Courageously Humble
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
April 19, 2015
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Some years ago I attended a weekend long retreat for aspirants to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It was an opportunity to meet other people interested in the ministry and to listen to and ask questions of active and retired ministers about this most strange of vocations. There were also people from the UUA there to explain the rather daunting credentialing process.
At the closing worship for the retreat the Rev. Vann Knight gave a rousing sermon based on the temptation narrative in the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13)...this is the story where the devil taunts Jesus by questioning his identity and worth and then tempting him show off...to surrender himself to the worldly measures of power, status and worth and thus betray his calling. Jesus of course does not give in and the devil departs, frustrated.
The story of Jesus’ temptation is a story about calling, discernment, sacrifice, and faithfulness or devotion...all reasons why it was likely chosen as a text to preach from for aspiring ministers. The story, as you might imagine, also deals with pride or vanity, the topic of today’s sermon. For those who are counting this is part six of our seven part series on sin and specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins.
Pride as sin is described, in the Christian tradition, as “excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.”
Although rooted in theism, this understanding is pretty close to the understanding of sin we arrived at at the start of this series. Sin, we said, rather than being something we do or don’t do, is something that prevents us from seeing or knowing, we even described it as an obstruction, blocking some truth, especially about ourselves or others.
Still, to speak of pride as a sin is a tricky endeavor. Pride after all has its place. It can be a source of empowerment and solidarity for marginalized people, it can help inspire confidence and emotional well being, it can be playful or supportive, it can give us that extra boost to reach higher or further than we might otherwise and it can soften the impact when we fall short. A healthy sense of pride prevents us from being consumed by the fires of fear and loathing ablaze in the hearts and minds of humankind.
Here, in the United States the Fourth of July, just a few months away, (and indeed, Patriot’s Day tomorrow here in Massachusetts) is a pride-filled holiday for many, marked with fireworks, concerts, parades, and cookouts. It is a celebration of ideals as much as it is of a historical event, ideals that have become synonymous with the United States itself...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are ideals worth celebrating; ideals Americans can be proud of.
Yet, in recent weeks we’ve been reminded that the next presidential election is not too far off and already, more than I can stomach, I hear the vain rhetoric of American exceptionalism being shouted from the left and the right. For the most part, as in the recent past, the rhetoric seems condescending, cocky, and exclusionary. It seems less an expression of joy and celebration than one of defensiveness and fear.
“Hell”, wrote, the late William Sloane Coffin, “is truth seen too late.” The pride many people including politicians, have today in American exceptionalism, is not a celebration of the founding ideals of this nation, it is a stubborn or even fearful response to our failure to live up to those ideals throughout history...a defense against recognition of our interdependence, limitations, and shortcomings.
This is not to say that we have not had any progress or great moments in our relatively short history, indeed we have made progress towards realizing our ideals. Still, for many, if not most, the nation’s founding ideals have yet to be fully or equally extended, and for many more, they have been far too slow in being realized.
American exceptionalism is an example of how a healthy sense of pride can descend into excessive vanity. Pride as vanity seeks to project and protect an image of oneself as one wishes to be seen, not as one is. It is a deception rationalized by the fear or denial of one’s limitations and shortcomings. Increasingly, we stand as a nation hobbled by our own vanity, vulnerable to the temptation to proclaim or show off our might rather than shore up our ideals... choosing cowardice over courage.
Its easy, of course, to rail against the pride or vanity of nations, institutions, and others. It is quite another thing to recognize it in oneself. That’s what makes pride so insidious.
During my first semester of seminary, I engaged in a debate with a conservative Christian women from Virginia concerning the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. We did not see eye to eye, not even close.
At one point she said to me, “I don’t think you even believe this story is historically true.” To which I response, “That’s correct, I don’t...proudly adding, I’m not even sure Abraham was a historical figure...but it doesn’t matter,” I said, “the story still contains truth.” “Doesn’t matter?”, she said with palpable concern in her voice...”it most certainly does matter. If that story isn’t literally true, my whole faith would collapse.” Well that was it for me...after that day I thought I had this person all figured out. To me she was the poster child for the kind of unthinking, illogical, and rigid religion I wanted to avoid. “Thank God I’m a UU, I thought.” I was so proud.
Some time later she approached me after class and said, “I’m sorry.” Bewildered, I asked her, “Sorry about what?” “About Virginia, you know, the vote to ban same-sex marriage there.” She told me she had talked to her pastor and asked him to preach against the ban, saying so far as she was concerned it violated Jesus’ teachings. I thanked her. I walked away that night tremendously humbled...surrounded by the charred remains of my self-righteous assumption and flimsy pride. I had sacrificed the principles of my UU faith on the altar of vanity, I had faced temptation...and fell for it hook line and sinker...how many of you have done the same?
Pride or vanity is a deadly sin when it sets us apart and binds us to an idolatrous understanding of ourselves...an understanding that enlists our loyalty and demands our protection at any cost. When our pride is such that it causes us to choose fear over faith, cowardice over courage it is a deadly sin.
Such pride makes us a co-conspirator in our own self-delusion, making it increasingly difficult to recognize anyone else as anything but the “other”, a potential rival, or enemy, or even someone not quite as good or worthy as us in some way. It perpetuates our delusions of independence and superiority while dismissing or trivializing our limitations or shortcomings. Unchecked it becomes a deception fatal to spiritual progress.
But all is not lost. As I’ve noted in the other sermons in this series, Gregory the Great, the man who formulated the Seven Deadly Sins, also came up with Seven Heavenly Virtues to counter them. Gregory the Great prescribes humility to counter pride. Not really a surprise and one that at first I thought, yes, that makes perfect sense, after all, humility is one, if not the most, essential qualities of a meaningful spiritual life.
Yet humility is poorly understood and often equated with willingly enduring humiliation. Indeed, “For many Americans, writes Brother Wayne Teasdale, a lay monk and spiritual teacher, “humility is not only undesirable, it is virtually incomprehensible.”
Consider for a moment, this passage from 2 Corinthians (12:9b-10)...and try not to get tangled up in the Christology if its theologically problematic for you, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
Even absent the Christology, I’m willing to bet this is a hard passage for many of us, if we’re honest, to stomach. But it offers an important spiritual insight, ”for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” This is not about dutifully enduring suffering, it is about the power of recognizing limitations, one’s own and that of others. It is a call to radical “honesty and self truth”, the very definition of humility offered by Brother Wayne Teasdale.
“Whenever I am weak, the I am strong” This is the paradox of wholeness, the gift of humility...the very thing pride prevents us from seeing.
Indeed, pride makes a boogeyman of humility...it is a threat to be avoided at all costs. So while humility is essential to keeping pride in check, to me we must first find courage; the courage to be humble.
Throughout the sermon I told you about where the minister talked about the temptation of Jesus, the minister also kept posing the question....”What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
In the biblical story Jesus continually resists resorting to prideful displays of power and instead displays humility in the face of the devil’s taunting and temptation. He was able to do this because he was not reacting out of fear. He was responding out of humility. He found the courage to be humble by committing to and nurturing an authentic spiritual life as evidenced through the references to scripture, teachings, and spiritual insights he uses in the story to counter and resist the devil’s goading and thus remain true to himself and his purpose in life. And we can do the same if we’re willing to work at it.
In our second reading this morning, William Houff describes what he calls three essential elements of an authentic spiritual life: attention, love, and nonattachment. His list is impressive for its brevity and breadth.
What Houff calls attention others call mindfulness. Mindfulness is being present to the moment rather than inordinately focusing on the past or future. The practice of mindfulness helps alleviate the angst of regret and keeps us from living in the past and feeding desires to “get even” with people or events. It also serves to keep us from becoming immobilized by or overly reactive to an unknown future. Mindfulness keeps us aware of what we have available to us in this moment so that we can live courageously and confidently in the here and now rather than out of the pain of the past or fear of the future.
Love, Houff describes as a sense of inclusiveness, an opportunity to “recognize our kinship to another-identify with another-walk in his or her shoes for a mile” that we might recognize others, even our enemies, as extensions of ourselves. Another name for what Houff is talking about is compassion. Compassion is the cornerstone of all spiritual practice and forms the basis of the seventh principle of UUism, respect for the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part.
Nonattachment concerns a willingness to allow ourselves and others to grow...to loosen our grip on life that we may live more freely. Indeed, my spiritual director, a Buddhist, always advised me to hold my ideas, conceptions, and desires lightly, ready to release any of them if and when the time came to do so without fear.
When we look at the heart of each element, as Houff explains them, we find humility...there is a lightness as well as profundity to a life grounded in humility...what a refreshing alternative to the heavy superficiality, the prideful, vain existence we are continually tempted to live.
A lighter, yet more profound life, a life of integrity...of wholeness is available to each of us. But it takes courage...the courage to ask ourselves, “what would I do if I weren’t afraid?” The courage to be humble.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
April 19, 2015
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Some years ago I attended a weekend long retreat for aspirants to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It was an opportunity to meet other people interested in the ministry and to listen to and ask questions of active and retired ministers about this most strange of vocations. There were also people from the UUA there to explain the rather daunting credentialing process.
At the closing worship for the retreat the Rev. Vann Knight gave a rousing sermon based on the temptation narrative in the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13)...this is the story where the devil taunts Jesus by questioning his identity and worth and then tempting him show off...to surrender himself to the worldly measures of power, status and worth and thus betray his calling. Jesus of course does not give in and the devil departs, frustrated.
The story of Jesus’ temptation is a story about calling, discernment, sacrifice, and faithfulness or devotion...all reasons why it was likely chosen as a text to preach from for aspiring ministers. The story, as you might imagine, also deals with pride or vanity, the topic of today’s sermon. For those who are counting this is part six of our seven part series on sin and specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins.
Pride as sin is described, in the Christian tradition, as “excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.”
Although rooted in theism, this understanding is pretty close to the understanding of sin we arrived at at the start of this series. Sin, we said, rather than being something we do or don’t do, is something that prevents us from seeing or knowing, we even described it as an obstruction, blocking some truth, especially about ourselves or others.
Still, to speak of pride as a sin is a tricky endeavor. Pride after all has its place. It can be a source of empowerment and solidarity for marginalized people, it can help inspire confidence and emotional well being, it can be playful or supportive, it can give us that extra boost to reach higher or further than we might otherwise and it can soften the impact when we fall short. A healthy sense of pride prevents us from being consumed by the fires of fear and loathing ablaze in the hearts and minds of humankind.
Here, in the United States the Fourth of July, just a few months away, (and indeed, Patriot’s Day tomorrow here in Massachusetts) is a pride-filled holiday for many, marked with fireworks, concerts, parades, and cookouts. It is a celebration of ideals as much as it is of a historical event, ideals that have become synonymous with the United States itself...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are ideals worth celebrating; ideals Americans can be proud of.
Yet, in recent weeks we’ve been reminded that the next presidential election is not too far off and already, more than I can stomach, I hear the vain rhetoric of American exceptionalism being shouted from the left and the right. For the most part, as in the recent past, the rhetoric seems condescending, cocky, and exclusionary. It seems less an expression of joy and celebration than one of defensiveness and fear.
“Hell”, wrote, the late William Sloane Coffin, “is truth seen too late.” The pride many people including politicians, have today in American exceptionalism, is not a celebration of the founding ideals of this nation, it is a stubborn or even fearful response to our failure to live up to those ideals throughout history...a defense against recognition of our interdependence, limitations, and shortcomings.
This is not to say that we have not had any progress or great moments in our relatively short history, indeed we have made progress towards realizing our ideals. Still, for many, if not most, the nation’s founding ideals have yet to be fully or equally extended, and for many more, they have been far too slow in being realized.
American exceptionalism is an example of how a healthy sense of pride can descend into excessive vanity. Pride as vanity seeks to project and protect an image of oneself as one wishes to be seen, not as one is. It is a deception rationalized by the fear or denial of one’s limitations and shortcomings. Increasingly, we stand as a nation hobbled by our own vanity, vulnerable to the temptation to proclaim or show off our might rather than shore up our ideals... choosing cowardice over courage.
Its easy, of course, to rail against the pride or vanity of nations, institutions, and others. It is quite another thing to recognize it in oneself. That’s what makes pride so insidious.
During my first semester of seminary, I engaged in a debate with a conservative Christian women from Virginia concerning the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. We did not see eye to eye, not even close.
At one point she said to me, “I don’t think you even believe this story is historically true.” To which I response, “That’s correct, I don’t...proudly adding, I’m not even sure Abraham was a historical figure...but it doesn’t matter,” I said, “the story still contains truth.” “Doesn’t matter?”, she said with palpable concern in her voice...”it most certainly does matter. If that story isn’t literally true, my whole faith would collapse.” Well that was it for me...after that day I thought I had this person all figured out. To me she was the poster child for the kind of unthinking, illogical, and rigid religion I wanted to avoid. “Thank God I’m a UU, I thought.” I was so proud.
Some time later she approached me after class and said, “I’m sorry.” Bewildered, I asked her, “Sorry about what?” “About Virginia, you know, the vote to ban same-sex marriage there.” She told me she had talked to her pastor and asked him to preach against the ban, saying so far as she was concerned it violated Jesus’ teachings. I thanked her. I walked away that night tremendously humbled...surrounded by the charred remains of my self-righteous assumption and flimsy pride. I had sacrificed the principles of my UU faith on the altar of vanity, I had faced temptation...and fell for it hook line and sinker...how many of you have done the same?
Pride or vanity is a deadly sin when it sets us apart and binds us to an idolatrous understanding of ourselves...an understanding that enlists our loyalty and demands our protection at any cost. When our pride is such that it causes us to choose fear over faith, cowardice over courage it is a deadly sin.
Such pride makes us a co-conspirator in our own self-delusion, making it increasingly difficult to recognize anyone else as anything but the “other”, a potential rival, or enemy, or even someone not quite as good or worthy as us in some way. It perpetuates our delusions of independence and superiority while dismissing or trivializing our limitations or shortcomings. Unchecked it becomes a deception fatal to spiritual progress.
But all is not lost. As I’ve noted in the other sermons in this series, Gregory the Great, the man who formulated the Seven Deadly Sins, also came up with Seven Heavenly Virtues to counter them. Gregory the Great prescribes humility to counter pride. Not really a surprise and one that at first I thought, yes, that makes perfect sense, after all, humility is one, if not the most, essential qualities of a meaningful spiritual life.
Yet humility is poorly understood and often equated with willingly enduring humiliation. Indeed, “For many Americans, writes Brother Wayne Teasdale, a lay monk and spiritual teacher, “humility is not only undesirable, it is virtually incomprehensible.”
Consider for a moment, this passage from 2 Corinthians (12:9b-10)...and try not to get tangled up in the Christology if its theologically problematic for you, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
Even absent the Christology, I’m willing to bet this is a hard passage for many of us, if we’re honest, to stomach. But it offers an important spiritual insight, ”for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” This is not about dutifully enduring suffering, it is about the power of recognizing limitations, one’s own and that of others. It is a call to radical “honesty and self truth”, the very definition of humility offered by Brother Wayne Teasdale.
“Whenever I am weak, the I am strong” This is the paradox of wholeness, the gift of humility...the very thing pride prevents us from seeing.
Indeed, pride makes a boogeyman of humility...it is a threat to be avoided at all costs. So while humility is essential to keeping pride in check, to me we must first find courage; the courage to be humble.
Throughout the sermon I told you about where the minister talked about the temptation of Jesus, the minister also kept posing the question....”What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
In the biblical story Jesus continually resists resorting to prideful displays of power and instead displays humility in the face of the devil’s taunting and temptation. He was able to do this because he was not reacting out of fear. He was responding out of humility. He found the courage to be humble by committing to and nurturing an authentic spiritual life as evidenced through the references to scripture, teachings, and spiritual insights he uses in the story to counter and resist the devil’s goading and thus remain true to himself and his purpose in life. And we can do the same if we’re willing to work at it.
In our second reading this morning, William Houff describes what he calls three essential elements of an authentic spiritual life: attention, love, and nonattachment. His list is impressive for its brevity and breadth.
What Houff calls attention others call mindfulness. Mindfulness is being present to the moment rather than inordinately focusing on the past or future. The practice of mindfulness helps alleviate the angst of regret and keeps us from living in the past and feeding desires to “get even” with people or events. It also serves to keep us from becoming immobilized by or overly reactive to an unknown future. Mindfulness keeps us aware of what we have available to us in this moment so that we can live courageously and confidently in the here and now rather than out of the pain of the past or fear of the future.
Love, Houff describes as a sense of inclusiveness, an opportunity to “recognize our kinship to another-identify with another-walk in his or her shoes for a mile” that we might recognize others, even our enemies, as extensions of ourselves. Another name for what Houff is talking about is compassion. Compassion is the cornerstone of all spiritual practice and forms the basis of the seventh principle of UUism, respect for the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part.
Nonattachment concerns a willingness to allow ourselves and others to grow...to loosen our grip on life that we may live more freely. Indeed, my spiritual director, a Buddhist, always advised me to hold my ideas, conceptions, and desires lightly, ready to release any of them if and when the time came to do so without fear.
When we look at the heart of each element, as Houff explains them, we find humility...there is a lightness as well as profundity to a life grounded in humility...what a refreshing alternative to the heavy superficiality, the prideful, vain existence we are continually tempted to live.
A lighter, yet more profound life, a life of integrity...of wholeness is available to each of us. But it takes courage...the courage to ask ourselves, “what would I do if I weren’t afraid?” The courage to be humble.
Amen and Blessed Be
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