I am so humble.
Let me tell you how humble I am.
I am so humble that I am going to stand up here and tell you just how humble I am.
It would be more honest to say that I am humility challenged.
Humility is a hard thing to talk or preach about, or think about or to cultivate, it gets silly pretty quickly.
We can resort to humor and self deprecation in attempting to address humility but that only gets us so far.
There is a great quote of mysterious origin, “Humility is a strange thing, the minute we think we’ve got it, we’ve lost it.”
It is easy to be caught up in the humility game, of trying to manipulate others opinions of us by the appearance of humility, which is anything but humble, it is just a clever way of self inflation and it is pure spiritual poison.
It is better to be honestly and openly arrogant than falsely humble, and more interesting.
Jesus was talking about the humility game, he was playing off of the common wisdom, almost quoting directly from the book of proverbs about how to avoid social embarrassment by taking the less good seat, and then turning the situation in to an opportunity of being elevated by the host, slathering on honor. How to schmooze the crowd into giving us honor. The humility game.
At first it looks like Jesus is playing along with the common wisdom of how to win at the humility-seeking-honor game. Why inflate my self-importance when I can trick others into inflating my self-importance for me?
But then Jesus does the Jesus thing, he turns it all upside down. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
The humility game is just another clever way of elevating ourselves, it is doomed.
True humility is elusive, and according to St. Augustine it is “The whole of the Christian religion.”
Our faith is a faith of the cross, where God is humbled, humiliated and shamed in the Cross of Christ, that shame is where the exaltation of the resurrection happens.
How do we take up that cross and be shamed? Only God can exalt and raise us from that place.
Honor is only found in the shame of the cross.
C.S. Lewis has some insight into the elusive nature of humility and self involvement. He said that, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself , but thinking of yourself less.”
Humility is ultimately about finding something more interesting and important than abusing myself or always trying to inflate and satisfy myself, those are the two flipsides of self infatuation.
So what is it that can pull our attention of f of ourselves; that can knock us off our thrones at the center of the Universe? Only a vision and experience of God can do that, a vision of God being humbled and exalted in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
The freedom of humility creates a deep interest and attentiveness to the world around us, to other people, it frees us to love, to care, to experience a deep sense of wonder and awe.
It is interesting that the word humility at its root it means on the ground. Someone who is well grounded is able to see past their own fears and concerns, they can actually see others, they can see the world for what it is, a precious gift and expression of God’s love.
It is interesting that this teaching on humility is paired with a teaching on hospitality. Again Jesus does the Jesus thing and he redefines good company, not friends, not the people we enjoy, not the people we want to impress or have an “in” with, but rather good company are those who are left out and excluded. A good host not only finds but is capable of noticing and finding those who are left out.
It takes humility, being well grounded, to be able for it to even occur to us to practice this kind of hospitality that is really the hospitality of God’s kingdom.
The Gospel, especially in the Gospel According to Luke, is that Jesus is the hospitality of God seeking out the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. So Jesus’ teaching on hospitality is about what God is doing that we may do likewise and share in the exaltation of the resurrection of the righteous.
Again what can displace our self interested understanding of hospitality? What can shake us from our throne at the center of the universe so that this all inclusive hospitality may take hold of us? Again it is a vision and experience of God, the God who finds us in our broken self interest and wakes us up to the fullness of life.
Interesting how both the teachings on humility and hospitality both center on the occasion of a banquet, of a celebration, of a party.
It is quiet a vision, a party where no one tries to become the center of attention, where all are capable of truly seeing and caring for each other, a party where everyone is broken and handicapped in some way, and where no one is left out.
That is the vision we are given of God’s kingdom and of God’s judgment.
Almost every book of scripture has its own vision of how God’s judgment of the world works itself out. In Luke’s Gospel God’s judgment works out in the Jesus thing, the great reversal of pretty much everything and everybody, elevating and humbling, insiders and outsiders, rich and poor, the important and the invisible.
It is a powerful, awesome and fearsome vision. It is a vision of our self love being knocked off center, and being replaced not with self loathing or the self forgetfulness of drunken oblivion, but rather with a new kind of self love, what C.S. Lewis called “a charity and gratitude for all selves.”
Now that’s my kind of party.