“The 3 H’s of Discipleship, Part 2. Humility: Opening  the Word” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, July 9, 2023, Year A / Pentecost 7 – Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 and Psalm 45:10-17 or Song of Solomon 2:8-13 • Zechariah 9:9-12 and Psalm 145:8-14 • Romans 7:15-25a • Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Have you ever noticed how much our expectations affect our perception? Social scientists from MIT have actually documented this. They will tell you that we make sense of what we perceive in the present based on our past experience. Normally, that’s a good thing. The challenge comes when we are confronted with something radically new and different, something that does not conform to our past experience.

This explains perfectly the skepticism that Jesus and John encounter. First, John emerges in the wilderness dressed like a raving lunatic preaching radical repentance. The skeptics conclude that he is possessed by a demon, closer to the devil than to God. They dismiss him and his message. Then Jesus shows up preaching good news and dining with some of Judea’s least respectable residents. The skeptics conclude that he is a glutton and a drunkard, more interested in hedonism than holiness. They dismiss him, too.

It makes us wonder who exactly are these skeptics and what are they expecting? Evidently, they are the experts, the ones people consider wise. In a word, they are pharisees. No one knows the Jewish law and how to interpret it better than they do.They have spent their lives studying what the law and the prophets say about the Messiah. From all those years of study and their daily experience judging others critically, they have concluded that neither John nor Jesus can possibly be from God. Neither John nor Jesus conforms to their expectations of the Messiah. And so, despite all their learned wisdom, they do not recognize God’s truth and presence directly in front of them. The Messiah is in their midst – staring them in the face, in fact – but their expectations blind them to his presence.

Much to our surprise, Jesus sees God’s wisdom at work here. God has chosen to reveal his truth to spiritual infants rather than religious elites. But who are these little ones of whom Jesus speaks? They are not children. They are adults of little means and low status. In that culture, they are as powerless and marginalized as children.
Nevertheless, Jesus invites these little ones to come to him. He promises to remove the heavy burdens they carry and replace them with the gentle yoke of his discipleship.

He says “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I have been wondering this week what is it about these little ones that makes them so deserving of God’s gift of self-revelation in Jesus. And then it hit me. Their hearts are just like his: gentle and humble. They have not become jaded by their own learning or status. They are not wise in their own eyes. As a consequence, they have the gift of humility.

But there is something more, something deeper. While the Pharisees hold up their worldly status as their own achievement, the little ones suffer no such delusions of self-made success. Because they are humble, their hearts are open. As a result, they are receptive to God’s grace. And grateful for it. 

What God gives them is nothing less than God’s very own self. Everything there is to know about God is embodied in Jesus. And here they are speaking with him, interacting with him, learning from him, in the flesh. They’ve done nothing to earn it except to keep their pride at bay. Don’t we all want that? Don’t we all want to experience God in our midst? Isn’t that what we ask for in prayer, what we look for in scripture, and what we hope for in worship?
The question is are we willing to keep our pride in check in order to cultivate a humble heart, open to accepting the gentle yoke of Jesus?

I daresay this is no easier for us today than it was for those in Jesus’ day. We all aspire to greater wisdom and greater accomplishment. And whether we acknowledge it or not, we aspire to greater status and greater importance. Just like the pharisees, we are tempted to let our pride inflate our egos. But true wisdom does not breed pride. It breeds humility, not hubris.

As a child, my mother made me memorize a German proverb that captures this notion perfectly. In German it goes like this, Nur wenige wissen, wie viel man wissen muss, um zu wissen, wie wenig man weiß.“  In English, that means: “Few know how much one must know in order to know how little one knows.” It is a call to high learning and high humility. 

Karl Barth and Paul Tillich would have understood that proverb perfectly, both in German and in English. Paul Tillich and Karl Barth are widely regarded as the greatest Protestant theologians of the last century. As religious experts, you could say they are the modern day equivalent of the pharisees. Tillich was a German Lutheran pastor who escaped the Nazis and taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Barth was a Swiss-German Lutheran pastor whose magnum opus, the 35-volume Church Dogmatics, contains 6 million words. It is often regarded as the single most important theological writing of the 20th century. In addition to all their famous, learned writings, however, neither one lost his childlike faith. Two brief anecdotes bear that out.

One day, someone asked Professor Tillich to define discipleship and evangelism. Without missing a beat, and instead of giving a long, complicated answer, he said “Oh, that’s easy. Evangelism is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”

A similar story is told about Karl Barth. During a lecture at the Rockefeller Chapel in Chicago, a student asked him if he could sum up his theology in a single sentence. He responded, “Yes - in the words of a song I learned at my mother's knee. 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'"

These are examples for us to follow.  Great wisdom leads not to pride, but to humility. Beggars thrilled to receive God’s grace and children whose hearts and minds are open to it.
It is often said, however, that the Church in the 21st century, particularly here in America, does not see itself as the home of child-like beggars helping one another find food. Instead, we are more prone to see ourselves as right when others are wrong.

In other words, we, too – all of us – have been infected with the disease of pride. In the words of another famous 20th century Christian writer, this is the greatest spiritual danger we face. C. S. Lewis said, “Make no mistake about it. Pride is the great sin. It is the devil’s most effective and destructive tool (because) pride leads to every other vice. . . . It is the complete anti-God state of mind (and) the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” 

Pride is downright sneaky. It deceives us. It appeals to what we so desperately want to believe about ourselves: that we are wiser, more important, and more righteous than we know ourselves to be. Even worse, pride inflates our opinion of ourselves in direct proportion to the reduction it makes in our regard for others. In other words, pride closes our minds and our hearts. And when it does, not only can we not receive the gift of God’s grace. But we are less and less able to share that gift with others.

But if we can keep our pride in check, reminding ourselves that all we are and all we have comes from God through Jesus Christ, then we can know better the power of God’s grace. And we can live it better. Friends, let’s do a little heart audit. How open is your heart? If it’s not as open as you might like it to be, has pride managed to creep in and crowd out some of your humility? To whom in your life could you show a bit more grace?

I’ll close with a story that Billy Graham once told about his experience of receiving grace. One day, he was driving through a small southern town. His mind was elsewhere and he was in a hurry. Suddenly, he noticed the lights of a police car behind him, pulling him over. The officer charged him with speeding and told him he would have to appear in court.

When he got there, the judge asked, "Guilty, or not guilty?" Graham pleaded guilty. The judge replied, "That'll be ten dollars -- one dollar for every mile you went over the limit." Then suddenly, the judge recognized him as the famous minister and preacher that he was. He paused, thought for a second, and said, "You have violated the law. The fine must be paid--but I am going to pay it for you." He took out a ten-dollar bill from his own wallet, paid the ticket and then took Graham out for a steak dinner!

The judge was a Christian who knew God’s grace. And he was passing it on. Friends, you and I can do the same. That is our vision here at SSPC: to be a grace-filled family of faith sharing Christ’s love with all. What that requires is humility. 

The question is: Can we learn to see ourselves as the child-like beggars we really are?

May it be so.