Luke 18:9-14; Joel 2:23-29
There is the story of two holy men who fall to their knees in the front of the church crying out to God, saying, “I have sinned. I am unworthy. I am unworthy.” Just then a man who had come in off the street looking for a handout saw them and observing their display of piety joined them in their refrain: “I have sinned. I am not worthy. I am not worthy,” he cried. To which one of the holy men turns to the other and sneers, “Now look who thinks he’s unworthy!”
It reminds me of the great truth and paradox of humility. As soon as you think you are humble you aren’t humble anymore. Why is this important? We don’t think much about humility in our self-absorbed culture but in fact for those of us who want to know the heart of God humility is essential. We won’t get there without it. It was the first of the beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To reverse this saying we could say that those who are not humble will not know the kingdom of heaven. It is that important. What is humility? From the Wisdom of the Desert, the little book by Thomas Merton, Abbot Pastor is quoted as saying: “A man must breathe humility and the fear of God just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales the air.”
We learn how to breathe by breathing. Likewise we learn humility by practicing humility. Humility begins with what the Bible calls the fear of God which simply means a profound and serious respect for the God who created life and made relationship possible and who holds life in the mysterious embrace that passes all of our understanding. In short it begins with the belief or even the hope that God is real and we need to seek God to know what is real and who we are. In the presence of God humility is generous, merciful, non-judgmental, open, and not defensive. In Thomas Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert one of the elders was asked what is humility, and he said: If you forgive a brother who has injured you before he himself asks pardon. Humility is real when it becomes like breathing, unconsciously who we are, a state of mercy and love that rises in our heart as naturally as the sun rising on the new day.
Knowing ourselves, truly knowing ourselves, by that I mean knowing our condition as the finite, temporary, vulnerable and unperfected beings we are, we know how much we need mercy and forgiveness. We also know that love is possible because we are born longing for love. It is to know what we are not, as well, that we are not God and that we do not know what God knows nor do we have the wisdom to judge others as God in mercy and grace will do. (This may be, by the way, the most compelling reason for the existence of God – someone who knows what we do not know implying that we, you and I and every other human on earth since the beginning of time and forever, does not and will not know what we need to know without God.) (Do I need to remind you of the damage human arrogance has done in the history of the world and ironically and most tragically the human arrogance that claims even to know the mind of God?) In short it is the knowledge that we need God, the God who is, not the God we invent for ourselves when we tire of not having all the answers easily before us. (I am reminded of the experience of Annie Dillard when she wrote: It was as if God had said, “I am here, but not as you have known me.” The fear of God includes not being so quick to assume that we know who God is. Humility is also the knowing of who we are in relationship to everybody and everything else God has made. It is the realization that we are no better and no worse than any other person carrying within us the desire to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Knowing our need for mercy, we are ourselves, merciful to others. We no longer see each other as unequal adversaries or threats but as fellow travelers, flawed, and in need of God as much as everyone else. Not only do we need God but we need each other. We stop keeping score. Humility does not keep score.
I don’t know if it is what Jesus intended but there may be some irony in his simple little test of humility in the gospel reading for today. After all we still take the bait when Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer. It is one of those stories designed to make us choose who we are in the story. Are we the Pharisee or the tax collector? Some of us have been around a while and we have heard this story before and we are sophisticated enough to know that the Pharisee is often the illustration of what it means to be a hypocrite, to have the form and appearance of religion down but to have misplaced the essential heart of religion, the grace and mercy and humility, and replaced them with a new game where those with the highest score are the most righteous and therefore the most worthy.
Those of us in the know are also well aware that the Tax Collector is the despised and corrupt, pathetic creature who cheats his own people and sells out to the oppressors in doing so. Furthermore we know enough about the Jesus sayings to know that Jesus often chooses the most despised as the example for what is truly righteous shattering the common wisdom’s rules of engagement and scorekeeping every time. For what is Jesus saying if he is not saying that in this case it is not the worthy Pharisee who is most worthy but the unworthy Tax Collector who is most worthy and he is most worthy because he is aware of his unworthiness. This is what the Pharisees have missed somehow, their own unworthiness, because in the game that keeps score they are the winners not the losers.
But I wonder. Is it so simple? Could it also not be true that the Pharisees are well aware of their unworthiness, so aware in fact that they have buried it deep, so deep that they may have forgotten their whole game is founded on fear, the unhealthy fear that they are unworthy and need the assurance that they are worthy just like everybody else but have found a way to assure themselves that they are worthy, more worthy than others because surely if there is someone who is less worthy, we are then more worthy by simple logic. You can just do the math.
And the tax collector, who may escape our scrutiny because he is so pathetic and does seem genuinely sorry for what he has done, did you notice that there is no indication in this story that he going to actually change his ways after this heartfelt confession. Remember Zaccheus? He was a tax collector, too. He actually made reparations. There is no reason to believe that is what is going to happen here. It would not be easy for the tax collector to change because he is getting rich as a tax collector. It may be his only chance to get rich. If he is not the tax collector someone else will do it and he will be the one getting cheated rather than doing the cheating.
I am reminded of that other brilliant word from Jesus, the one where Jesus asks is it better to say you will do the right thing and then not do it or to refuse to do the right then and then do it after all?
Maybe there is more to this than just choosing between the Pharisees who make excellent church members by the way because they do what they are supposed to do - they tithe, they attend worship, they pray whether they mean it or not or even know what it means, they play by the rules, (unfortunately sometimes, in keeping score, hurting each other, but we are used to that in church by now, aren’t we?) or choosing the tax collector who has done all the wrong things, who has hurt many by his actions, who stays away from the worshiping community for any number of reasons, who cannot be trusted, and is now sorry. Indeed his heart is broken. Perhaps there is more hope for him but who knows? Perhaps the choice is a choice between a heart as hard as stone or one that has been shattered into pieces. And what kind of choice is that?
Or maybe Jesus had a bigger and deeper message than a simple choice. Maybe this is about the fact that no matter how we each act it out we are all victims of the felt need to justify our existence, to prove our worth. We fear our unworthiness which we suspect is a deal breaker. Having read many papers of those coming for ordination who are trying to convince me of their worthiness, I can tell you that it is rare when someone writes of their unworthiness which is understandable given the situation, but when they do, I take notice, because it seems to me, after all these years, that until we know our unworthiness we can never know our true worth and we don’t usually go there until we can trust God enough to love us as we really are in all our glorious unworthiness. Only love can break our hearts. Only when we know we are loved will we dare to let our hearts be broken so that they can finally be healed. It is one thing to claim and pretend worthiness by our own games. It is quite another to experience the worthiness of God’s gracious and merciful love. Only then are we really free to love one another, perhaps because only then do we know what love is.
Humility is to know who we are, yes, our flaws and failures fully revealed, but it also to know that who we are is loved by God and always has been and always will be. Love is what makes the unworthy worthy. Whose unworthiness is most worthy then?
They whose unworthiness is most worthy are those who trust that they are loved for who they are and are now ready to become who they will be. In short all those who have surrendered their good works and their misdeeds, all their perceived worthiness and unworthiness, all their success and failure, all their gains and losses, to God’s love and grace and seek nothing more than to love God and God’s creation in each new day come what may.
Whether we come full of ourselves like the Pharisee in this story and need to be emptied or empty like the tax collector and need to be filled we are met where we are in the story and offered new life in the grace of God. Whether we are the Pharisee who is afraid to face his unworthiness or the tax collector who is afraid not to, there is healing for those who will let such love as this break our hearts and set us free.
Trust God to love you and loving you to make you worthy of the life that you have been given to live, free from comparisons to others, free from keeping score, a unique and beautiful gift to the hope of the world.
May we practice humility with grateful hearts, gentle and merciful in all our ways until we become the humble people who love God and all that God has made with each breath we take, the most worthy unworthy, forgiven and free, let loose on the world for the purpose of love. Amen.
