Trinity 3 – Humble seeking

1 St Peter 5:5b-11       St Luke 15:1-11

 

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another…
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God
so that at the proper time he may exalt you

 

Last Sunday we heard the Gospel invitation that God is making to every one of us to join the Great Banquet.  We reflected on some of our core desires that God’s banquet fulfills – joy, rest, to truly see and be seen by others, the desire to love and to be loved.  It is to enter into communion with God and with others on a deep level and that happens only as our love is perfected.

The rest of this Trinity season is about uncovering the obstacles in our souls to entering more fully into that Banquet God is preparing for us.

We return to considering the passions of the soul, something spoken of by Jesus and by the Apostles Paul, James, Peter and Jude in their letters.  Passions are thoughts, feelings and desires that come upon us.  They are called passions because we are passive in relation to them, we don’t bring them up, but they come upon us, we receive them.

Today and in the next 6 Sundays we will consider these passions and how they can be, not destroyed, but transformed for our good, to mirror Jesus in His perfect humanity.

This morning we consider the passion of pride, the passion from which all other passions spring forth.  That is the universal teaching of the Fathers of both the Christian East and West.  [Recall the quotation from St Gregory the Great in the Moralia in our Newsletter.]

The Epistle is more explicit about pride, referring to it several times.  But the Gospel doesn’t mention pride explicitly, how is pride and its antidote humility spoken of by Jesus today?

If we think about participation in the Great Banquet as the ideal for the human person to flourish, in community, seeing others and being seen, rejoicing and resting in fellowship, then this move away in the Gospel by one sheep from the flock of sheep is a descent.

It is disobedience, a wilful moving away from the One who will protect us and from the protection that comes from being a part of a flock.  But also it is to deny the goodness of that fellowship and the love of the Shepherd and the rest of the flock.  And this leaving of the sheep is the default position of every human being after the Fall of man.  It is to decide for ourselves what I will do, what is my purpose, and to pursue it despite the invitation to the great banquet.  This is the unveiling of pride.

And we might think it is revealed by a person leaving the Christian faith, or having no faith, that’s true.  But it could also be someone who appears devout on the outside, observing all the precepts of our religion outwardly but inwardly his or her heart has gone far from God.

We know it happens in small ways all the time when we sin outwardly.  But it could happen in a major way, as it did with the Pharisees, who were devout in their outward practice of the Jewish faith, yet inwardly they were far from God.  They did not bow before Jesus and rejoice that the Messiah has come, but sought to find fault with him, as they did in this morning’s Gospel where they grumbled because Jesus associated with sinners and ate with them.  They were proud, revealed by their self-righteousness.

Jesus told these three parables in response to their grumbling: the Lost sheep, the lost coin, and, right after today’s Gospel reading, the lost Prodigal Son.   Unlike the Pharisees and scribes who scorned sinners and would not eat with them, the Shepherd, the Woman and the Father did not give up on what was lost, or scorn them, or condemn them, but sought them out.  The Pharisees and scribes who heard this and understood Jesus’ point must have been humbled by the teaching.  Because despite their pride, Jesus didn’t scorn them or condemn them, (not at this point), but by teaching them, was seeking them out.

But how does the Shepherd and Woman of today’s Gospel find the sheep, the coin?  You would have to say by humbling themselves to seek out what was lost.  The Shepherd was of much greater value than one sheep, and the 99 much greater value than the one, yet he risks what he has and who he is to find what is lost.

And it is of course a parable of what the Son of God does in becoming incarnate to leave the legions of angels who are faithfully praising Him in heaven to seek out a lost humanity, humbling himself to take our nature upon him, born in a lowly stable, and then suffering further the humiliation of the Cross, in order to seek and find a fallen humanity.

God is seeking and finding the lost.  We are all lost, and he wants to gather us all up, for the Great Banquet.  And He is doing this one by one by one.

With St Paul it was a flash of light from heaven, needed to stop him in his tracks and bring him back to the Father.  With me it was a sudden awakening to my state of lostness in the midst of building a Buddhist retreat centre outside of Ottawa.  I remember the day well.  Some of you will have similar stories of being lost and then being found.

For those of you who have never been outside of the Church, you know this moving away in the countless moments where you were checked by the Holy Spirit when you were straying.  And for all of us here today, we experience that humbling by the light of Truth and Beauty that we encounter in moments of spiritually waking up every day as we ascend into the life of God, into the heavenly banquet.

Here’s a beautiful thing – how does God bring about this change in us?  God humbles himself to seek us out when we are proud.  His humility crumbles the walls of our pride.  This is what turns us towards Him.  The result is more joy in heaven.

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Our Epistle today points to this same theme – pride and humility – but in relation to our own search for others to increase the joy, the rest, the fellowship, in the life of heaven.

We don’t avoid those who are sinners – we receive and eat with them.  And to do so, we must “clothe ourselves, all of us, with humility towards one another.”

Strangely, as we humble ourselves before other people, we accord them dignity, and we are earnestly trying to find out who they are.  In this authentic search, our love gets past their walls of defence.  We are humbling ourselves, but in doing so, we are becoming like God.  Do you see there is an exaltation in this?  This is the way to grow ourselves, and to grow the Church, to humble ourselves when we seek out the lost, recognizing always ourselves as also being lost and yet found by God.

“There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”  Our focus should not be primarily on the 99 who are here but on those who are on the fringes, the one who is outside the Church at present.

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The Gospel speaks about God’s humbling of us, by His humble searching us out and putting us on his shoulders and bringing us back to the flock.  We were totally passive in that action.  Our faith, however feeble, is not our own doing, but God’s gift.  We’re all here because we’ve been humbled by God (unless we’ve become a Pharisee).

But the Epistle says that we, having been humbled by God, are to humble ourselves before others and before God.  So that is a kind of conscious effort on our part, an active humility.

St Peter says, Clothe yourselves… with humility before one another… [and] humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

That is a call to prayer…casting all your anxieties on him.  To ask God in prayer is to humble ourselves before Him.  [And so the focus of the Collect of the day.]  We should practice this daily…and so the idea of daily prayer…in part, is to keep us humble before God.

The spiritual ascent begins by addressing this foremost passion, pride, and calling us to practice humility continually.

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Finally, I was listening to lectures in the past few weeks by a psychologist on Narcissism, a psychological trait identified by the psychological profession, that some suffer with.  It’s interesting to listen from a Christian perspective to the insights of those approaching these troubles of the soul by psychologists.  Narcissists are particularly proud.

I was surprised by the lecturer who said he loved to be around “grandiose narcissists”, one of the subclasses.  He likes to be around them because they are full of ideas and spiritedness and want to be great and you can find yourself feeling a part of something greater.

And in saying this, I think he was pointing to something in this passion that is in fact good.  Each passion has its virtue when exercised properly.  We want people who are challenging the status quo, because they can make new things happen, they can move things forward.  We want people who know their abilities and use them to the great benefit of all.

Jesus Himself, we are told by Gabriel, “will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.” [St Luke 1:32]  Greatness is a good thing!  And we are called to be like Him, great!  As I’ve said in previous years, Mary, was the humblest of souls, [St Luke 1:38] chosen by God to take her part in undoing the pride of Adam and Eve, and yet she knew her value, that "all generations will call [her] blessed" [St Luke 1:48] – she had magnanimity, greatness of soul.  The apostles wanted to know who would be greatest in God’s kingdom and Jesus did not deny their desire to be great but told them how to be greatest: to become a servant of all.  Jesus inspired them for greatness – “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” [St Matthew 19:28]  That’s pretty heady stuff!  Think of Joseph, of David, of Daniel, of Mishach, Shedrach and Abednigo, of Mordecai, humbling themselves before God and then brought to positions of greatness in earthly kingdoms.  Think of the Prophets and their greatness.

Humility does not mean denying one’s gifts, but having a right knowledge of them and dedicating them to God’s glory.  It is seeing oneself as God sees you – not more than you are, and not less than you are.

“Humble yourselves…under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”  That’s the beginning of the spiritual ascent.  Pride is our greatest obstacle, the most confused passion we possess, and the passion that when rightly ordered will bring about great things.

Let us humble ourselves now as we prepare through repentance and faith to receive the gift of our Lord’s Body and Blood, that our lowly body (and all its passions) may be made like unto His glorious body. [Philip 3:21]

Amen +