THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST August 29, 2004

I remember my mother saying, "Don’t get too big for your britches."

My doctor has said that too, more recently, but I think he is kind of a literalist.

Nevertheless, my reaction to both experiences was similar. It was shame.

My doctor wanted me to lose 4 more pounds, after I had already lost 10 pounds on my own initiative, but the result of his prodding was that I gained 3 pounds almost immediately.

I don’t remember the exact context for my mother’s statement. It was probably justified. But the way I took it expanded it beyond the field of its justification. It made me wary about claiming any special gifts or identity, wary of standing out too much in case I would get shot down. It sent me into a kind of hiding; not a true humility, but a kind of "cover" that cut me off from the reality checks on which true humility and self-esteem are based.

I don’t know whether it was just that comment, or the wide-ranging emotional environment that a comment like that symbolizes, or if maybe I just remember it that way, because it’s an issue I’ve struggled with a lot, and thought about a lot, especially this past week thinking about these lessons.

Both the Old Testament lessons and the Gospel reading today address the issue of arrogance and humility. It is a pretty tricky issue. Where is the line between true humility and the kind of "low self-esteem", the "inferiority complex" that psychologists say is at the heart of so much suffering?

Of course, arrogance can be as much of a problem as a sense of inferiority. We’ve see it a little in the Olympics, although maybe not as much as you might think ….the chest thumping, "we’re number one" chants, or the excuses of the poor losers. I think you see it more in the political realm where the powerful power of a great nation’s armies and the powerless power of the suicide bomber can turn arrogance very deadly.

We encourage it too. We see any admission of a mistake or uncertainty as a disqualifying weakness. We may say we don’t but it always seems to work out that way. There is fear all over the place in all this. I know there is fear in false humility, fear of being caught at being yourself, fear that the dream will vanish in the light. And there is even more fear behind arrogance, the bravado that compensates for a missing bravery, the identification with the act that hides the actor.

It begins in the beginning, like everything does. In the garden with God; Adam’s and Eve’s desire to be like God; the opening of the eyes; the awareness of good and evil. With that separation from everything else, that standing out that makes us human, we wanted to prove ourselves worthy, even outstanding. But remember even Jesus said, "No one is good, but God alone." We saw our nakedness. We saw our own vulnerability. We put on fig-leaf aprons and began the great lie.

We basically have it all reversed. We’re arrogant when we should be humble and cowardly when we should be proud. Each of us does stand out. Each of us is a unique miracle never to be duplicated in all the universe, in all eternity. Yet, for that very reason, we have no claim to superiority. There are no comparisons between people, between lives. We are not "better than." We just are.

It is like the Olympics again. I can understand winning and losing in swimming races and track races and soccer and softball. But when it comes to gymnastics or diving I don’t get it. Maybe there’s a sense that one person does better than the others, but the scores are a delusion, an attempt to quantify quality that just can’t be done. Life is much more like that than its is like any race or game. We do our own routine, and the degree of difficulty is totally individualized. We’re all doing the best that we can …. not that we couldn’t do better…..maybe.

And beyond that, of course, our achievements are never "ours" alone. That’s even true for the races and the games. There are no "self made" men or women. There’s a conditionality to all achievement that connects back in time and out in context in a web of dependency involving people and events and relationships way beyond our awareness, but definitely calling for our gratitude. It’s not just the people who help us who help us, who contribute to our success, or our genetic heritage, or our training and education. Each success is also somehow built on a failure. Each victory in the Olympics was dependent on a loss. Each new invention is dependent on prior ignorance. Each act of kindness is based on a preceding state of need. Light depends on darkness. That’s partly why Jesus says to love our enemies, because we wouldn’t be who we are without them. That’s why death on a cross leads to eternal life with God.

False pride and false humility both act as a denial of our humanity. "Humanity" and "humility" share the same root origin. They come from "humus" meaning ground, dirt, earth, soil, or ground. Dust to dust, earth to earth. Arrogance and false pride are a denial of death. We want to be like God. The serpent said to the woman, "You won’t die." False humility is a kind of playing dead so we won’t get caught and killed, so it amounts to the same thing.

But it is only in death, our return to the earth, our connection to earth, our true humanity in true humility, that we are firmly grounded. It’s the only solid ground on which to build, and building is what we are called to do, from the ground up; not focused on the upper stories, but on the next story, on our story. I think that’s really why the tower of Babel fell, not the language thing. They were only concerned with how high it was going, and not on the firmness of the foundation, or, even better yet, on the subterranean structure.

That brings me to Jesus who is the model for our humility and our humanity. He was in the form of God. (I’ll bet Mary never told him he was too big for his britches.) He was in the form of God, Philippians says, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, (resisting the fear-based arrogance of Adam’s grasping.) "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant," the emptiness contrasting with Adam’s nakedness. (The emptiness can be filled; the nakedness just calls for cover.) "And being found in human form", humble form, grounded, "He became obedient unto death," undergrounded….

I don’t think we appreciate the wideness of the gap this emptying bridges between God and human beings. How it’s more in this humility than in his exaltation that the uniqueness of Jesus is found.

Every religion has its "hero" figures, its miracle makers, its incarnate divinity. But Christians are offered a dead servant, a failed Messiah, because that’s precisely the place, the only place where we can meet God. We can only approach the heroic with arrogance or groveling. We can come to Jesus eye to eye, face to face, heart to heart. He knows us as we really are, waking and dreaming.

Mori Zaitsu has been sharing the writings of the Japanese Christian Shusaku Endo who tells the story of early Japanese Christians who were given the choice of stepping on an image of Jesus or of being killed. It was a serious crisis of conscience and courage, particularly for the European clergy who were seen by both friend and enemy as examples of faith. But one of them hears the voice of Jesus saying, "Go ahead, step on it. I am here to be trampled on." The shame of cowardice met the shame of the cross in the truth of redemption and grace.

In a book dealing with shame and recovery from addiction, Ernie Kurtz points out that while it is a good thing to be guiltless, it is not thought to be a good thing to be shameless. Maybe "shame" is just a sign that we are incomplete when we’re alone.

Maybe my problem wasn’t with my size, my assertions or dreams; maybe the problem was with my britches. Not, as St. Paul says, that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed in heavenly robes at the heavenly banquet.,

Friend, come up higher…..

Thanks be to God.