Humility.
Luke 18: 9-14
A little while ago I preached on Jesus’ parable of the guests at the banquet, which Jesus told after seeing how guests at a dinner gave themselves the places of honour, and warned His disciples not to behave in the same way. He says this to His disciples, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted”.
Jesus says these exact same words again after telling the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector. The need for humility is not confined to simply how we treat other people, or how we behave in front of others, but also extends to our relationship with God in our prayer lives as well.
But humility is a very tricky thing. A few years ago the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recommendation for a book for Lent was a book called The Barefoot Disciple by Stephen Cherry. In this book Stephen Cherry explores what it means to live a life of humility. In it he talks about something called the ‘humility trap’. Essentially, the ‘humility trap’ is a paradox: as soon as we think of ourselves as being humble, as having achieved humility, we’re actually no longer being humble at all. It’s a bit like someone saying, “I’m a very humble person. In fact I think I might be the most humble person in the world”.
The point of Stephen Cherry’s book is that humility is always just beyond the grasp of those who try to attain it, and can only truly be achieved by those who give no thought to themselves, who have no interest in their own status.
Jesus tells today’s parable as a way of illustrating this paradox. We have a Pharisee who lives by God’s laws. He doesn’t just do everything required of him by the Law, but he goes beyond the bare requirements and does more: he doesn’t just give a percentage of certain foods to the Temple, but a tenth of all his income. He prays and he fasts, and he makes sure that he doesn’t associate with those sinful folk like that tax-collector over there.
He knows why he is righteous. He gives thanks to God, not for what he has, but that he’s not like those other sinful people.
He asks nothing of God.
In complete contrast we have the tax-collector. Here we have someone who is a sinner, and he knows it. He cannot boast before God because he has nothing to boast about. He probably doesn’t do any of the things that the Pharisee does. In his own eyes he is worthless, and so he prays with his head bowed and he beats his chest.
He knows that he is a sinner, and he asks God for mercy.
The Pharisee asks nothing of God, because he believes he has nothing to ask for. The tax-collector asks for mercy, because that is all he needs.
Jesus completely turns upside-down our whole perception of who is and is not righteous. The Pharisee is righteous, but in his desire to boast about his righteousness and to fail to see the worth in those that he considers lower than himself, he actually turns away from God’s grace and forfeits any righteousness he had. The tax-collector, by recognising his own failings and throwing himself on the mercy of God, opens himself to the abundance of God’s grace, and so receives righteousness. He humbles himself before God, and so receives the greatest gift of all: God’s salvation through the forgiveness of his sins. The Pharisee already considers himself to be saved because of all the righteous things he has done, and so paradoxically misses out on salvation because he doesn’t think to ask for it.
All the way through the Gospel of Luke we are told time and time again not to look at the failings of others and, in doing so, end up ignoring our own failings. We must do the exact opposite. By recognising our own failings we end up being more merciful towards the failings of others. This is what it means to say, ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’.
Let me finish with a short story from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. A hermit lived a life of prayer and contemplation up on the hillside away from the monastery. When one of the brothers in the monastery was accused of a sin, two of the brothers came up to see the hermit. They asked him to come down with them so that he could stand in judgement over the sinful monk. The hermit told the monks to return to the monastery and he would follow in a little while. Soon after, the two monks saw the hermit walking down the hillside with a huge basket on his back. As he passed them, they noticed that sand was pouring out of a small hole at the base of the basket. “What teaching is this?” they asked the hermit. He replied, “My sins run out behind me and I do not see them, yet I am come to judge this man”. The monks decided to forgive their brother.
As St. Paul tells us, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3)
Reverend Phil Morton.