Humilty - the antidote to pride

Sermon preached at 11am Parish Eucharist at St Mary’s Lapworth on Sunday 29th August 2010. Other versions of this sermon were preached at the 8.30am Said Eucharist and at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton, 9.45am.
Trinity 13, Proper 17, Year C.

Readings: Hebrews 13: 1-8 & 15-16 Luke 14: 1 & 7-14


In the early 1950s the Ford Motor Company was brimming with confidence and flush with cash, following the success of the Ford Thunderbird. The management set about developing a whole new car with a whole new network of marketing dealerships. They hired all the best people to work on the design. They created a huge and elaborate marketing campaign. They named the car “Edsel” after the son the company’s founder and they invested millions in the launch. But after all the hype had died down, it became clear that American public didn’t really like the Edsel, and would not buy it. The car was a terrible commercial failure and was withdrawn in its third year. The company lost millions of pounds on the project. The name Edsel became associated with failures in marketing, and a famous “how not to do it” case study for MBA (Master of Business Studies) students. The old maxim, “Pride comes before a fall” comes to mind.
And in more recent times there has been another extraordinary example of “Pride comes before a fall” in the business world. In 2007 big banking appeared to a business of extraordinary power and wealth, and the banks were ever bigger and braver in what they took on. Yet by October 2008 many of the world’s biggest banks appeared insolvent, and there is no doubt that without a massive government intervention, most if not all of them would have failed.
The parable that Jesus told in our gospel reading today also has a “pride comes before a fall element”. At that time the custom at wedding banquets was to have the places graded from the places of highest honour, up high and near the host and bride and groom, down to the places of least honour, lower down and further away. Jesus pointed out that choosing to sit in a seat of high honour was inviting a fall. Someone more honourable that you might arrive later, and you would have to give up your seat. And because all the seats were no occupied you would find yourself moving to the lowest seat, while everyone is watching. Instead Jesus recommends a more humble strategy; choose for yourself the lowest seat so that the host might call you up higher.
Well we live in a much less hierarchical society today, but issues about the highest places have not gone away. We hear of film studios in terrible fights with film stars about the order in which names appear in the credits. I regret to say that I have heard even of clergy processions, where none of the clergy are willing to lead the procession out, because by tradition it is always the most senior clergy who occupy the back of the procession.
It is people’s pride that causes difficulty in these situations. Pride is the vice of self-importance; thinking of ourselves as above other people or above God. We often associate it with arrogance and self-sufficiency. Of course the word pride can denote good things. We encourage people to take pride in their work, in their appearance, their neighbourhood, in their nation. These attitudes are important and contribute to our self esteem. They show that we value the good gifts that God has given us, and want to fully play our part in realising their full potential. Pride only kicks in as a problem when we start to value to ourselves higher than other people, or our own nation more than other nations.
The antidote to pride is the virtue of humility. Virtues are attitudes and habits that are good. Vices are attitudes and habits that are bad. We all need to practice good attitudes and behaviours so that they become habitual, they become virtues. Virtues grow by practice, and by the grace of God, which we should ask for. So humility is a virtue, but what is humility all about?
Well I think that humility is ultimately about being completely and utterly realistic about who we are, and who other people are. It is not humble for a student who has just got a string of A stars at GCSE to say, “Oh I’m not that clever really.”; that’s just unrealistic. It is humble for that student to thank God that they have been blessed with certain talents, to recognise the support they have received from their school and from their family, and recognising that these good gifts are given by God not just for our good, but for the good of others too. Being humble means seeing ourselves as God sees us and of course, God sees us through the eyes of love; God loves us immensely. We must remember that we were created and are sustained by God, we owe everything to him. God sent is own son to die for us and to redeem us. For God we are most definitely “worth it”! And of course God also sees our many frailties and sins and vices, but God sees beyond them, knowing that when we turn to him he forgives us, and heals us and make us whole. So seeing ourselves as God sees us, and loving ourselves as God loves us, means having a very high opinion of ourselves, but it also means having a very high opinion about other people, because we know that God loves them, just as he loves us.
Now prayer is very good discipline for growing in humility. When we pray we place ourselves before God and hold ourselves in our relationship with God, and this really does help us to know who we are and to have the right attitudes. First of all pray is a humbling experience because it is difficult, and we don’t really know what we are doing. As St Paul says (Romans 8: 26) we do not know how to pray as we should, but we depend on the Holy Spirit to pray for us.
And then the things that we do in prayer help us with humility. We say prayers of adoration, praising God for his greatness. This reminds us how very great God is and what a very small cog we are in the mighty universe of God’s creation. In our prayers we make prayers of confession. We hold before God our sins and failures, and this is necessarily very humbling. It reminds us that we are completely dependent on the mercy of God. Also in our prayers we give thanks to God for the good things he gives us. This too reminds us that all the good things we have are gifts from God and not products of our own hard work or cleverness. In prayer we also learn to thank God for the difficult things that come our way, the things we would not choose for ourselves, but by thanking God for them we come to see them as part of God’s love for us, part of his plan for our lives.
So today I would like to commend to you humility as a virtue, a good habit and attitude; humility as the utterly and totally realistic assessment of ourselves, as we are seen by God. I would also like to commend to you prayer, as a way of growing in humility. Amen.