Proud of Our Humility

Text: Matthew 23:1-12

Focus: Being humble

Function: To help improve our Christian witness

Form: GOK

Intro:

Being raised in an Anabaptist tradition, I too can claim what the rest of the Brethren can claim: “We are PROUD of our humility.”

And I mean it without hypocrisy. Humility is something to be honored, something to be grasped. It is something for which to strive.

With humility, we can fulfill the scripture, “Give preference over one another in honor.”

With Humility, we can indeed care for our neighbor as much as we do for ourselves.

With humility, we can seek the value in another person's viewpoint.

With humility, we can recognize that even a little child has something that they can teach us.

With humility, we can forgive, repent, admit we are wrong and admit we are sorry.

With humility, we can be genuinely happy when someone else gets an honor that we thought we deserved.

I remember a Church picnic once. We were playing another church in a pick-up game of softball.

Gary Willig, a man who wasn't terribly athletic, but he was big, hit the ball completely out of the park. And he shouted out: “Praise the Lord!”

I cringed at first. I thought the other team was going to react. You know, if you are on the other team and someone hits a walk off home run, it makes winning the game that much harder. And for someone to shout praise the Lord at what could be your defeat, well it just doesn't sit right. But the other team rejoiced with him. I knew that I had arrived within a group of humble Christians.

They were genuinely happy when the competition did well.

So, we can almost honestly say that we are proud to be so humble.

I remember my dad used to have to trip over the legalism behind being humble.

And finally one day, when one of his sons, not me, did particularly well at something my dad just said: “doggone it! I am just going to admit it. I am proud of my son!”

And the world didn't stop spinning.

Humility.

What a great Christian virtue.

Remember Micah 6:8: God has told us the three things that are important to Him: 1). Do Justice, 2). Love Mercy and 3) Walk humbly before Him.

Isn't that an interesting list of things to chase after, things to strive for and things to excel with?

Note what is not on that list: Make a lot of money. Beat the competition. Win the World Series. Not that winning and competition are evil in themselves. But what does God really want from us?

Jesus is speaking about living the Christian life and obeying God.

I love the introduction to the passage in the Message: “Religious Fashion Shows.”

Jesus points at their own religious leaders and speaks about the hypocrisy of their entire religious system. And in so doing, He wars us as to how the cancer of hypocrisy can manifest itself in any religious system.

Wouldn't religion be great if there was complete sincerity on the part of every worshiper?

What if we could find the perfect Church?

Well I know this, the moment I step into it, it ceases to be perfect.

That is true for all of us.

The fact is, there isn't.

As perfect as we all strive to be, eventually, we are all going to have to face our own hypocrisy. It is better to strive to be good and fall short than to have no morals at all, and live up to them.

But that doesn't excuse hypocrisy and that is what Jesus is speaking against with these religious leaders.

He says: “They are really good at explaining morals, but they don't live up to them.”

In John 13:34, Jesus makes all the rules of the Bible simple. He boils them down to just one easy commandment. Jesus said: “a new commandment I give to you, love one another.”

These religious leaders were really good at looking good because they followed all the rules. But they still didn't practice the sacrificial love that Jesus states sums up the entire law. But they were sinning by not loving each other.

The best proof of that is the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells them that the greatest command is to love their neighbors as themselves. The religious leader, the text says: “wishing to justify himself” says, “But who is my neighbor?”

Here he is, trying to make a short list of who his neighbor is. He is trying to look like he was following the law in all its technicalities. But in so doing, he was trying to shorten the list of neighbors. Listen, the list of who our neighbor is extends, as Jesus says, even to our enemies. Love your enemies as yourself.

So, although he technically followed the law, he missed the whole point of it.

Jesus points out the futility of their religion if they refuse to practice what they preach. Jesus said: They make broad their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels on their garments, give long prayers and make a great show.

You may ask, what the heck is a phylactery?

If you read Deuteronomy 6, where God gives the great command to follow God's law, God says that they are to investigate this word so much that it would be as if they wrote it on their foreheads.

So, the leaders fashioned leather pouches, fancy and ornate leather pouches, placed Deuteronomy 6:4 in the pouch and wore them as a head band.

I think it is pretty cool to wear a scripture verse there instead of a gang symbol.

But all of a sudden, it became an object of religious pride, religious competition. They made bigger and fancier pouches as if somehow the bigger the symbol, the more righteous the person wearing it was.

It doesn't work that way.

God checks into the heart of people.

He knows if our motives are revenge, pride, greed or genuine love. God knows our motives better than we do. He sees our hearts. So Jesus is condemning a kind of religion that looks good, but doesn't cause people to actually act in love toward their fellow men.

Next week we are going into the prison. I am going in with a group of people who are Methodist, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist and Charismatic.

Because of that, we aren't allowed to tell how to baptize, we aren't allowed to anoint someone with oil for healing, we aren't allowed to pray in tongues. We aren't allowed to do or say anything that isn't practiced by the entire Church as an whole.

And yet, I got an email from the Lay Director asking us to wash the feet of others next week.

As far as I know, the only group in there that practices foot-washing as a regular act of worship is us.

And yet the leader of the group sent us all an email this week about foot washing.

And it was unique. He wasn't talking about the residents. He was explaining to us how some of the guards resent our presence. The guards are instructed to consider the prisoners as numbers, not as men.

And we come along with cookies, great food and overwhelming mercy.

Some guards resent it.

And their resentment gets in the way of our work.

But the leader told us to especially look for ways to wash the feet of the guards, to show them love, to forbear with their resentment and instead of reacting negatively, use it as a chance to love them even more.

Because Jesus said: “Love your enemies as much as you love yourselves.” (Matthew 5:43)

Listen, in this teaching, Jesus is condemning the very system of religious hierarchy and domination.

Listen to these very strong words about religious systems and hierarchies: “Don't call anyone teacher,” “don't call anyone father,” in The Message it is paraphrased to modern language and he says “don't call anyone Reverend, or Doctor.”

I get amused when I hear the phrase: “Dr. Phil.” I confess that it makes me feel good, even though I do not have a doctorate.

And when I sign a marriage license, I use the term Reverend. It is a title that I have earned. If I had earned a Doctorate, I would probably use that title as well.

The scriptures say that we should render honor to whom honor is due, respect to whom respect is due. And the Bible itself says that the calling of preacher is worth double honor.

We live in a culture that values the disrespect of authority. We, as a culture are suffering from the disrespect of authority. I wish there was more.

So, how do we reconcile “double honor” with “don't call anyone teacher?”

What is Jesus talking about here?

It isn't a contradiction.

He is talking about power and authority. And he is warning us about the potential for abuse of that power and authority.

Sometimes I visit a church and I see a sign at the best parking spot: “reserved for Pastor.” And I wonder about that sign. I wouldn't be comfortable with it. Because Jesus said that if we want to be great, then we need to become more of a servant, not more of a “lord.”

That does not mean that authority and authority figures do not deserve our respect. The Bible commands it.

He is talking about religious leaders flaunting, or exercising their authority into positions of power.

I believe that there are two reasons why the world's structures of power, authority and domination are bad for the Church.

First, God gave power to the entire Church.

Jesus' plan is to create a Church where everyone is a priest. We call it the Priesthood of All Believers.

Listen to 1 Peter 2:9-10:

The Message (MSG)

^9-10But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

Whatever greater power the leader wields, then those under him have lesser power. But Jesus is in us, in all of us.

When the Charismatic movement swept across American in the late 70's, it met a lot of resistance by Church leaders. I believe a lot of that resistance happened because it threatened their power base.

So, the world's system of power keeps the individuals in the Church from realizing just what God can do through you.

You have great potential with God inside of you.

The second problem with the world's power system is that Jesus gives His power in a way that is completely different than the way people gain it in our world.

Jesus is creating a religious system that does not conform to the standards of the world. Two of the disciples wanted more power than the other 10. When the 10 found out, they were angry with the two. Jesus said:

Mark 10:42-43 New Living Translation (NLT)

⁴²So Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. ⁴³But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant,

A system where the first are last and the last are first. It is a system where the weakest has as much, if not more, power than the strongest. It is a system where the greatest person is the one who isn't being served, but the one who serves.

Throughout the Scripture, God keeps telling us to rely on Him and not us.

Gideon faced an huge army with 300 people and defeated them.

Isaac was born to Sarah when she was 89 years old. Jesus fed 5000 people with 2 fish and 5 loaves. When the Egyptian army wanted to kill off the Israelites, God protected them with a curtain of fire and then parted the sea.

Elijah was fed by ravens. Manna appeared on the ground and if someone collected extra, it rotted, and if someone collected too little, it miraculously expanded.

In all of this, God is saying to us that His ways are higher and better than ours. And those who strive in fear or fighting with others to get ahead have missed His purpose for us as Christian.

These last words should both haunt and inspire us: “The greatest among you will be your servant...”

Hopefully they inspire us more than haunt us. But the reason why worldly leader lord their power over others is because it is just human nature. It is a part of our human nature that we ourselves need to resist, to struggle against. When we live by faith, we live in an attitude of service toward others.