On Humility, or the Lack of It

All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. 1 Peter 5.5

The Bible teaches often and in depth about humility. It is such an important quality for a Christian, one which St. John the Baptist possessed in abundance, but which was supremely exemplified by our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet, despite his most glorious example, humility has never been a quality which mortal men prize or accord the respect it deserves. The consequences of that are tragic.

What have we done, O Lord, in our arrogance and foolish pride? You created for us a beautiful place to live out our allotted span. Some get more, some get less. Yet we all, with few exceptions, treat your creation with arrogant contempt.

We have torn down vast areas of beautiful forest, making of them barren deserts. In doing so, we have thrown away cures for one disease after another. We have deprived our descendants of the beauty, diversity and potential of these great and complex living systems. We have destroyed untold numbers of your creatures, never once pausing to think that they were not ours to destroy.

What have we done, O Lord, to your oceans? We have plundered their treasures, more out of greed than necessity and making of them also a kind of desert, now offering up less and less food to rapacious man.

Where once the joyful cries of whales filled the deep, now can be heard the desperate cries of pain as those magnificent creatures, Leviathan you called them, die in agony from the hunter’s harpoon or the entangling net. In their ravaged numbers, they call out now in loneliness, hoping to hear a response from their own kind and often not finding it. When, Lord, did you give us the right to commit such sensitive creatures to such despair?

What have we done, O Lord, to the clear, fresh waters of your lakes and rivers? We have filled them with the stench of corruption as we pour into them the poison from pulp mills, chemical plants and our own voluminous waste. The fish float on the surface, dead and bloated. The frogs, among others, have disappeared, victims of some silent killer, released by unthinking, uncaring man. Who told us that we should try to live here alone, in some perverse human monoculture.

What have we done, O Lord, to the whispering, life giving breezes on which your birds in myriad shapes and colours take wing in their exhilarating aerial ballet? We have turned them into carriers of toxic dust and gases, spreading death and illness far and wide, to all your creatures including ourselves. We have infused them with chemicals to transport to the upper reaches of the atmosphere, stripping away our protection from harmful radiation from the sun. The whispering breezes seem to be taking on a new form, lashing at us with fury at our insolent carelessness. And the birds of the air, like the fish of the sea and the frogs of the streams are dying, killed by the very men to whom you, Lord gave stewardship.

In our foolish pride, we actually lay the blame on you, Lord. We actually quote your word, And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

But you never meant us to extinguish them, one by precious one. And if we had worn the mantle of humility, we never would have done so.

Without humility, Lord, what have we done to ourselves? We have closed our ears to your word and done things our way, not yours. We give in to our sinful nature, because we cannot submit ourselves to your will. We commit adultery, we steal, we lie and deceive. We create false religions and false gods and enslave ourselves to them. We murder innocents in the womb and call it our right to choose. Those who survive we strip of protection, leaving them prey to sexual perverts, pornographers and in many parts of the world, to the evils of slavery.

We turn the name of Jesus Christ into an epithet, spitting it out with venom and contempt. We shatter the sanctity of your most sacred institutions, like marriage, perverting them into a travesty of everything you intended them to be.

And all the time, we ignore the pain we cause, to our neighbour and to ourselves, obscuring the truth in a fog of pride, while the vestments of humility lie withering in some dark corner of our heart.

What hope is there for us?

Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons. Luke 15.1.

God loves the worst of us through the worst of what we may do. That is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, God is searching for us, constantly. The first parable Jesus relates in today’s Gospel from Luke 15 tells us that God will go after that which is lost, until he find it. We are lost until we repent and when we repent, God can lift us up and like the lost sheep, carry us home.

The second parable says the same thing. The woman who lost the coin searches diligently until she finds it. God never stops searching for us, he is so eager to save us, every one of us. That is the message of these parables but, most importantly and strikingly, it is the message of the Cross.

If we think about it, we will be able to recall evidence of God’s loving search. A moment when God’s messenger, Conscience, has broken through our pride, bringing us back to obedience. A passage in the Bible which came to us as we plunged down some forbidden path, telling us again to fear the Lord, The soft touch of the Holy Spirit, comforting us and reminding us of the promises of Jesus Christ. An unexplained event which reason may tell us was an angel sent from God to protect us in some moment of danger. For some of us, Jesus has sent his Holy Mother, or has even come himself.

If we open our hearts to Jesus, we will find more evidence of God’s loving search, perhaps so much that it will surprise us.

These parables also show us that while we remain lost, God grieves over us. What else can explain the focus on the one sheep, or the one coin. A friend of mine once told me that he cannot believe in God because if God is so all powerful He would not waste His time on insignificant beings like us. Well here it is, in the Gospel of St. Luke, spoken by Jesus Christ. We each matter so much that God grieves over us when we are lost. We are each, individually, so important to God that He never stops searching for each one of us.

In the face of such Love, we surely should, as St. Peter wrote, humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, the God who giveth grace to the humble. In such humility comes repentance and in repentance humility. And just as joy will abound in the presence of the angels of God, that joy will communicate to those who walk in humility, hand in hand with The Good Shepherd.

And the God of all grace, who hath called you into his eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered for a while, shall himself restore, stablish, strengthen you. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Peter Jardine+

Trinity III, 2004