Scripture: Mark 8:31-38
The scripture you heard read a moment ago is the lectionary gospel reading for this Sunday. It’s one of those interesting coincidences that this should come up in the pre-arranged schedule of scripture readings, because it’s a passage that deals directly with what I wanted to talk about anyway, and in fact it’s a passage I might well have chosen on my own to go along with my thoughts for the day. Just a quick recap…
I have been saying that I wanted to spend some time reflecting upon what it means to “walk humbly with God”, the last part of the verse from Micah about “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.” Meaning, I guess, not just thinking about it but trying to get some thoughts together and put them into words and tell you about them in the form of a sermon. I don’t know how long that will last, or when I’ll run out of things to say, or when I’ll get tired of it, but it does seem to me there are a number of things that deserve to be thought about in connection with the general theme of walking humbly, so for at least a few weeks the sermons will be at least loosely connected to each other in this way.
What I had in my mind as I concluded writing last week’s sermon but didn’t tell you about really, just alluded to it very briefly, were some thoughts that maybe could be summarized something like this: “But maybe humility isn’t necessarily always and for everyone a good thing.” Yes, true enough, (I think to myself) there sure are some people in this world who, in my humble opinion, would make the world a better place if they would think a little less of themselves—in both senses—think of themselves less often and think a little less highly of themselves. I’ll keep the names I’m thinking of to myself, though I suspect there are at least a few names that most of us in this room could agree to put in that category. But there are some people, maybe legions of people in fact, who suffer not from thinking too much of themselves but from thinking too little of themselves, and both they and the world would be better off if they thought a little more of themselves, in both senses, more often of themselves and more highly of themselves. And if perfect humility is to remove your “self” from your thoughts altogether, how can it be good for anyone to think nothing of themselves, or to think of themselves as nothing? So maybe humility isn’t necessarily such a good thing after all, or maybe we need some different ways to think about humility—other than being completely self-less—losing oneself altogether. I was thinking those kinds of thoughts at the end of the sermon last week…and as I begin this week’s sermon.
And you can see how I might think of the scripture from Mark in that connection. Jesus and Peter have this little exchange about whether Jesus has gone completely out of his mind imagining this rather gruesome fate that lies before him and even though he seems to know what’s coming, apparently intends to go through with it anyway, and then Peter telling Jesus that this is a crazy idea causes Jesus to tell Peter essentially that he doesn’t get it, this business of being a disciple and then Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel will save it.” Jesus doesn’t use the word humble here, but you can see why my mind might move in the direction of this passage. Is this what humility is about, losing yourself, and what does Jesus mean by losing yourself, how are we to understand what he is saying, and how might we misunderstand it, and is losing yourself a good thing, and is humility a good thing. My mind quickly went to this passage as a way to reflect on this matter of walking humbly with God.
I also might say, before I go much farther, that women’s history month had something to do with the direction of my thinking as well. The whole idea that humility is about putting other people first and denying yourself, that it’s about nurturing the well-being of others, often at the expense of one’s own well-being, this whole approach to humility has often been foisted on women as a virtue that women particularly should try to exhibit—not so much a virtue for men. In other words the very notion of humility has been used to keep in place a situation where women are supposed to support others in being all that they can be but are not supposed to attach any importance to becoming all that they can be themselves. Humility can be just a way to put a nice-sounding veneer on attitudes and practices that are really not very nice at all.
In this connection, there were a couple of other scripture passages that occurred to me as possibilities for today. There’s a passage in Luke, a very brief one that goes like this. “After leaving the synagogue, Jesus entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus about her. So Jesus stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her. Immediately she got up and—do you know what comes next?—she began to serve them.” The woman is deathly sick. Jesus heals her. Immediately, she gets up and begins to serve them. Isn’t there something wrong with that picture?
Then there’s the story of Mary and Martha. Do you remember which was which? I always get confused. But one of them, Martha actually (I looked it up), was entertaining Jesus in her home and she was running this way and that doing who knows what, getting some food together, bringing in chairs, getting some towels for the bathroom, whatever, while her sister, Mary, was…well, some would say acting just like a man, sitting there listening to Jesus, maybe even taking part in the conversation, but doing nothing at all to help Martha, perfectly happy to have someone attend to the food and the towels, as long as it wasn’t her. Martha calls this to Jesus attention even, but Jesus tells her basically to chill, not to be so worried about the food and the towels, and to leave Mary alone because what she’s doing is the better approach. Again humility is not mentioned in this story. It is not a story about humility exactly, maybe, but it is a story that has some bearing on the matter of walking humbly. On the one hand, Jesus counsels us to deny ourselves and lose ourselves, but here I hear him saying to Martha that she is the one who, in trying so hard to fill the servant role, has lost herself—and it’s not a good thing.
Humility is a pretty easy virtue to embrace when one’s own needs and interests are being pretty well attended to. It has a different look from the perspective of people whose interests are not being very well attended to. Humility is easy to pay lip service to when the person who’s recommending it is doing so from a place of privilege. When humility is a social condition, not a spiritual attitude, it ought not to be so easily embraced, ought not to be embraced at all. For a great many people in a great many situations, losing oneself is not appropriate advice and is not to be valued, not even a little bit.
But then Jesus didn’t say it was, not in my understanding of what he said. I don’t think it’s quibbling at all to point out that he didn’t just say, “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life will save it.” Losing your life, denying yourself, is not a good in and of itself; it is not something that is done for its own sake. The way the saying actually reads is: “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.” This is not, as I read it, a kind of egocentric statement on Jesus part—“Love me. That’s the answer to all your problems.” It is a matter of losing yourself in the spirit that Jesus embodied, for the sake of the gospel. It’s not a matter of losing yourself in another person, not even Jesus. Losing yourself in other people is never a good thing. We love people. We don’t lose ourselves in them.
So having recognized all the dangers of denying oneself and all the ways that losing oneself is not a good thing, still there are ways in which we do find ourselves maybe by losing ourselves in something else. When we speak of losing ourselves in a piece of music, for instance, we instinctively recognize that we are talking about something different than the loss of self that can be so hurtful sometimes. Or when we think of losing ourselves in the wonder of the stars, the vastness of the universe, or in the wonder of the miracle of this planet. Or in the wonder that is God. There is something about losing ourselves in these ways that is not loss at all. There is something about losing ourselves in these ways that is profoundly saving, healing, moving us not so much toward loss as toward wholeness. To have nothing in which to lose ourselves is to be left only with ourselves and in that sense, to use Jesus’ language, we will have gained ourselves but forfeited our life.
I also don’t think it’s quibbling to note that Micah does not say, “What does the Lord require but that we do justly and love mercy and walk humbly.” Again, humility is not an unconditional good. It is not a good in and of itself. It is not just to walk humbly, but to walk humbly with God. And although we may expect that walking humbly with God would produce a certain natural humility in the way a person relates to other people, it is not the same thing as assuming that everything that might go under the name of humility is a good thing.
So I’m thinking about losing ourselves in God, which may involve partly the idea of losing ourselves in visions of the kingdom of God, which is what Jesus seems to have done quite often, given himself over to living toward a new age, and to the kind of loving that would bring that new age into being. You and I aren’t going to be perfect at walking humbly with God in this sense. Most of the time we won’t even be very good at it. But neither is it completely out of reach. And I think one of the things that keeps us in touch with it is prayer, at least some kinds of prayer. I think of prayer in one sense as losing yourself in God. To be sure, there are kinds of prayer, prayers of petition, where we are essentially asking God to pay to attention to what concerns us, and so maybe not so easy to lose ourselves in that kind of prayer. But then again, maybe not impossible. In any case there surely is a kind of prayer where we gradually find ourselves being taken up into the being of God, losing ourselves in God. And maybe, if in this sense we could turn prayer into a way of life, we would learn in an everyday sort of way, gradually, step by small step, what it means to walk humbly with God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 12, 2006