by CCW | 20 June 2010 15:04
The humility of God’s charity is all our theme on this day, and not for this day only, but also for the week that brings us to the celebration of the Nativity of John the Baptist. What is the humility of God’s charity? It is God’s reaching down to us so that his love may take shape in us.
The Nativity of John the Baptist signals the preparations which God himself makes for his coming into our midst as the Incarnate Lord in the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The summer solstice is upon us; the long summer’s march to winter is about to begin! Say it isn’t so! But, already, Christmas is in view! Yet, this summer’s feast, the Nativity of John the Baptist (on June 24) signals something more. Beyond the reminder of God’s coming to us, there is the purpose of his coming in us. The redemption of our humanity revealed in Christ is about the motions of his grace taking shape in our lives. The humility of God’s charity in us means the “scattering of the proud in the imagination of their [our] hearts.” There are the practical lessons about the necessity of humility.
The humility of God’s charity calls us to humility against our pride. Pride is that grand delusion whereby we presume to be the center of everything either in our complacency or in our whining neediness. The self-giving love of God stands altogether opposed to the self-centeredness of our pride. Pride stands utterly opposed to God and to God’s ways with us.
In the Gospel, “all the publicans and sinners drew near to hear Jesus.” But “the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them’.” In other words, the Pharisees and Scribes – the self-righteous in the pride of their religion – complain about the company which Jesus keeps – the company of publicans and sinners. It is in relation to this division between publicans and sinners, on the one hand, and Pharisees and Scribes, on the other hand, that Jesus tells his parable.
Tax collecting is one of those necessary features of public life in any organized state or political community. Yet tax collectors can hardly ever be regarded in exactly a favourable light. Even less so in the context of the Gospel. For then, they were seen as traitors to Israel because they were working for the Roman Authorities over and against their fellow Jews. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were seen as extortionists. The business of tax collecting was hired out by the Roman government to local agents. They were given a quota they had to meet; anything above that was for themselves. Consequently, the tax collectors were out to get whatever they could from an unwilling and hostile population, namely, their own people.
Traitors to Israel and extortionists of their own people, the Jews. No one could be more despised and seen as a sinner than a tax collector. Hardly respectable company for a teacher of religion, it might seem, or at least, so the Pharisees and the teachers of the law thought. After all, they saw themselves as the worthy ones, as the respectable company with whom Jesus should be, not this rabble of unworthy tax collectors and sinners. How does Jesus respond?
He tells two stories – three actually – the story of the lost sheep, the story of the lost coin. The third story which follows those two is the story of the lost or prodigal son. The lesson is plain. Salvation is for those who need salvation, for those who are lost. “There shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.” To know oneself as a sinner is to stand in need of salvation, to be looking for it and to be where it is proclaimed.
Jesus tells this to the Pharisees and Scribes who, like the publicans and sinners, also need repentance and salvation. But, unlike the publicans and sinners they don’t think that they need anything whatsoever. They stand and murmur against Jesus in the pride of their self-righteousness, claiming a worthiness on the basis of their observation of the law. Keeping the law, however, is not their sin. Their sin is in despising the publicans and sinners, in presuming upon their own self-sufficiency and in murmuring against the ways of God with men in Jesus Christ.
The lesson shows us who Jesus is. He is the infinite charity of God towards us, reaching down to seek out the lost, from the greatest to the least. He is the humility of God’s charity. There is the condescension of God in the Nativity of the Christ and in all the preparations which he makes for his coming to us as in the Nativity of John the Baptist. But in this reaching down of God to us, there is also his reaching down in us. Humility is God’s grace opening us out to the pattern of his love in us.
And it changes everything. “Be subject to one another,” Peter tells us. How different that is from the Pharisees and Scribes. They would stand over everything else – lord it over us all, not unlike the petty prelates of our day. But if it is not so with God, then how can it be so with one another? “Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.”
The point theologically is the total primacy of God’s grace in the work of salvation. It is not our worthiness but the infinite generosity of God that is at work for us and in us. And this is something which we have to want if ever we will discover how it is all God’s work in us. Pride can have no place with God for it stands opposed to God and murmurs against God for the company he keeps. But the company he keeps is you and me – sinners all, whether publicans or not! And if we think that we are not sinners, then we exclude ourselves from his company and presume to be better than one another. Such is not of God; it is entirely of us and separates us from God and from one another.
The lesson Jesus teaches illustrates the gentle humility of God’s way with us even in the face of the hardness of our proud hearts. He shows us the infinite extent of the humility of his love for us in his seeking out the lost. And he shows us that the way of his love must be his way in us. Such is the power of the parables.
The Nativity of John the Baptist, too, signals the humility of God towards us and in us. John the Baptist is the instrument of God’s grace sent to prepare the way of the Lord by “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”; in other words, awakening us to our need for repentance and salvation. He is not the forgiveness of sins but the instrument of God preparing us for the coming of the one whom, he says, “is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.” This is the humility of John the Baptist who points us to the one who comes as the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus is the forgiveness of sins. He comes into the company of sinners such as you and me and calls us into his company through the door of baptism and at the supper table of communion. Humility is his way to us and it must be his way in us. “We do not presume to come …trusting in our own righteousness, But in thy manifold and great mercies.”
He makes us gracious by his being with us. If only we will let the divine humility rule in us and over-rule our pride.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity III, 2010, 10:30am
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