Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity

admin | 6 July 2014

“For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”

Humility is not only the counter to pride; it is the condition of our access to God’s grace, the necessary condition of our being raised up or exalted, albeit “in due time” and not without “hav[ing] suffered a while.” Grace is what truly and rightly defines and dignifies our humanity. The Epistle and Gospel for today speak profoundly to lessons which have ever to be learned and relearned, again and again, and certainly for us in our world and day.

Just recently, The Economist magazine included an insert from its sister magazine, Intelligent Life. The first article asked the question “What is the deadliest sin?” and provided a series of very thoughtful reflections by a number of notable writers and thinkers on envy, pride, ingratitude, greed, gluttony, sloth and lust. Not bad. Six out of the classical and traditional seven deadly sins! Though ingratitude is a serious problem it is not one of the seven deadly sins classically speaking. It is wrath that is the one sin that was curiously omitted. I say ‘curiously’ since wrath is such a dominant feature in the destructive nihilism of contemporary culture and so it seems odd that it should have been left out. There are no end of examples of wrath in our contemporary world, after all. But what is more remarkable is that the very idea and language of sin and of the seven deadly sins should be the subject of a sophisticated contemporary journal.

It suggests at the very least that the moral discourse about sin which is part and parcel of the Christian faith is very much needed in our present times and is there to be recovered and reclaimed. Pride, as the novelist Will Self points out, “is so much a part of every one of us that we can’t see how deadly it is – it inheres in our very self-consciousness, and has metastasized through the body politic.” That is a profoundly theological view. He goes on to argue that “pride is paramount” in the modern economy, in what he calls “the commoditisation of pride,” the sense that we think we deserve what we want “because we are worth it.” Even more, he shows how pride “is the three-personed god we have made of ourselves,” which he describes wonderfully as “the Big-I-Am; King Baby, Me-Me-Me,” what he calls “the true trinity of the modern psyche.” Utterly remarkable. The descriptive force of this is undeniable but what is the prescription? Humility.

The Scripture readings help us to understand the power of humility which opens us out to God’s grace. Pride is what cuts us off from God and from one another. “Pride was my wilderness,” as Hagar Shipley Currie, Margaret Laurence’s character in Stone Angel, realizes about herself. At the age of ninety – yes, ninety! there is hope for us all! – she looks back and sees this truth about herself. The stone angel is a statue erected in the Manawaka cemetery in memory of her mother but also as the symbol of her father’s pride. The statue is described as being “doubly blind”; the eyes of the angel don’t even have the appearance of sight. But beyond the literal description, the notion of being doubly blind captures precisely Hagar’s pride problem: her blindness about herself and about the needs of others. The story is about her coming to realize this about herself. In a way, it is the point of our readings.

The Epistle reminds us of the importance and the necessity of humility; it is grounded, not simply in the awareness of “the mighty hand of God,” but in the awareness that God “cares for you”! This changes fear into love, we might say, but without ignoring the serious dangers of pride which are wonderfully set before us in the image of a wild lion: “your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour” on account of which we are exhorted to “be sober, be vigilant;” in short, to be watching, to be on the look-out. In other words, it is about how we see ourselves. Humility requires us to see ourselves in relation to God and to God’s grace which alone can overthrow us in our pride and so “restore, stablish, strengthen [us].” though only, it seems, “after that [we] have suffered a while.”

The Gospel illustrates the grace of God that restores and exalts even in the face of the pride which cuts us off and creates divisions and animosities. Jesus tells three parables of which this morning’s gospel provides the first two. They are the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. The third is the tremendous parable of the lost or prodigal son. The point is that these parables are told in the face of animosity and antagonism. Publicans and sinners draw near to hear Jesus. Pharisees and Scribes, the so-called religious ones, murmur against what is going on. Their murmuring is their self-righteous and proud judgments about the company Jesus keeps. “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them,” they say.

The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin show the grace of God which seeks our restoration from the lost conditions of our sinful lives when we are cut off from one another, either lost in the wilderness and separated from the ninety and nine other sheep or like the one piece of silver lost in the darkness of the house and separated from the other pieces of silver. God, like the shepherd and like the woman, is depicted as “seek[ing] diligently,” that is to say, with great concern and care, love really, that which is lost. The parables illustrate God’s great care and concern and show us that in being found and restored there is an even greater joy, namely, the joy of heaven. “There is joy in presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” This emphasis on “one sinner that repenteth” is a deliberate poke at the Pharisees and Scribes who are seen as being like the hypothetical “ninety and nine which need no repentance,” and as such seem to lose out on the joys of heaven. For who, pray tell, would they be except “the proud in the imagination of their heart”? While the lost sheep and the lost coin might seem to be static and passive images the point of the sinner that repents is that something is required of us – repentance. That, of course, requires humility.

Repentance is about a kind of metanoia, a change in outlook and in our thinking. It is about realizing the pride which cuts us off from one another, not least of all, in the Christian understanding, because it cuts us off from God. To repent is to realize this. It is, paradoxically as it might seem, the condition of our rejoicing and of our being raised up. That there is rejoicing in heaven shows us the true worth and dignity of our humanity. It is found in God’s love and care for us. Humility is about our openness to God, to the God who reaches down to us to restore us to communion and fellowship with him and the whole company of heaven. Pride alone cuts us off from the joys of heaven. Humility alone is the grace of God in us. We are the sinners whom Jesus receives and with whom he eats. Communion is our fellowship with God in the company of the redeemed.