Lent, a humbling reminder

Lent is a season of reflection. It comes from an Old English word meaning "a lengthening." As the days of spring become longer, nature sings a song of renewed life, energy and growth.

During Lent we Christians are called upon to reflect together on the final weeks of Christ's ministry. We remember his betrayal, arrest and suffering upon the cross. Lent is a time for us to reflect, as well, on our own discipleship. It examines with the forensic skill of a pathologist our own motivations in serving the Messiah. Like a deep sea fisherman plunging to the coral reef below, we, too, plunge below the surface and examine who we are and why we are here in God's world.

I have come to look at the Season of Lent as a Season of Grace. Lent invites us to reflect our our lives and to prepare for the holiest days of Christendom. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we came from nothing and we will return to nothing when we die. It is a reminder that our righteousness is nothing.

This journey of Lent is a path that leads to the cross and we begin it appropriately enough on Ash Wednesday. On this day many churches observe the tradition of distributing ashes on the foreheads of the worshipers. It's an ancient practice, reflecting the traditions of the Old Testament where people put on sackcloth and used ashes as an outward sign of repentance. The ashes were to remind them of their inward and heartfelt sorrow and repentance for the sin that could only lead to separation from God and death. And ashes can be a symbol for us as well, not only of our sorrow and repentance, but also of the certain mark of death that we each bear upon our foreheads.

The sobering thought is, however, that whether we bear the ashes on our foreheads or not, we are all marked; we all carry the sign of our sinful condition. The Bible tells us, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." And "the wages of sin is death." As Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden, God makes it clear when God says, "Dust you are and to dust you shall return." Those same words echo each time we stand at a grave in the cemetery when the Scripture is read which says, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

In a few moments I will invite you to come to the front so that I can make the sign of the cross on your forehead with palm ashes. I will say to you “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.”

This is a powerful reminder that God has called us out of our sin into a relationship with him. He has called us to be faithful to him. We bring nothing but ourselves into this relationship. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we are transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Our scripture this evening paints a contrasting picture between pride and humility.

Pride

Pride says “I’ve got it handled, I can do this.” It says “well at least I’m not like that other person.”

C.S. Lewis aid that pride is a “cancer that eats up the very possibility of love, or even common sense."

Webster calls pride, vanity, conceit, narcissism, unreasonable delight in one's position or deeds.

Is pride a virtue or vice? Which is it in our country? I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud to be a parent. I'm especially proud to be a grandparent. I’m proud to be an Elder in the Church of the Nazarene. When I rejoice in those events of life am I committing a deadly sin or embracing a worthy virtue?

A child that gets a pat on the back for doing a lesson well is receiving worthy praise. Families are smart to be mutual admiration societies. Of all the places in the world we ought to be able to go and get a hug and a word of encouragement and some sense of affirmation to make it through the day, we ought to be able to go home and find those kinds of things. Self-respect is one thing. Self-infatuation is another.

A child that gets a pat on the back for doing a lesson well is receiving worthy praise. Families are smart to be mutual admiration societies. Of all the places in the world we ought to be able to go and get a hug and a word of encouragement and some sense of affirmation to make it through the day, we ought to be able to go home and find those kinds of things. Self-respect is one thing. Self-infatuation is another.

Pride is somehow this deep inner part of ourselves that always has the desire to be better than others. It germinates in the swamps of comparison and competition.

Jesus tells us a parable, a story. Two men went to the temple one day to pray. This was a normal thing to do in Jesus day. There where prescribed times to go and pray during the day, 9 am and 3 pm. One of the men was a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders who faithfully followed the law down to the smallest detail. The other man was a tax collector. These people weren’t like our IRS agents. These people represented the Roman government. They extorted extra money out the people. They got rich on the backs of the poor people.

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 26: Luke Learning Humility

Both were sincere and devout. As a matter of fact, one kept the law scrupulously, or thought he did. The other was in a profession in which extortion and dishonesty were expected. It’s very unfair that the man of such exemplary behavior is not acceptable, while the one with the questionable vocation is. The Pharisee had everything, except the one essential thing. The publican had nothing but the one essential quality—which is a sense of his own unworthiness and his need for God’s grace.

Both men went to the temple to pray. Look at verses 11 and 12

Both men went to the temple to pray. Look at verses 11 and 12

Luke 18:11–12 CEB

11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself with these words, ‘God, I thank you that I’m not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.’

What's happening here? It's one of those straightforward little parables that really doesn't need a sermon around it. You can just read it and get it. The Bible says “He prayed about himself saying these words." I think that's a revealing little statement. He prayed about himself about who he was. He's praying, or is he? Is he talking to God who knows all things or to himself who needs to prove all things?

So, two men went to church one day. Two men went to pray. One says to himself, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get" ().

What's happening here? It's one of those straightforward little parables that really doesn't need a sermon around it. You can just read it and get it. The Bible says “He prayed to himself saying these words." I think that's a revealing little statement. He prayed to himself about who he was. He's praying, or is he? Is he talking to God who knows all things or to himself who needs to prove all things?

What has this tax collector got to do with this Pharisee's righteousness? What is he trying to prove? Is he trying to prove something to himself, trying to help himself out a little bit? It's that stuff that pride is made of, that inner need that we have again and again always to be in comparison with somebody else. “I'm better than," or “I'm worse than," or “I wish I could make up to…". You know what that's like. It lingers in the human soul.

C.S. Lewis once said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and of course as long as you are looking down, you cannot find God because God is always above you." The need to compare. Why?

I may not be the best person in the world, but I'm better than the hypocrites up at your church." — Pride.

Our church preaches the real Gospel, believes the whole Bible, has no creed but Christ. — Pride.

Who are all these other sick people sitting in this waiting room? I'm glad I don't look as pitiful as they do! — Pride.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to save money when your neighbors keep buying things you cannot afford. — Pride.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to save money when your neighbors keep buying things you cannot afford. — Pride.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

We've got to find an antidote for pride. It's going to take some bulldozers to come in and just wipe the thing out so something better can be built in its place. Radical problems call for radical cures. Radical sin calls for extreme measures.

HUMILITY—the antidote for pride, an extreme spiritual makeover.

One of the finest statements of humility in the Bible is from Philippians, Chapter 2. We call it the Kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ in which he became one among us. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" is how Paul starts. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." That's humility.

Humility comes when you know who you are. You are a child of God. Equality with God is not something to be grasped. We are created in the image of God. We are not God. It seems to me that the human race fundamentally is sort of ticked off that we are not God. It's the very stuff that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden. There's something inside of us that would like to displace God and take God's place.

Bertrand Russell said, “Every man would like to be God if it were possible — some find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

Bertrand Russell said, “Every man would like to be God if it were possible — some find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

Humility begins when we know ourselves, not as doormats but children, children of God. Humility comes when we love our neighbors. They are sinners. So are we. We are not good people who occasionally make a mistake. We are lost sheep who err and stray from God's ways and follow too much the devices and desires of our own thought. Humility gives us new eyes with which to see the people around us.

The best definition of humility I know is ‘down to earth.' The word comes from ‘humus,' down to earth. Down to earth people know they have something in common with all of the people in the world.

Down to earth people understand that they are part of the human race. Down to earth people know that on a given day and a given moment I'm not any better than anybody else. Whenever we start thinking that we may be better than someone else, we can be sure that we are being acted upon, not by God, but by the devil.

Humility is being down to earth. It's time to join the human race. “Judge not," said Jesus, “for in the same way that you judge others, you will be judged." Tough words, hard words, humbling words. Helpful words.

Humility knows God. Not knows about God, but knows God. ‘Know' in the sense of being wedded to. Know God like a wife knows her husband. In the mystical union of marriage, two spirits become so united over the years that they are one. If you don't believe that observe the grief of a widow or widower at the death of a spouse, or sense the chaos and devastation when a long-time marriage ends in divorce. Two have become one. Know God like that!

When you know God that intimately, you will be delightedly humble, for you will no longer be thinking about yourself at all, only how to please your God. It's not announcing, it's falling in love with the Lord and knowing you're one with human beings and accepted as a beloved child of God. That is humility.

Humility is receiving mercy. The prayer of the tax collector is simple: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner." You can remember that, I can remember that. It's a prayer any of us can pray: Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.

God forgives sinners. A soldier asked an an old priest if God accepted repentance. The old man thought a moment and then replied “Tell me, dear friend, if your coat is torn, do you throw it away?" “No," replied the soldier, “I mend it and use it again." “Ah," said the priest, “if you are so careful about your coat, will not God be equally careful about his children?"

God's in the mending business. In our throw-away world, God wants to mend you, and make you new. He'll take these old broken souls of ours and make them new again. That's what mercy is about. That's what grace is about.

We receive Communion. We don't take communion, as we might grab a sandwich at McDonalds. We receive the sacrament, with hands wide open, as a child coming to a loving parent flings wide her arms to be picked up and held.

Come open-handed, needy, longing to be loved, not afraid to receive what we all desperately need — grace and forgiveness that leads to true humility and gratitude.

After all, the old prophet Micah was right.

Micah 6:8 CEB

8 He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.

Jesus said there in verse 14

‘What does the Lord require of us — but to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God?' ().

Luke 18:14 CEB

14 I tell you, this person went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee. All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.”

Luke: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition The Prayer of a Righteous Man

The only choice is whether we want God to be the one to humble us or we take that posture ourselves. His plan is to exalt us is a much better plan than ours could ever be.