“Humility – Bowing Low”

Luke 18:9-14, Philippians 3:10 – Going With Jesus Series #5

August 21, 2005

First Presbyterian Church Carson City

Pastor Bruce Kochsmeier

      The Gospel; good news of Jesus Christ is often confusing to us because it seems so opposite to what we would do for ourselves.  This is most true when it comes to the discipline of humility.  An evidence of this is that we tend only to accept humility when necessary.  We seldom seek opportunities to be humbled.  And yet Jesus showed us that humility is an act; not just a virtue and it is a gift to be sought and lived with gratitude.    

      Recently I’ve been confronted with the gift of being humbled.  And as I have studied this concept and played it through in my own life I’ve begun to realize how utterly liberating it is to be humbled and to live in humility.  But I am also realizing that this is a journey of a lifetime.  Do I let God’s grace be enough or do I grumble that justice isn’t served?  Do I love someone and humble myself to serve them when they don’t deserve it?  If I do, I bless them and myself because I become a “friend of tax collectors”?

      Calling us to the gift of humility with this parable Jesus asks the Pharisee in us, “Who is the tax collector in your life?”  And at the same time Jesus asks the tax collector in us, “How do you need to be humbled so that you may receive and give God’s grace?  With this simply story Jesus asks, “Are you longing to be forgiven and graced, or proud of being right or self-sufficient?  If it is the latter we miss the whole point of the cross and the gift of Jesus Christ.  Humility is hope! 

      As Alan helped us see last week, grace is a matter of the heart, not the will or even the act on our part.  The tax collector knows he needs to be forgiven NOW and that he can’t effect this forgiveness with his act BEFORE his heart repents.  Do we want to be forgiven?  Are we willing to be humbled?

      The tax collector didn’t need; maybe didn’t want anyone to see him in the discipline of repentance.  He didn’t need applause.  He simply needed grace. 

      The Pharisee was ironically grateful that he was “so good” he didn’t need to ask for grace.  The tax collector knew he couldn’t be good enough and needed grace.  We can be both people, but the second one is the one who knows himself.  Do we know ourselves?  If we do we know we need grace.  Ironically it was the elder who didn’t know himself and couldn’t understand his need for grace.

      Our greatest weakness is our lack of humility and our abundance of pride.  Our greatest times as a people have been and are when we are literally and spiritually driven to our knees.  The problem is we get over it.  We fail to realize how right it is to STAY in this position when we get there.

      Recently, of the steroid scandal in baseball and in reference to the latest alleged user Alan said, and Rick Reilly echoed Alan in Sports Illustrated, “If he’d just said, “Yes I did it.  It was wrong.  I lied.  I am guilty” it would have been the greatest thing he could have done – greater than all his baseball accomplishments drugged our not.”  I agree with Alan.  From our leaders to the least conspicuous of us we all need to realize the power of humility because we all need the freedom to which humility leads.  But there is only one way to get there.

      I’m indebted to Chuck Swindoll for pointing out that in his eulogy for late President Ronald Reagan, the first President Bush told this story.  In 1981, Reagan was recovering from the gunshot wound he received during the assassination attempt.  Just days after the surgery that repaired his life-threatening injuries, his aides discovered him on his hands and knees in his hospital room, wiping water from the floor.  Bush said of Reagan, “He worried that his nurse would get in trouble.”

      Chuck Swindoll makes a literal and spiritual point, “How rarely would we imagine our president on his hands and knees cleaning up his own mess.  But that’s true humility.  Not merely a quality, but an action for which the most natural position is on all fours.”

      You see responsibility and humility run hand in hand.  When I am humble I will take responsibility even if it isn’t necessarily mine.  Jesus did.

      When we are filled with gratitude for what Jesus did for us we will be humble.  That is the story of the tax collector.  Rather than being grateful for his own accomplishments like the Pharisee, the tax collector acted in humility seeking the accomplishments of God toward us.     

      Everywhere we turn Jesus was LIVING and ACTING in humility; teaching us what it means to be whole by going low.  In the sermon on the mount, the first shall be last; the greatest will be the servant; the Lord of all washes the feet of the undeserving, Jesus gives himself up for US on the cross.

      We learn what humility really is by experiencing it again and again.  We say, “I’ve learned Lord.  Can I stop being humbled now?”  But when this is our attitude we haven’t truly let ourselves receive the gift of humility.  Often this is so because we fail to believe that God really cares most completely for us.  If we don’t believe this we won’t be humble, but will start looking out for ourselves.  But when we believe we are valued by God so much that he gave his Son up for us we will forget about ourselves in humility and seek those who do not know this powerful gift.  

      In Mark’s Gospel (2:4ff) we learn about a man who was lowered into the presence of Jesus.  Isn’t this you and me?  Don’t we need to be lowered into Jesus’ presence?  Isn’t this what Jesus is telling us through the act of the tax collector?  He knew that for all the power of the world as a tax collector; he couldn’t walk; he was crippled and couldn’t even start to EARN God’s favor without first begging for total mercy. 

      If we are ever going to be the people God created us to be; do the ministry he create us for, we will first and routinely need to be humbled in and by the presence of Jesus in our lives.  We all need to be lowered to Jesus.  We all need to have him wash our feet.  We all need to discover the power of giving ourselves away to his grace because we have nothing in our power that will take us into his presence.  And that’s all any of us needs – to be in the presence of God.

      Jesus never worried about getting ahead.  He was never anxious about being treated justly.  He knew who he was and whose he was and because of this he could live into the daily discipline of humility.  You can tell a lot about a person by how they live out the end of life.  Knowing his life was about to end at 33 Jesus did not lament or get anxious about the things he never got to do.  He just kept serving.  He never said, “This isn’t fair; no one recognized what a great guy I am; how compassionate and serving; the world never changed because of me.”  No Jesus never said any of this.  He simply humbled himself and gave away his life to the least deserving and the most open – to the tax collectors and sinners.

      When this life is over – and it WILL be over before any of us know it from the youngest to the oldest, NONE of us will stand before God saying, “I never got to be famous” or whatever.  We WILL say, “I wish I had served you more.  I wish I had given my life away to others more; the way YOU showed me.

      Our daughter Kate took us to a show in San Francisco last week that is a  Broadway production destined to become perhaps the greatest of our time.  It is ironically titled “Wicked”, ironically because in it the supposedly good are really more wicked than those who are called wicked.  Sound like the Pharisee and the tax collector?  “Wicked” is the story of the friendship between Glinda the good witch of the North and Elfaba the “wicked” witch of the East before Dorothy comes to Oz.  Without spoiling it for you I can tell you that in the end the humility of the supposedly wicked Elfaba transforms the shallow Glinda and in grateful humility she sings, “Because I knew you I have been changed for the better.”

      Jesus Christ the God of the universe came into the world came into the world, laid aside his Godly power and showed us that the one power we can have; that we gave up in the garden when we traded it for pride; can be ours as we live in Him.  It is the power of humility against which no power on earth can stand.  The world didn’t understand Jesus’ humility and so we killed him.  But we can’t kill the power of humility.  It continues in the power of God’s Holy Spirit to change lives every day such that people who submit in humility to the reign of Jesus Christ in their whole lives can say with deep understanding, “Because I knew you I have been changed for the better.”

      Do you want the life you’ve always dreamed of?  Learn to live like Jesus.  Chuck Swindoll says to find out what this means, “Find the least desired position, the task no one else wants, the worst seat in the house, and claim it.  Make it yours.”