Monday, September 21, 2015

Sept 20, 2015 Sermon: "Humility: Liberation from Me-First Thinking"

Stephen Baldwin
OT: Psalm 1
NT: Mark 9.30-37
Humility: Liberation from Me-First Thinking

            Today, Dr. William Hood is a retired professor of art history at the Oberlin College in Ohio.  But in the late 1960s, he was a college student who had a chance encounter with a larger than life figure.  He tells a story about that encounter which was brought to my mind by this week’s reading from Mark. 
            In 1968, Hood was a college student in Atlanta.  He attended a small dinner party with a few friends.  To his great surprise, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta also attended.  When the Kings arrived, the whole room grew still.  After all, they were national figures, and here they were at a dinner party.  The college students were afraid to say a word, and the host was in the kitchen.  So naturally, it was the dog, a corgi, who greeted them first.  Coretta King knelt down to rub his belly while Martin took their coats to the closet.  They offered Coretta a drink, very well aware of the fact that she was the wife of a Baptist minister, so they made sure to say they had non-alcoholic options.  She said she’d have a Coke. 
            Martin returned to the room, and they offered him a drink as well.  He said, “Are there any Baptists here?” 
            They said, “No sir, we’re Episcopalians.” 
            “Well in that case,” said Martin, “I’ll have a scotch on the rocks!”  And Coretta said she’d have a sherry instead of that Coke. 
            Hood found himself amazed at the King’s humility.  Even though they were on television and in the papers, at the dinner party they were just like everyone else.  When the conversation turned serious, everyone looked to Martin for his views on the Vietnam War, poverty, and race.  But he didn’t want the conversation to be about him and his work.  Instead, he turned to Hood—a young man he’d only met that night, a college student he would never see again, looked him directly in the eye, and said, “Tell me what you’re studying and why.”  And then he listened. 
As Hood tells it, King looked at him with a keen intensity that let him know he was actually listening, caring, and wanting to know who this young man was and what he intended to do with his life.  He described the humility he saw in King as a kind of energy that had a liberating effect on everyone in the room. 
            Who are some of the most humble people you’ve known in your life?  Seriously, I want to know.  Tell us.  Inspire us!  Make those humble souls blush by naming them! 
            Now think about that person you mentioned or thought about.  What made them humble?  It’s sort of hard to describe humility.  You know it when you see it, but it’s hard to describe positively.  Jesus describes humility this way: "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." 
            If you’ve grown up in church, you’ve heard that same idea hundreds of times.  The first will be last…and the last will be first.  But what did Jesus mean by that in his culture?  Everybody knew who the “first” were.  The wealthy.  There was no middle class in Jesus’ day.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  In his day, there were the landowners and everyone else.  The 1% owned everything, including the other 99% of the population.  There was no Galilean Dream where you could work your way up out of poverty if you got a corporate job and invested your money.  So the first were the select few wealthy landowners, and the last was everybody else.  Jesus’ message, in that world, was that whoever wants to be first must be last of all.  Why would Jesus preach that to his disciples?  What would be so important about humility? 
            Because their society viewed wealth as an indication of importance, and he turned that idea on its head.  For Jesus, putting others before yourself is what really makes your important.  Humility.  If you were rich, you could be first in God’s eyes by serving your less fortunate brothers and sisters.  And if you were the 99% who was always lasts in this life, you could be first too…by humbly serving your neighbors.  In that way, Jesus’ message was for everyone in every circumstance.  The humility he preached knew no bounds whatsoever. 
            He even practiced it himself!  When he healed someone, what did he tell them?  “Please don’t say anything about this to anyone else.  There’s no need to call attention.”  When he’d had a long day and would rather just take a nap but someone came to him with a sick little girl, what did he do?  He put the nap on hold and healed the child. 
            This week I read a definition of humility in Psychology Today, and it said this:  Humility is a state of freedom from me-first thinking, which our culture teaches us to do at every possible turn.  A state of freedom from me-first thinking.  Does that sound good to you?  Sounds great to me.            
            Remember Hood in the room with King…where he said King’s humility had a liberating effect on him…did the humility of your heroes have a liberating effect on you?  Did it make you feel like anything was possible? 
            I’ve been thinking this week…what if the church was more humble?  What if we as a people, as an institution, were liberated from me-first thinking?  It’s no secret that most of our churches were built for three or four times the people who attend today.  We argue all the time about why that is.  Is it because we’ve taken stands on social issues?  Or because we’ve failed to speak up people are hurting?  Is it because people are just too busy these days?  Or is it because we’re too busy taking care of aging buildings to do ministry?  I think it’s much simpler than that.  We’ve been too busy trying to be first instead of being last. 
            Our call is not to be the biggest or the best or the most attractive.  Our call is not to be the most glitzy or shiny church on the block.  Our call is not to be the “it” church.  Doesn’t it feel liberating to have that weight lifted from your shoulders?  It allows you to relax and be who you were called to be.  Last! 
            Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American theologian, taught that humility was an ethic.  That infers it’s not a choice you make but a constant series of choices you make over a long period of time.  A series of habits strung together.  A pattern…with a surprising result. 
            The surprising result of humility is not meek, mild, lowliness.  The humble are not weak.  Bring back to mind that example of humility you mentioned or thought of before.  That was not a self-conscious, weak person, was it?  Our society thinks of humility in those terms, but they couldn’t be more wrong.  The humble are confident.  The humble are liberated.  They have peace of mind and heart.  Like a child who will dance to their heart’s delight even when everyone is watching, the humility of Christ liberates each of us to be first in God’s eyes.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.   

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