“Be clothed with humility”
The humility of
God’s charity calls us to humility over and against our pride. Pride is that
grand delusion whereby we think we are sufficient unto ourselves, whereby we
think we stand in need of nothing but presume to be the center of everything.
The self-giving love of God stands altogether opposed to the
self-centeredness of our pride. It is our pride which stands utterly
opposed to God and to God’s ways with us. “For God resisteth the proud and
giveth grace to the humble.”
In the Gospel for
today, “all the publicans and sinners drew near to hear Jesus.” But
“the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying ‘This man receiveth sinners and
eateth with them’.” In other words, the Pharisees and Scribes -
the self-righteous in the pride of their religion - complain about the company
which Jesus keeps - the company of publicans and sinners. It is in relation to
this division between publicans and sinners, on the one hand, and
Pharisees and Scribes, on the other hand, that Jesus tells this parable.
Publicans are not
the keeper of pubs, but the collectors of taxes - taxes which belong to the
res publicae, the public things in the order and rule of the state. Now tax
collectors can hardly ever be regarded in a favourable light, but much less so
in the context of the Gospel. For then, they were seen as traitors to Israel
because they were co-operating with their foreign Roman overlords. And beyond
that, they were also seen as extortionists. The business of tax collection was
hired out by the Roman Government to local agents - Rome may have been the first
government to outsource taxing! They were given a quota which they had to
meet; anything above that was for themselves. Thus the publicans were out to
get whatever they could from an unwilling population. No-one could be more
despised than a publican.
Hardly respectable
company for a teacher of religion, or a least so the Pharisees and the Scribes
thought. Their complaint was that they were the worthy ones, the respectable
company with whom Jesus should be, not this rabble of unworthy “publicans and
sinners”. Their complaint reveals a feature of pride. It cuts us off from
others and from God. As Hagar Shipley Currie, in Margaret Laurence’s classic
novel The Stone Angel, puts it, “Pride was my wilderness”,
a wilderness in which we are lost to ourselves, to others and to God. There is
nothing more empty and more isolating than pride - the pride that is so
completely focused on oneself whether in boasting “how great I am” or in
whining “how poor, sad, mad and miserable I am.”
Jesus’ response is
to tell two stories - three actually - the story of the lost sheep, the story of
the lost coin, and the story which follows those two, the story of the lost or
prodigal son. The lesson is plain. Salvation is for those who need salvation,
for those who are lost. “There shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.”
To know oneself as a sinner is to stand in need of salvation, to be looking for
it and to be where it is proclaimed. To know oneself as such is itself an act
of humility, an act of the grace of God in one.
Jesus tells this to
the Pharisees and Scribes who, like the “publicans and sinners”, also
need repentance and salvation. But unlike the “publicans and sinners”
they don’t think that they need anything whatsoever. They stand and murmur
against Jesus in the pride of their self-righteousness, claiming a worthiness on
the basis of their observation of the law. Keeping the law, however, is not
their sin. Their sin is in despising the “publicans and sinners”, in
presuming their own self-sufficiency and in murmuring against the ways of God
with men in Jesus Christ.
The gospel shows us
that Jesus is the infinite charity of God towards us, reaching down to seek out
the lost, from the greatest to the least, and to draw us back out of the
wilderness to which our sins have exiled us, to bring us into the company which
we have forsaken. He is the humility of God’s charity. But in this reaching
down of God to us, there is also his reaching down in us. Humility is God’s
grace opening us out to the pattern of his love in us. It is the inner clothing
of the soul.
And it changes
everything. “Be subject to one another”, Peter tells us. How different
that is from the Pharisees and Scribes. They would stand over everything else -
lord it over us all. But if it is not so with God, then how can it be so with
one another? “Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud and
giveth grace to the humble.”
But being subject
to one another does not mean mindless submission. Humility must also mean a
confident openness to the truth which one has been given to see and a confident
willingness to act upon what one knows. Humility is not grovelling
subservience.
The point
theologically is the total primacy of God’s grace in the work of salvation. It
is not our worthiness but the infinite generosity of God that is at work for us
and in us. And this is something which we have to want if ever we will discover
how it is all God’s work in us. Pride can have no place with God for it stands
opposed to God and murmurs against God for the company he keeps. But the
company he keeps is you and me - sinners all, whether publicans or not. And if
we think that we are not sinners, then we exclude ourselves from his company and
presume to be better than one another. Such is not of God.
The lesson Jesus
teaches illustrates the gentle humility of God’s way with us even in the face of
the hardness of our proud hearts. He shows us the infinite extent of the
humility of his love for us in his seeking out the lost. And he shows us that
the way of his love must be his way in us.
He has reached down
to us in the lost wanderings of our ways, but he has reached down to us that he
might redeem us, that his humility might be both his example and the workings of
his grace in us, that he might be in our company - sinners all - and we in his
company - gracious in the sight of God by virtue of God’s reaching down to us.
Such is God’s humility towards us. Such is the humility with which we should
want to be clothed.
“Be clothed with humility”
