in Robertson Davies’s novel The Lyre of Orpheus. Darcourt was a priest by training and vocation, working now as a university professor. He knew he should be more devout, humble and loving, but there was too much to enjoy in the world around him. He even pulled off an art theft at one point and muses about what it might do to the eternal destiny of his soul. Finally, he decided that his sins and deceit would not matter: “A deathbed repentance would probably square things with God. Meanwhile, this was life.”
Humility is at the heart of each of our passage for today. Moses, for all of his gifts and leadership strength, was viewed by others as the humblest of all men. Paul extols the virtue of humility as evidence of God’s Spirit at work in our lives. And Jesus declares that the greatest accomplishment for anyone, including himself, is the humility of sacrificial love.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Are you proud?
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a little poem about pride:
When I am grown to man’s estate
I shall be very proud and great,
And tell the other girls and boys
Not to meddle with my toys! (A Child’s Garden of Verses)
We probably all feel that way sometimes, especially when someone bigger or haughtier than us walks all over our toys or our self-esteem. And even though we feel like little people many times, we are much too proud to stay that way.
The opening sentences of Bonamy Dobree’s famous biography of John Wesley capture his struggle with pride: “It is difficult to be humble. Even if you aim at humility, there is no guarantee that when you have attained the state you will not be proud of the feat.” Isn’t that the truth?
Pride is so subtle. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogenes came to Plato’s house one day. He already felt that Plato was not as good a teacher as he, and now he had the proof. On the floor of Plato’s house were several ornate carpets, obviously very exquisite and costly. To show his contempt for such a waste of money, Diogenes walked all over them and then wiped his feet in a show of contempt. “Thus do I trample upon the pride of Plato!” he said.
Plato observed quietly: “With even greater pride, it seems.”
“The proud hate pride — in others!” said Benjamin Franklin. And somehow our pointing fingers must turn round to our own hearts.
C. S. Lewis observed that “unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that are mere flea bites in comparison with pride.”
So how do we come to the humility of Moses as highlighted in his obituary passage? And how can we be sure that we are not proud of our humility when we get there?
Perhaps it demands, first of all, that we take our eyes off ourselves. The truest way to be humble, as Phillips Brooks said, “is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”
Many people in Moses’ day were worse than he, morally, socially, and spiritually. But setting himself up against them would do nothing to challenge the evil in his own heart, nor put him on the road to a higher quality of life. Only a vision of God’s glory can do that. And that is the strength of Moses’ humility.
The only way to defeat pride is to make it irrelevant. Once, when conductor Arturo Toscanini was preparing an orchestra and chorus for a performance, he was forced to work with a rather temperamental soprano soloist. His every suggestion was turned aside by her haughty opinions. At one point she loudly proclaimed: “I am the star of this performance!”
Toscanini looked at her with quiet pity. “Madam,” he said, “in this performance there are no stars. There is only the music.”
And in that moment her pride became irrelevant. It was swallowed up in the larger glory of the soaring melodies and complex harmonies. Personal arrogance was like a third left shoe. Who needs it?
So too with Moses. So too with us. As Isaac Watts put it in his well-known hymn:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Boasting can be an invigorating sport. Two young lads found a stray puppy one day. Both wanted to take it home. They finally decided to hold a contest of skill in order to decide the winner of this prize. They would each tell a story. The teller of the most fantastic, the most unbelievable, the most exaggerated story would earn the furry friend.
The stories were good. The boys’ pastor happened to walk by. He was amazed at the lies and fairy tales they were spinning. “Boys, boys!” he said. “You shouldn’t tell false stories like that. Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie!”
The youngsters looked at each other regretfully. Then the oldest said to the minister: “Well, that’s got to be the biggest fib of all. Here’s your puppy, sir.”
At first, in our New Testament reading for today, it may seem like Paul is boasting. He tells some good stories. But it soon becomes clear that he is recounting acts of service in which both his readers and Jesus Christ are the heroes. The “boasting” is simply telling the truth about people and things that truly matter. And Paul does not consider himself of any great significance in that tale.
Matthew 22:34-46
A little boy wanted to know how tall he was. So, he made a ruler by which to measure himself and found that he was nine feet tall! Those around him realized that the standard he set was his own.
Usually that’s the problem with pride: it measures us and ours by rulers we create to our own dimensions. That seems to be true of the leaders who surrounded Jesus in today’s gospel reading. They wanted affirmation from the one who seemed to assess people’s hearts with the measuring rod of heaven. At the same time, they wanted to put down Jesus because, among the crowds, he appeared to be stealing their glory.
There can also be good pride, honest pride, pride that has its measuring stick firmly grounded in reality. Isak Dinesen spoke of it in her book Out of Africa. She said, “Pride is faith in the idea that God had when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea and aspires to it.”
This is the vision Jesus casts. When the Creator is rightfully acknowledged, those made in the Creator’s image can take proper pride that is not twisted by self-aggrandizing boasting.
The boasting of Jesus regarding his own authority is like that. “My God is bigger than your god!” he shouts to whatever little powers might vie for trite allegiance. Jesus is not measuring by standards he created out of his own school kit; he just happens to be in touch with reality.
The true way to be humble, said Philips Brookes, “is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”
No one need stand against a greatness greater than the God before whom David knelt when speaking of the greater one who would follow him. In that context, the shout of pride is very, very good.
Application
Some people boast out of pride. In his story, “How the Camel Got Its Hump,” Rudyard Kipling took a potshot at prideful boasters. In Kipling’s story, when God first created the earth and all the animals, he gave each of them a different job to do. Quickly the animals went about their business. Except for one. The camel refused to do anything. Whenever any of the other animals asked the camel to help them, he just said “Humph!” and walked away.
The camel, you see, thought that he was so much better than all the other animals. When God saw what was happening, he began collecting all of the camel’s “humphs” until they created a big pile in heaven, and then he dumped them back down on the camel’s back. And that, according to Kipling, is how the camel got its hump.
Even though we know that the true story of the camel’s hump doesn’t read quite that way, it’s an accurate description of prideful people. They stand out in a crowd. You can almost see them “humphing” up above everyone else.
In the mid-20th century, people used to say of the pompous Italian dictator Mussolini things like, “He could strut sitting down” and “He was a solemn procession of one.” In our mind’s eye we can see him “humphing” along.
That self-promotion may entertain and amuse for a while. But when life gets real, we want to be with people who care at least as much about us as they do about themselves. Moses comes to mind. So does Paul. And most of all, Jesus.
What about me? What about you?
Alternative Application (1 Thessalonians 2:1-8)
Here is a parable: a man is convicted of a criminal act. But before he is sentenced to life in prison, the governing authorities issue a pardon. This convicted criminal is permitted to live in society like a law-abiding citizen. How do you think he will be treated? Probably few people will accept him—children will be told to stay away from him; employers will not hire him; banks won’t give him a loan; landlords will refuse him as a tenant. He will most likely be the butt of jokes, jokes that cut him down as inferior, jokes that ring with self-righteous pride.
Finally, in desperation, the man finds a home among a small community of women, men, and children who take him in because they, like him, are convicted criminals. They, like him, have received the pardon of grace. It’s the present pardon that gives them unity, not the sin of the past. It’s the grace of forgiveness that makes them one, not the successes or failures of other times.
In a sense, that is a picture of the church of Jesus Christ as Paul presents it to the Thessalonians. Each person has been convicted of sin, yet each lives in the grace of God’s pardoning love. What good would a pardon be if each of us were forced to live in isolation at the edges of communities that rejected us, joked about us, and refused to let us in?
To be pardoned and yet to be alone would be the worst of all punishments God could inflict on us. Instead, God has created a new humanity, a society of the forgiven who no longer see each other with the scarlet letter of adultery, or the neon sign of pride, or the sticky fingers of materialism, or the bloody hands of murder. Each person is welcome, not because he or she is a sinner in a club of rogues, but because each has received the kiss of forgiveness from the great governor of the universe.
Our participation in the present humanity of this world drives us often toward distinctions, separations, bigotry, and racism—even in the church. Remember the powerful old spiritual, “I Got Shoes”? While the richly dressed white folks in the old south of the United States marched off to their churches wearing their polished Sunday shoes, the black slaves, with their bare feet, were left to gather for worship as they could. And while white folks were singing about the worldwide church of Christ, black folks were singing:
I got shoes!
You got shoes!
All God’s children got shoes!
And when the angel Gabriel calls us home,
Gonna walk all over God’s heaven!
For they knew that God takes care of God’s children, and when God finally brought them to glory, God would not check to see the color of their skin, or the whiteness of their clothes, or even the place where they were born. Instead, God would simply ask them if Jesus was their brother. And then, like the only begotten Son, they too would receive a pair of shoes, the sign of people who were no longer barefoot slaves of others but cared-for children of God.
The Japanese decided that since these came from America, each American should get three packages, and all of the non-Americans would get one package apiece. But the Americans protested; as a group they demanded that they each get seven Red Cross packages, and their non-American allies get none!
Self-centeredness dies slowly in the human heart. We are born frail and helpless, but spend our years asserting our importance. When the French philosopher Auguste Comte was about to die, he murmured to those at his bedside, “What an irreparable loss!” Similarly, as Nero, the mad emperor of Rome, prepared to commit suicide, he wept for himself, crying, “How great an artist dies here!” And the German philosopher Hegel took this parting shot: “Only one man ever understood me. . . And he didn’t understand me!”
Humility is part of the Christian gospel. We are not the best. We cannot make it on our own. We have no boast in ourselves. Sometimes that can engender a bit of bitterness toward those around us who seem rather self-accomplished and self-fulfilled. Asaph spoke that way in Psalm 73. “I decided at one point to stop training my children in the ways of the Lord,” might be a paraphrase of what he says in verse 15, “since godliness kept them from enjoying life!” And David seemed to feel the same way when he wrote in Psalm 10: “Why do you let others get away with so much, God?”
Simon Darcourt expressed similar sentiments in Robertson Davies’s novel The Lyre of Orpheus. Darcourt was a priest by training and vocation, working now as a university professor. He knew he should be more devout, humble and loving, but there was too much to enjoy in the world around him. He even pulled off an art theft at one point and muses about what it might do to the eternal destiny of his soul. Finally, he decided that his sins and deceit would not matter: “A deathbed repentance would probably square things with God. Meanwhile, this was life.”
Humility is at the heart of each of our passage for today. Moses, for all of his gifts and leadership strength, was viewed by others as the humblest of all men. Paul extols the virtue of humility as evidence of God’s Spirit at work in our lives. And Jesus declares that the greatest accomplishment for anyone, including himself, is the humility of sacrificial love.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Are you proud?
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a little poem about pride:
When I am grown to man’s estate
I shall be very proud and great,
And tell the other girls and boys
Not to meddle with my toys! (A Child’s Garden of Verses)
We probably all feel that way sometimes, especially when someone bigger or haughtier than us walks all over our toys or our self-esteem. And even though we feel like little people many times, we are much too proud to stay that way.
The opening sentences of Bonamy Dobree’s famous biography of John Wesley capture his struggle with pride: “It is difficult to be humble. Even if you aim at humility, there is no guarantee that when you have attained the state you will not be proud of the feat.” Isn’t that the truth?
Pride is so subtle. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogenes came to Plato’s house one day. He already felt that Plato was not as good a teacher as he, and now he had the proof. On the floor of Plato’s house were several ornate carpets, obviously very exquisite and costly. To show his contempt for such a waste of money, Diogenes walked all over them and then wiped his feet in a show of contempt. “Thus do I trample upon the pride of Plato!” he said.
Plato observed quietly: “With even greater pride, it seems.”
“The proud hate pride — in others!” said Benjamin Franklin. And somehow our pointing fingers must turn round to our own hearts.
C. S. Lewis observed that “unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that are mere flea bites in comparison with pride.”
So how do we come to the humility of Moses as highlighted in his obituary passage? And how can we be sure that we are not proud of our humility when we get there?
Perhaps it demands, first of all, that we take our eyes off ourselves. The truest way to be humble, as Phillips Brooks said, “is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”
Many people in Moses’ day were worse than he, morally, socially, and spiritually. But setting himself up against them would do nothing to challenge the evil in his own heart, nor put him on the road to a higher quality of life. Only a vision of God’s glory can do that. And that is the strength of Moses’ humility.
The only way to defeat pride is to make it irrelevant. Once, when conductor Arturo Toscanini was preparing an orchestra and chorus for a performance, he was forced to work with a rather temperamental soprano soloist. His every suggestion was turned aside by her haughty opinions. At one point she loudly proclaimed: “I am the star of this performance!”
Toscanini looked at her with quiet pity. “Madam,” he said, “in this performance there are no stars. There is only the music.”
And in that moment her pride became irrelevant. It was swallowed up in the larger glory of the soaring melodies and complex harmonies. Personal arrogance was like a third left shoe. Who needs it?
So too with Moses. So too with us. As Isaac Watts put it in his well-known hymn:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Boasting can be an invigorating sport. Two young lads found a stray puppy one day. Both wanted to take it home. They finally decided to hold a contest of skill in order to decide the winner of this prize. They would each tell a story. The teller of the most fantastic, the most unbelievable, the most exaggerated story would earn the furry friend.
The stories were good. The boys’ pastor happened to walk by. He was amazed at the lies and fairy tales they were spinning. “Boys, boys!” he said. “You shouldn’t tell false stories like that. Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie!”
The youngsters looked at each other regretfully. Then the oldest said to the minister: “Well, that’s got to be the biggest fib of all. Here’s your puppy, sir.”
At first, in our New Testament reading for today, it may seem like Paul is boasting. He tells some good stories. But it soon becomes clear that he is recounting acts of service in which both his readers and Jesus Christ are the heroes. The “boasting” is simply telling the truth about people and things that truly matter. And Paul does not consider himself of any great significance in that tale.
Matthew 22:34-46
A little boy wanted to know how tall he was. So, he made a ruler by which to measure himself and found that he was nine feet tall! Those around him realized that the standard he set was his own.
Usually that’s the problem with pride: it measures us and ours by rulers we create to our own dimensions. That seems to be true of the leaders who surrounded Jesus in today’s gospel reading. They wanted affirmation from the one who seemed to assess people’s hearts with the measuring rod of heaven. At the same time, they wanted to put down Jesus because, among the crowds, he appeared to be stealing their glory.
There can also be good pride, honest pride, pride that has its measuring stick firmly grounded in reality. Isak Dinesen spoke of it in her book Out of Africa. She said, “Pride is faith in the idea that God had when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea and aspires to it.”
This is the vision Jesus casts. When the Creator is rightfully acknowledged, those made in the Creator’s image can take proper pride that is not twisted by self-aggrandizing boasting.
The boasting of Jesus regarding his own authority is like that. “My God is bigger than your god!” he shouts to whatever little powers might vie for trite allegiance. Jesus is not measuring by standards he created out of his own school kit; he just happens to be in touch with reality.
The true way to be humble, said Philips Brookes, “is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”
No one need stand against a greatness greater than the God before whom David knelt when speaking of the greater one who would follow him. In that context, the shout of pride is very, very good.
Application
Some people boast out of pride. In his story, “How the Camel Got Its Hump,” Rudyard Kipling took a potshot at prideful boasters. In Kipling’s story, when God first created the earth and all the animals, he gave each of them a different job to do. Quickly the animals went about their business. Except for one. The camel refused to do anything. Whenever any of the other animals asked the camel to help them, he just said “Humph!” and walked away.
The camel, you see, thought that he was so much better than all the other animals. When God saw what was happening, he began collecting all of the camel’s “humphs” until they created a big pile in heaven, and then he dumped them back down on the camel’s back. And that, according to Kipling, is how the camel got its hump.
Even though we know that the true story of the camel’s hump doesn’t read quite that way, it’s an accurate description of prideful people. They stand out in a crowd. You can almost see them “humphing” up above everyone else.
In the mid-20th century, people used to say of the pompous Italian dictator Mussolini things like, “He could strut sitting down” and “He was a solemn procession of one.” In our mind’s eye we can see him “humphing” along.
That self-promotion may entertain and amuse for a while. But when life gets real, we want to be with people who care at least as much about us as they do about themselves. Moses comes to mind. So does Paul. And most of all, Jesus.
What about me? What about you?
Alternative Application (1 Thessalonians 2:1-8)
Here is a parable: a man is convicted of a criminal act. But before he is sentenced to life in prison, the governing authorities issue a pardon. This convicted criminal is permitted to live in society like a law-abiding citizen. How do you think he will be treated? Probably few people will accept him—children will be told to stay away from him; employers will not hire him; banks won’t give him a loan; landlords will refuse him as a tenant. He will most likely be the butt of jokes, jokes that cut him down as inferior, jokes that ring with self-righteous pride.
Finally, in desperation, the man finds a home among a small community of women, men, and children who take him in because they, like him, are convicted criminals. They, like him, have received the pardon of grace. It’s the present pardon that gives them unity, not the sin of the past. It’s the grace of forgiveness that makes them one, not the successes or failures of other times.
In a sense, that is a picture of the church of Jesus Christ as Paul presents it to the Thessalonians. Each person has been convicted of sin, yet each lives in the grace of God’s pardoning love. What good would a pardon be if each of us were forced to live in isolation at the edges of communities that rejected us, joked about us, and refused to let us in?
To be pardoned and yet to be alone would be the worst of all punishments God could inflict on us. Instead, God has created a new humanity, a society of the forgiven who no longer see each other with the scarlet letter of adultery, or the neon sign of pride, or the sticky fingers of materialism, or the bloody hands of murder. Each person is welcome, not because he or she is a sinner in a club of rogues, but because each has received the kiss of forgiveness from the great governor of the universe.
Our participation in the present humanity of this world drives us often toward distinctions, separations, bigotry, and racism—even in the church. Remember the powerful old spiritual, “I Got Shoes”? While the richly dressed white folks in the old south of the United States marched off to their churches wearing their polished Sunday shoes, the black slaves, with their bare feet, were left to gather for worship as they could. And while white folks were singing about the worldwide church of Christ, black folks were singing:
I got shoes!
You got shoes!
All God’s children got shoes!
And when the angel Gabriel calls us home,
Gonna walk all over God’s heaven!
For they knew that God takes care of God’s children, and when God finally brought them to glory, God would not check to see the color of their skin, or the whiteness of their clothes, or even the place where they were born. Instead, God would simply ask them if Jesus was their brother. And then, like the only begotten Son, they too would receive a pair of shoes, the sign of people who were no longer barefoot slaves of others but cared-for children of God.
