Humility

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on November 2, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, based on Matthew 23:1-12.

How many people attended the largest funeral you have ever attended?
1,000?
20,000?
100,000

What do you think your family might say if, after you had received your last rights lying on your death bed, thousands of people trooped through your hospital room touching your hands and feet with religious articles and asking you to remember them when you get to heaven?

Or how about if after you died they laid your body out in the church and a million people came to see it. Sick people were getting healed, sinners getting saved and there were so many people milling around that not even an archbishop could get close to the coffin?

What would it take to receive the following accolade during your funeral homily: “No prince of the Church or of the State could have a funeral such as this…” (Cardinal Villeneuve, speaking about Br. Andre. Pg. 135 in God’s Doorkeepers).

The person we are talking about, Br. Andre of Montreal, Canada, was neither a prince of the Church nor of the State, but a lowly doorkeeper at the College of Notre-Dame, someone who was so sickly, and had such modest gifts that when he tried to enter the Congregation of Holy Cross, which operated the college, all the brothers could think to do with him was to make him a doorkeeper and messenger boy – someone to go find the brothers or the students when they had visitors, someone to sort the mail, someone to run errands – and someone to pray.

And pray he did! This man of humble origins and gifts was a ‘prayin’ fool’. He would get up at 4:45 am to pray and stay up half the night praying after his chores were done late at night. He would become so engrossed in prayer, that he lost total awareness of his surroundings and the students at the school would make fun of him for being so oblivious.

His piety took the form of devotion to St. Joseph and he was largely responsible for the construction of a multi-million dollar Basilica dedicated to St. Joseph – yet this Br. Andre owned nothing. He lived in such simple surroundings that if he were around today someone would call Adult Protective Services on the school to get him better provisions.

And this same person of such humble circumstances became known for his piety and began to receive an amazing number of visitors, who would tell him their darkest secrets and ask him to pray for their sicknesses. Hundreds of them did in fact recover – often at a rate of more than one miraculous healing per day – to such an extent that crutches littered the walls and corridors of the basilica where Br. Andre prayed.

If he were alive today, somebody would surely try to hook him up with a television show, a multi-book publishing contract, a line of best-selling videos entitled, “Your Most Humble Self Now”, T-Shirts emblazoned with his picture and jeans pre-worn at the knees in imitation of the great man of prayer.

I hope, in this little bit of foolishness, that you can see what we’re up against when we compare ourselves to someone who is truly humble. I don’t know about you but when I think about God’s standard of Greatness, I think about someone like Br. Andre – or his contemporaries, the Italian Franciscan, Padre Pio of stigmata fame, or Solanus Casey, another doorkeeper/ healer similar to Br. Andre, whose academic gifts for theological study were so slight that the Roman Catholic church would not even allow him to preach full sermons or pronounce absolutions after hearing a confession. And of course, there is Mother Teresa, of blessed memory, who for many of us seemed to embody and personify Christ in her humility and faith.

These are examples of people that God says are truly Great. In God’s kingdom the truly Great are never loved for their great knowledge , fund-raising or administrative skills. No, they are known for the depth of their devotion to Christ and their absolute commitment to serving their fellow men. Jesus says it in our Gospel text today, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

St. Benedict’s Ladder of Humility.

St. Benedict used the example of Jacob’s Ladder to describe this phenomenon. …”if we wish to reach the highest peak of humility,” says Benedict, “we must, by our good deeds, set up a ladder like Jacob’s, upon which he saw angels climbing up and down. Without doubt, we should understand that climbing as showing us that we go up by humbling ourselves and down by praising ourselves.” RB. Chapter 7. “The Ladder represents our life in the temporal wolrd; the Lord has erected if for those of us possessing humility.” And the practice of humility demands discipline: “We may think of the sides of the ladder as our body and soul, the rungs as the steps of humility and discipline we must climb in our religious vocation.”

Benedict goes on to create the first Twelve-Step program. See what you think:

1) Obey all the commandments – never ignoring them, and fearing God in your heart.
2) Forget your own self-will; Do not please yourself, but follow the Lord’s example: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me”: (Jn. 6:38).
3) Love God and obediently submit to a superior in imitation of the Lord.
4) In obedience, patiently and quietly put up with everything inflicted on you.
5) Humbly confess and disclose to a superior (or Anam Cara) all the evil thoughts in your heart and evil acts you have carried out.
6) Accept all that is crude and harsh and consider yourself poor and worthless in it all.
7) Not only confess that you are inferior and a common wretch, but believe it deep in the depths of your heart.
8) Only do that which your superiors command.
9) Practice silence, only speaking when asked a question.
10) Restrain yourself from laughter and frivolity.
11) Speak gently, without jests, simply, seriously, tersely, rationally, and softly.
12) Show humility in your heart and your appearance and actions. Think of your sins, keep your head down, eyes on the ground and imagine you are on trial before God.

Benedict concludes this daunting list by saying, “When you have climbed all twelve steps, you will find that perfect love of God which casts out fear, by means of which everything you have observed anxiously before will now appear simple and natural. You will no longer act out of the fear of Hell, but for the love of Christ, out of good habits and with a pleasure derived of virtue. The Lord through the Holy Spirit will show this to you, cleansed of sin and vice.


I don’t know aobut you, but I’m not there. I’m nowhere near fulfilling this list. In fact, just the opposite. In the AMIA application questionnaire I recently completed, one of the questions was:

“Provide an honest evaluation of your life and character …:

I answered in part, “Before I became a Christian, my character could accurately be described in terms almost as stark as Romans chapter one; I was arrogant, boastful, self-centered, disobedient to parents and to all authority, self-willed, promiscuous, intemperate and ambitious, militant against God and disdainful of Christians.”

After becoming a Christian, God burned away my grosser sinfulness immediately, but you know what? Even after 30 years of submitting myself to God’s transforming process I still struggle with pride and self-centeredness – and there are times when I almost despair of ever overcoming these flaws. I’m very glad it is God who is at work in me, because if were only up to me, I would make very slight progress indeed.

Of course, Jesus is our great exemplar of humility. Consider the lyrics of this song, The Servant King by Graham Kendrick:


Verse 1
From heav'n You came helpless babe
Enter'd our world Your glory veil'd
Not to be served but to serve
And give Your life that we might live

Verse 2
There in the garden of tears
My heavy load He chose to bear
His heart with sorrow was torn
Yet not my will but Yours He said

Verse 3
Come see His hands and His feet
The scars that speak of sacrifice
Hands that flung stars into space
To cruel nails surrendered

Verse 4
So let us learn how to serve
And in our lives enthrone Him
Each other's needs to prefer
For it is Christ we're serving

Chorus:
This is our God the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King

This is a picture of true Humility. Not to be served but to serve. Not to call upon legions of angels in the time of dire struggle, but take the sins of the world; submitting to the cross for our sake, surrendering the same hands to cruel nails that flung starts into space. This is what it means to be truly humble.

The chorus of this song gives us the right response to Jesus’ gift of himself to us: to follow him, to bring our lives and all that we have - not just the tithe - but all to God as a daily offering of worship.

This is our high calling; the calling to lowly humility that imitates the Master, our Savior Jesus Christ.

And here’s The Acid Test: Forgiving our Enemies

Bishop John Rucyahana lost many family members during the genocide in Rwanda. When he returned to the country after the genocide, he was asked to serve as the chairman of Prison Fellowship and was invited to preach at one of the prisons that house some 110, 000 genocide related inmates nationwide. As a Christian and an evangelist he knew that the perpetrators of the crimes were guilty of great sin before the Lord and that they needed to repent of their sins or perish in the flames of hell.

He was in the middle of proclaiming this message at one of the prisons and the inmates started to cry aloud under conviction. At that moment he had a terrible crisis of faith himself. When he realized that the Holy Spirit was bringing people to faith in Christ, he was stopped cold in his tracks and could not bring himself to go on with the message.

Like Jonah, he knew that if they repented, the Lord would save them. He relates how he literally ran out of the meeting room where he was preaching, out of the prison and up onto the hill overlooking the prison.

“Tears were streaming down my face,” he says. “Pain was gripping my heart. I couldn’t believe the depth of anger I felt against them. It shocked me. It overwhelmed me.”

“They killed my niece, Madu,… and her mother, and her brother also. What was I doing preaching to their killers?”

“I tell you the pain was too great for me. I fell on my knees and wept. I thought I wanted those men to know Jesus, but it’s not true. I wanted them to pay. I opposed them, and I opposed the Lord. Whey was He reaching out to save those men? How could He forgive them for what they did to me and my family?”

“I could not stop the crying. I didn’t understand it. But I knew this truth: The confusion and pain was coming from within me. Bitterness had taken root. The desire for revenge was choking me. If anybody needed to run to Jesus and repent, it was me. I needed Jesus. I needed Him to forgive me. I was no different than the prisoners. I was locked behind bars of resentment and unforgiveness and I knew it.”

He goes on to tell how the Lord gave him the grace to forgive the killers of his family, realizing that the Lord forgave his enemies while he was still on the cross, while he was still in pain.

After this excruciating wrestling match with himself and with the Lord, John forgave his enemies and went back into the prison to finish preaching the message of salvation. Although it was terribly difficult and he still struggles with bitterness, yet his face lights up when he says, ‘You can’t believe it! The Lord is performing miracles in the prisons. We are seeing men and women cry out to the Lord like never before. They are coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ and then they’re becoming evangelists! They are winning fellow prisoners to Jesus. We are seeing repentance catch fire from prison to prison. It is true. It is miraculous. It is the glory of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is healing Rwanda from inside the prisons of the killers! Who would ever imagine that?” (Quoted in Never Silent by Thaddeus Barnum)

Friends, this is the picture of Humility par excellence – being able to forgive those who sinned against you – while you are still in pain!

Last week, when we were at the Anglican Awakening conference in Akron it became clear again to me that there is still much pain among us over the divisions that have torn us from our long time church homes, from our family members and our friends. We are angry at what has been done to us. I am angry at the heresy that has been tolerated and promulgated. But I also know that we have a huge challenge still remaining – to forgive those who have hurt us and despitefully used us.

You may be sitting there this morning thinking that you’re OK, that you don’t have that issue bothering you – and you may be right. But one thing I’m sure of is that someone somewhere has hurt you and that hurt still plagues you at some level.

Right now, I’d like to challenge us to humble ourselves like John Rucyhana did, to bring our hurts, bitterness and resentments before the Lord and let Him heal us. There are thousands of people in our Tri-State region that need God, just as the murders of Rwanda do, but we can’t really effectively take the gospel out to them unless we are well ourselves.

It’s also very important spiritually for us to be as well as we can be before we go to stand before God. Make it your goal to be so well – so known for your humility and Christlikeness, that when you die people will flock to your funeral and not even be able to get close to the casket for the crush of the crowd.

In order to give God some time to heal us, I’m going to ask you to take some moments and just be quiet now, asking the Lord to bring to mind any lingering hurt, pain or bitterness that you may be holding on to. I urge you to humble yourself and let it go right now. Let the Lord heal you so that you may be free…AMEN.