Humility: a sermon

By Veronica Zundel

A story is told of the young St Francis, when he first got the call to serve God. His father felt he was disgracing the family by outrageous acts such as nursing lepers, and so tried numerous ways to stop him. Finally he got the bishop involved to try to persuade Francis to come back to his wealthy family. At this Francis took off all his clothes in front of the bishop, giving them back to his father and saying that from now on he didn’t want any part of the family wealth, but would own nothing. Some versions of the story have him doing this in the public square and standing naked before the whole town.

This is certainly a different way of ‘presenting your body as a living sacrifice’! But my question is, was this an act of humility on Francis’ part? Or was it an act of assertiveness, even public defiance? And are the two necessarily opposite?

Competitive humility

To answer that I want to tell another traditional story. The rabbi was praying in the synagogue, and he prostrated himself before the Torah scrolls which represented God’s word, and said ‘O Lord, I am nothing but a lowly worm’. Seeing this, the synagogue cantor decided to follow suit, and also prostrated himself, saying ‘Lord, I too am only a lowly worm’.

Then the synagogue caretaker joined them, beating his breast and crying ‘Lord, before you I am a mere worm.’ At which the rabbi turned to the cantor and said ‘Look who thinks he’s a worm now.’

When we think of humility, we tend to think it requires us to have a low self-image, a sort of ‘I’m the chief of sinners’ attitude. Of course the only possible answer to ‘I’m the chief of sinners’ is ‘No, I am’ which leads us into competitive humility to see who’s worth less than the other. We expect humility to be shown by always taking the smallest piece of cake, or saying ‘no’ whenever we are asked to do something public, claiming that we are much too useless to achieve anything.

We may also remember the Dickens character, Uriah Heep, who never lost an opportunity to say how ‘werry ‘umble’ he was, yet all the time he was scheming to gain power over others. Which showed in fact that he was anything but humble.

The Bible in fact is very aware of the danger of false humility, or competing to see who is the most humble. In Col 2:18, 23 we have this warning:

‘Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking... These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence’.

I think Paul is demonstrating here that the kind of humility that concentrates on externals, on how self-effacing we can be, is actually a form of pride a sort of ‘look how humble I am’ attitude.

So what is it?

If that kind of self-imposed humiliation is false humility, what’s true humility? Perhaps we can actually get further in understanding what true humility is by working out what its opposite is.

The traditional answer is pride. But then of course we need to know what pride is, and what it isn’t. I think Christians may have done a lot of harm over the ages by labelling any pleasure in one’s own achievements as pride. Surely it’s good to take a pride in your work, since that will make you put effort and creativity into it. It can also be positive to take pride in your children, if you have any, not because of how well you’ve brought them up, or the talents they may have inherited from you, but in order to show them that you value them and what they do.

After all the parent of a child with dyslexia may be really proud of that child learning to read a simple starter book even if it’s years behind what the other children are reading, because the parent knows how difficult that easy book was for her child. This is a very different thing from the pride that says ‘My child is already on Book 8’ with the implication of ‘I’m a better parent than you’. I believe that God, our heavenly parent, is sometimes proud of us and the extraordinary discoveries and inventions we have made in God’s world.

So if pride isn’t always the opposite of humility, what else could be? Is it self-confidence? But surely confidence in yourself is essential to being the person you’re meant to be? If we want to serve God, especially in any risky or pioneering way, we have to have confidence not only in God’s power to use us, but in our own power to respond to God’s call. Moses insisted to God that he couldn’t possibly give God’s message to the Israelites, because he had a stammer, but God wasn’t actually pleased with this response.

Is the opposite of humility assertiveness then? A lot of people might think so, but only because they are confusing assertiveness with aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is all about getting your own way, by force or by forcefulness of personality. Assertiveness is not about getting your own way, it is about making sure your voice is heard in any negotiation, along with all the other voices. In true assertiveness, the final decision may not in fact be what you wanted, but you accept it because you know your point of view has been considered.

In fact when we fail to be assertive and instead say something like ‘don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine’ we may in fact be adopting a passive-aggressive approach which manipulates others into feeling sorry for us. This is another kind of false humility.

The grass is greener

I want to suggest that, for me at least, the opposite of humility is envy. I have to admit this is a particular problem of mine. Envy of others can make me perpetually dissatisfied with my own life, my status and my achievements. Everyone else’s life is always better than mine. Envy, in fact, is a sort of photographic negative of pride: I believe myself entitled to what others have or can do, and that I ought really to be in their position. At the same time I attach low value to my own abilities, to the people I live with, to whatever life has served me up with.

I believe this helps us shed light on humility because it links humility with acceptance, both of the bad and of the good in our lives. Humility is what enables us to look reality in the face and find it neither better nor worse than our fantasies or our dreams, but just the material God has given us to work with. The Latin root of the word ‘humility’ is the same root that gives us ‘humus’, the soil that is the basis for all living things to grow. Humility is in a real sense ‘earthiness,’ a realism that makes us neither the chief of sinners nor the chief of saints. Humility reminds us that we are only human beings with all the limitations that comes with being human.

Biblical views

Does this view square out with biblical evidence? It would take too long to do a Cook’s tour through all the Old Testament references to ‘the humble’ or to humbling ourselves, so I just want to pick a couple of verses out of Mary’s song, the Magnificat. This poem is in some ways the last OT prophecy and also the first NT prophecy.

Here is what Mary says in Lk 1:46- 48:

‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.’

And in verse 52: ‘He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly’.

The word translated as ‘lowly’ here in the NRSV is given as ‘humble’ in other Bible translations, and I think this is the main meaning of ‘humble’ in the Old Testament: it means basically those of low social status, people who are not rich or politically powerful or educated - in fact what we now call ‘the salt of the earth’.

These are the people Mary claims that God has favoured by sending a saviour. People who are of no account in society have suddenly become the most important of all. So the angels appear to shepherds, who are one of the most despised groups in society of that time - sort of the used car salesmen of the Gospels.

How does Mary’s son use the word? In Matt. 11:29 Jesus applies it to himself:

‘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’. Here ‘humble’ seems to gain a meaning of ‘not expecting too much of others’, not burdening others with your ideals of how they should be. We could paraphrase it as ‘learn from me, for I am down to earth and easy to be with.’

Later on in the same Gospel, in Matt 23:12 he declares that ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted’. This is in the context of talking about the religious leaders of the time, who in his view wanted to use religion to gain social status. He is calling his disciples to be different from them. They should not seek to be the top dog but put themselves at the disposal of others, being the least of all and the servant of all.

Jesus’ example

Does that sound a bit like we’re back at the lowly worm approach? Jesus’ own example would suggest otherwise. If we look at his trial before Caiaphas, in Matt 26:59-65, we see a very different picture:

‘Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said, "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days.'" The high priest stood up and said, "Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?" But Jesus was silent. Then the high priest said to him, "I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God." Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven."‘

This doesn’t sound at all humble to me in the traditional sense. In fact Jesus is being pretty bold in his claims, though he only makes them in response to what Caiaphas suggests. However if we think of humility as not caring what others think of us, then he is indeed being humble. To those around he must have appeared to be either deluded or a dangerous revolutionary, or possibly both. Yet he is willing to open himself to ridicule, to be honest about who he knows himself to be, and not hide under the false humility of ‘Oh I’m nobody really’.

Could it be then that humility could sometimes mean calling attention to oneself, putting oneself forward, or letting oneself be put forward when circumstances require it? We’re not Jesus of course, and any claims we make for ourselves will be very different from his. But perhaps humility is shown when the not very confident pianist agrees to play for the church although he knows he will make mistakes; or when a bystander gets involved with an accident victim because she admits that she’s done first aid. Humility could be exposing oneself to the risk of failure, not just staying in the background.

Paul’s example

I think this is borne by the account in Acts 20:18-20 of Paul taking his farewell from the people of Ephesus :

‘When they came to him, he said to them: "You yourselves know how I lived among you the entire time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews. I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly and from house to house.’

This might sound like Paul boasting of his humility, but in fact he is saying that he didn’t let pride make him shrink from risky public preaching. Paul has put his neck out and been prepared to meet not only hostility but actual danger - and this in fact takes both courage and humility.

So if we look back at the passage we heard from Romans 12 at the beginning, although the word humility doesn’t appear in that passage, I think it’s all about humility. Paul tells us ‘not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.’ Now sober judgment may tell us we are not very good at one particular virtue or skill, but that actually we are moderately qualified in another which we should be making more use of. ‘In humility regard others better than yourselves’ (Phil 2.3) does not mean thinking yourself useless, but just acknowledging the virtues and abilities of others and treating their faults with compassion.

It’s interesting that Paul goes straight on to the metaphor of God’s people as a body, because I think this is about recognizing your appropriate place in relation to others. Pride thinks you are better than others, envy thinks others have it easier than you, but humility values both others and yourself. In terms of the body, you may not be the brain, but neither are you necessarily the armpit or any other less worthy part. In fact, even if you are the armpit, armpits are absolutely necessary, or the arms would be unable to move.

So humility is having a proper estimate of yourself, your role and abilities. It may mean being assertive where that is needed, or it may mean holding back when that’s appropriate. The state churches of the 16th century no doubt thought of Anabaptists as spiritually proud, because they chose to follow their individual consciences in faith. I think they were humble because they were willing to risk everything for the truth.