18th Sunday after Pentecost, October 1, A+D
2023
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches, Custer
and Hill City, SD
Uplifting Humility – Matthew 21:23-27 and Philippians 2:1-10
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And so, maybe we would like to focus on an uplifting text, some topic like faith, or hope, or love. But as so much of the Bible does, our readings today drive us first toward humility. Which ends well, because the Lord lifts up the humble. Christ Jesus humbled Himself, making Himself nothing. And Paul tells us to have the mind of Christ; that is Paul tells us to be humble. We might prefer to talk about faith, hope and love, but humility is the first necessary trait for Christians, because we are truly lowly and humble. Even more, humility is essential to Jesus, to His identity, to His work, to His life.
Humility is proper for you and me. But Jesus didn’t need to be humble. He knew it wasn’t robbery, that it wasn’t improper for Him to declare Himself equal with God, because He was God. He is God, still. All glory, laud and honor, forever and ever, to the Man, Jesus. Jesus affirmed His Godly authority, various times, including the many “I AM” statements of John’s Gospel, which led the Jews to want to stone Him for blasphemy, for applying God’s personal Name to Himself. Jesus also showed His Godly power over the creation through many miracles, and accepted the praise and worship of people around Him, who, through these miracles, recognized He was the Lord God come down from heaven. For Jesus to present Himself as God was no robbery, no proud theft of Godly status. Jesus is God.
But He often hides this truth, often deflecting, as in His debate with the Chief Priests and Elders this morning. Any student of the Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms knows who Jesus has to be. Unless all His work and ministry were fraudulent. Unless all those clean-skinned lepers and suddenly walking cripples had been faking it all along. Who else but God could perform miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding thousands from a few loaves and fish? Who else but God could know the hidden thoughts and feelings in the hearts of men? Who else but God could preach with perfect authority? That Jesus has to be God is obvious to anyone familiar with the Scriptures. But the Chief Priests and Elders refuse to acknowledge Jesus. Instead, they try to trap Him in His words. So, for a moment at least, Jesus is more cagey than humble.
The setting for our Gospel reading is the
first Holy Week, just days before Good Friday.
Jesus has accepted the worshipful praise of the crowds at His Palm
Sunday entrance to Jerusalem, and has driven the moneychangers out of the
Temple, as if He owned the place. The
Chief Priests and Elders want to know where Jesus gets off doing these things, who
He thinks He is, from what Source He claims authority. They hope that Jesus will proudly and
publicly claim to have authority as God, and so give them a clear reason to
arrest Him. Because according to Jewish
law, any human being claiming to be God should be stoned. Unless of course He is God. But the Chief Priests and Elders reject that
entirely. They will not believe. Instead they fear Jesus, and at the same time
proudly oppose Him.
But these Jewish elite have a problem, because they are a conquered people. They are not allowed by their Roman overlords to stone anyone. So, arresting Jesus and turning Him over to Pontius Pilate is the next best thing.
It wasn’t quite time for that, so Jesus turns the tables. “Tell you what,” He says, “You fellas tell me where John the Baptist got his authority to preach and baptize, and then I’ll tell you where I get mine.” Which is a cunning reply. The Priests and Elders don’t want to give John credit for being a real, called-by-God prophet, but they are also afraid to deny it. Because the crowds loved John, who had recently been killed by Herod. The commoners might riot if the Priests and Elders were to deny that John’s authority and call came from God. So they punt, replying, “We don’t know.” In return, Jesus declines to name the Source of His authority. Pretty clever on the part of our Lord. Not prideful, yet not exactly humble.
Of course, the many times Jesus, through His words and actions, did make clear His divine authority and power, He always did so in a humble way. His great miracles were never in service of Himself, but always for others. His words glorified His Father in heaven, not Jesus of Nazareth. His efforts always sought to reveal truth, not win popularity. Jesus humbled Himself, constantly, and so, as the Christ is humble, Christians are also humble. Humility is a necessary character trait for those who follow Jesus.
But humility is a problem for you, isn’t it? It is for me. Being humble is a constant problem for most of us, every day. Now, we liturgical Lutherans should be ahead of the game a bit, since we quite regularly confess our sinfulness and need for salvation in crystal clear words of humility: I a poor miserable sinner, confess unto You… We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, … and we justly deserve Your temporal and eternal punishment. God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Humble words. It is good that we regularly confess our sins and our sinfulness this way, since we are sinners. Even more, it is wonderful to confess our sins, because when we do, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Still, humility comes hard, especially today, living as we do in a proudly self-infatuated world.
Humility has never been popular. But it’s never been more unpopular than in 21st century America. The vast majority of the proclamation you and I hear day after day comes from voices that consider humility a temporary crutch at best, needed only when you’ve messed up big time. A humble face is needed only to smooth over your embarrassments until you’re ready to seize the moment and scramble to the top of the heap again. Maybe you remember the rise and fall of the golfer, Tiger Woods. For a decade he appeared to be the perfect combination of skill, determination and pride, dominating his chosen sport like no one ever had. His disdain for the mere humans he competed with always seemed to be just below the surface. Millions of people became fans of a game that’s hardly a sport, not because golf changed, but because Tiger’s proud domination captivated us. We loved to watch him.
Then came the revelation of another Tiger, undisciplined, hurtful, perverse. Pride feeds on adulation and fear, both of which Tiger’s fall destroyed. He was revealeed to be a mere human, a deeply flawed human. So, he checked himself into the Celebrity Recovery Program, complete with the somber news conference, the biting of the lower lip, the display of public humility. Maybe Tiger’s humble show was real; I pray that it was. In the years since, through some ups and downs, he has seemed to be a different person. But typically, such staged public humility doesn’t last. Usually, it’s just a necessary step in a plan to get back on top, to be number one again, proud and victorious.
You and I may not have as frightening a level of pride as some big celebrity. But we tend to handle sin and especially public embarrassment for sin in the same way. Humility is not popular. We don’t like confessing our flaws and our failures. Our culture doesn’t embrace it. Humility doesn’t sell. Nobody’s buying it. Nobody really wants it. We like to be proud. We are encouraged to take pride in ourselves, self-esteem being a regular subject in school at every level, taught along with, or even pushing aside topics like reading, math and science. Being proud of yourself, no matter what that might mean, no matter how you live, such self-pride is the highest virtue in our popular culture today.
But we Christians can’t really point fingers. We can be just as bad. We especially like it when our religion puffs us up. The most popular preachers in America, your Joel Osteens, Rick Warrens and Bill Hybels, do not gather their followings by consistently pointing out your sin and smallness. Megachurches more often grow by puffing you up, to make you believe in yourself, so that you will feel good and achieve great things, maybe even achieve your best life now, a life you can be proud of.
Faith in yourself might make you a better person in this life, but it will not make you a Christian. Christians put their faith in Jesus, for this life, yes, but faith especially keeps an eye on that best life, still to come, with God in heaven. It’s not just celebrity preachers, of course. What megachurches achieve, mini-churches and their pastors are tempted to imitate. By our nature we prefer to feed our spirits with anything but God’s truth. A church where God’s Law and Gospel are rightly preached will not be very popular with the world, nor perhaps with us, even though we claim to be followers of Jesus.
And even if we hear God’s unvarnished truth for an hour on Sunday, we have dozens of free hours to feed our prideful spirits. We could devote inordinate amounts of time to sports, whether your kids’ sports, or your hunting, or the NFL. We could devote ourselves to building up a business, fixing up a home, or investing for retirement. Seven days a week, there’s always more work to do to get ahead. Church leaders are susceptible to turning Christian ministry into a numbers contest, reaching out in order to feed the ego, instead of to save sinners. And the first step in an ego-feeding ministry is to get rid of all that harsh sin and crucifixion talk, which isn’t very seeker friendly.
If we pursue these things, if we make self-fulfillment our religion, we may feel pretty good, most of the time. For a while at least. There’s just one problem: you and I and our loved ones will not find forgiveness in a sports arena, nor in a successful business, not in a beautiful home, nor even in a glowing church statistical report. When guilt and sin and failure conspire to burst our bubbles, neither your 401K, nor the Minnesota Vikings, nor the most impressive church attendance stats in town, none of these have the authority to forgive our sins and rescue us from destruction.
Repent. You don’t need to repent of having fun. You don’t need to repent of trying hard to do well in life. But do repent of making a false god of your earthly life and your achievements and your pleasure, because that’s a dead end.
Literally, a proud life spent seeking the self is a dead end. I don’t just mean a coffin and a hearse in a few years or decades, but rather an eternal existence spent apart from God and every good thing. For God is the source of every good thing, even the good things we tend to make into idols. That is the biggest, saddest irony, that we take good gifts from God and turn them into idols, false gods to which we give our full attention, and so cut ourselves off from the true God, both today and forever.
Repent, and have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, and did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, nevertheless made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected one, is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Christ Jesus, the eternal King of heaven, humbled Himself, that your sins be forgiven. And they are! Believe in Him. He humbled Himself, that you might share His good Name. And you do, because He put His Name on you in your Baptism. You have been called through Water and the Word into the family of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, called into God’s family through Christ. This is why you are called Christians, Christians who are to be proud of this: that Jesus has humbled Himself, for you, to remove your guilt and your sin.
Boast in Jesus, who humbled Himself, so that He can one day lift you up to where He is right now, at God’s right hand in glory. Your humble Savior is there, right now, preparing a place for you. And He is also here with you, helping you to know that true joy is found not in worldly pride and popularity, but in the amazing Good News that you are precious to the Lord. True happiness comes from being a beloved member of God’s family.
Be proud of Jesus, and rejoice in His humility, which is your glory, and your life, today, and forever and ever, Amen.
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