The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
The topic for today's readings seems to be PRIDE. It seems a good time, therefore, to do some thinking about exactly what pride means and why Scripture feels so strongly about it.
The Old Testament reading warns us against pride. The writer of Ecclesiasticus tells us that pride starts when we begin to forget and ignore God. That warps our perspective on life and opens us to the possibility of a whole variety of sin.
It's clear that this kind of pride that Scripture warns us about is not the same as the pride we feel in doing a good job, or the pride that leaps up in our heart when we hear the National Anthem and feel proud of our country, or the pride we have in our child's graduation or honor roll status or even in the baby's taking his first step. Those are legitimate feelings that can and should lead us to giving thanks to God. They are not bad. They are not the kind of pride that Scripture warns us about.
The kind of pride that the Bible warns us about is the kind that starts when we ignore the first four commandments. Remember what they are? I am the Lord your God...you shall have no other gods except ME. You shall not make gods of anything...no statues, nothing that you take to be more important than I am. Do not use my holy name in a casual or meaningless way, and do not invoke my name to bring evil upon others. Remember to worship me on the day each week that is set aside for worship and rest.
The acceptable kinds of pride do not go against these commandments. The good or acceptable kinds of pride encourage us to thank God for his help in our life. We thank God that we have the strength and intelligence and education to be able to do a good job, complete a difficult project. We can thank God that we live in America, that we are free and do not live under a tyrannical government. We can thank God for helping us to bring up this child, and that the child is now ready to start out to shape her own life. We can thank God that the baby is strong and healthy and is developing right on schedule. Good prides.
But the kind of pride that the writer of Ecclesiasticus warns us about is the kind that starts when we ignore God's commandments. We forget that HE is the Lord our God, and we put ourselves in his place...what WE want becomes the "right thing to do", and what GOD commands becomes irrelevant or unnecessary or unimportant. We make ourselves into a god, just as Adam and Eve tried to do when they ignored God's command and tried to put their own desires in his place. We no longer respect God's name, or use it carefully and only for good reasons. We ignore our religious duties and our responsibility to offer God his due worship. And in doing all this, we start sinning. We cannot help it. If we are gods, we become self-centered and selfish, and begin ignoring the welfare and the rights of others. We want that coat....okay, kill the guy wearing it and take the coat. We would like a car. Fine, help yourself to that car parked outside the store. We get mad at somebody, and call upon God to damn that person to hell. And so on.
Jesus' parable as told in the Gospel of Luke is an extension of this. Jesus tells us that one surefire way to avoid the sin of pride, and all the sins that spring from it, is to remember to live and behave humbly. Now in our culture, that word humble is almost a dirty word. It means, to people here and now, something like "make a doormat of yourself." But that is not its true meaning. If you look in the dictionary and do some word study, you will find that being humble is just plain being realistic. Humble means: I know my place. I know I'm not God. I know I am just an ordinary person with my share of gifts from God, but I am not God himself. So I will live my life, using my God-given gifts, and not pretend to be more than I am, or better than I am. I will be honest and say that I am a working class person. I work for my money; I'm not rich, and if my ancestors came to this country on the Mayflower, well, that's nice to know, but it doesn't make me any better than anybody else. I won't try to buy more than I can afford, and I won't buy things I don't need and can't use. I know that nothing but God can give me true peace, and I won't look for it in things or people other than God.
And, guess what? If we live humbly, we have a much easier time avoiding sin. A famous poet wrote:
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot.
One of the prophets, Micah, wrote a long discussion of humility and pride. President Kennedy was reading this in the Bible in his hotel room, the morning he was sworn in as President. Kennedy was so impressed with one verse that at the last minute, he added it to his speech, which he had carefully written out several days before. This is the verse that impressed President Kennedy so much:
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
That is in Micah chapter 6, verse 8, but it would be worth your while to read the whole book of Micah sometime...it's quite short...to help yourself understand what a big part the sin of pride played in the fall of Israel, long ago.
And so: like so many other parts of Scripture, today's readings make us face up to the fact that we have to make a choice. Is the Lord our God, or are we our own gods? Do we put the Lord first in our lives, or do we play the "I wanna, gimme" game? Do we share in God's love and care for others, or do we love only ourselves? Do be careful of your choice here; your future in heaven or hell depends on it. Amen.
