| By Faith, Not By Sight |
April 30, 2000
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The Apostle Paul preached the cross. Jesus crucified and
raised.
Said if you want to be wise in faith, you would probably be a fool in
the world.
He cautioned against self-reliance, against thinking highly of
oneself.
He founded the church at Corinth in his travels.
After he left some wise-guys, led by a Greek named Apollos, came in
and began saying,
"Why do we listen to that fool Paul...there are obviously things
you must do to achieve greatness in God's kingdom.
Achievements."
And the result was boasting, and the stretching of the truth that
came with boasting....
Rather than preaching the cross, these fellows were preaching
something more akin to a ladder.
And in the church there were cliques of people in the church
competing...for salvation and achievement.
I think rather than talking today about another one of the seven
deadly sins...
Greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, avarice, pride and envy....
Or rather than talk about the 9 gifts of the spirit
(Gal 5:22-23)
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control.
Today I want to talk just a bit about the one characteristic
necessary for overcoming deadly sins and undergirding and preparing
oneself to receive gifts of the Spirit...
Humility.
A forest ranger friend describes how tourists coming to Maine
complain that they haven't seen any wildlife in the woods.
"They barge in there with all their chatter, boisterousness,
and bluster, and the animals just scatter,"
"If you walk into the forest quietly, stilling your mind,
not
taking up any more space than you really need,
noticing and being
respectful of the life around you, the animals recognize you as one of
their own, and treat you accordingly.
These people haven't learned how to become part of the forest, and the
forest turns its back on them.
They aren't humble before it."
Biblically speaking, the way the ranger walks through the
woods is the way the meek walk through the world--gently,
not imposing ourselves, ready to serve the creation
around them. God wants such people to "inherit the
earth"
(Matt. 5:5),
and all creation, ravaged by prideful human
destructiveness, longs for them
(Rom. 8:19).
What I want to talk about with you today will not be as funny as
last week.
But it may save your soul.
Read texts:
Galatians 2:20, 2 Corinthians 11:21-30
In the rural, Midwest, Protestant environment of my
childhood the highest compliment we could pay another person
was to say that they were "down-to-earth." The
opposite of being "down-to-earth" was to "put on airs,"
and involved viewing oneself as better than others.
Geneva Garrison, the first person I remember telling me stories,
called that attitude "having the big eye on yourself and the
little eye on everybody else."
We all knew that, despite the triumphalist hymns we sang every
Sunday during services, Jesus was God in our midst who is
also down-to-earth.
The other word we used was 'umble, (the "h" was silent), and
it was also a term of deep respect.
I want to talk today about a decision that was made in about 322 AD
by members of the Christian community.
I think it's one we must make again.
The story I want to tell you, begins, as so many stories
do, with a great king.
CONSTANTINE assembled his army at the very gates of Rome.
They had defeated the troops of their rival Maxentius
at Verona and, though vastly outnumbered, they proceeded toward the
Milvian Bridge that spans the Tiber River.
Somewhere between Verona and Rome, Constantine had a vision...
saw a cross made of light
and a voice said to him, "By
this conquer."
That same night Jesus appeared to him and showed this great
military leader the sign that his soldiers' standards would bear as he
defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.
This was a combination of the first two Greek letters of the title
Christ, chi (X) and rho (P), one superimposed onto the other.
To be quite honest Constantine's vision sounds a lot like that of
the Apostle Paul.
A light, Jesus speaking.
What strikes me is how a supposed vision effected each man.
Paul had been a man of the law.
A hunter and killer of Christians.
After his vision he became one of them.
He founded churches, nurtured them in being communities of faith.
And in the end he lost his head for his faith.
Constantine, basically, co-opted the Christian church
as a tool of the empire.
The year of Constantine's vision and victory was 312, and it was
considered by many in the early Christian communities to be an answer
to prayer.
Christians had suffered persecution under imperial rule in
Rome.
Their single-minded devotion to God's calling in Jesus meant that many
refused to burn incense to the emperor, which would have acknowledged
his deity, or to serve in the emperor's army.
If the emperor became a friend of the Christians, then persecution
would cease.
And cease it did.
In 313 the Edict of Milan allowed for the practice of a variety of
religions in the empire, including Christianity.
Just before his death Constantine would be baptized into the Christian
Church.
Under a later emperor, Justinian, Christianity would
become the official and favored religion of the Roman
Empire.
Prayers had indeed been answered.
Dreams had come true.
Or so it seemed.
But for some Christians the dream of close ties between the
imperial court of Rome and the Christian movement soon turned into a
nightmare.
Soon Christians took on the characteristics of the Roman elite and
began persecuting pagans, Jews, and other Christians depending on the
theological disposition of the current emperor.
The Church's alignment with the power of Rome had a strange and
grotesque influence.
It took the figure of Jesus--
a marginal Jew and itinerant rabbi whose throne was a
cross and whose crown was made from thorns,
whose life was a critique of the royal system (even that of his own
religious tradition),
and whose death was a tragic mockery of royal pretensions --
and recast him into the prototype of the Roman emperor.
The same community that had refused to worship the
emperor had, under imperial influence, turned this
Christ into the very image of a military and political
ruler.
Not all Christians thought this was a healthy transition.
The men and women who escaped to the desert hermitages and
communities opposed, with the humility Jesus had lived and
taught, the hubris of a church modeled on the power politics of
the Roman empire.
The desert mothers and fathers were escaping from a culture in
which a person's value was judged by family background and
connections, wealth and possessions, vocation, gender,
one's position in the web of debt and slavery, and many other
factors.
In churches, theological distinctions frequently were added to the
mix.
Some of the women and men in these communities gave up
privileges associated with life in the imperial Church and culture to
move to the desert.
Others came from the lower classes and included thieves and
prostitutes.
If people from across the spectrum of Roman society were to
be included into these new communities, a new basis for
relationships had to be forged.
The ore from which those new relationships would be crafted was
mined from the life and teachings of Jesus.
Their calling was nothing less than "the enormous and
dangerous task of the transformation of the old creation into the
new."
Essential to this task was humility as a way of life.
For the ancient monastics "it was the living-out of the
conviction that all human beings, every man, woman, and child are
beloved creatures of God."
The life of humility manifested itself in a willingness to learn
from others,
combined with an unwillingness to stand in judgment of others.
Both of these stances toward the neighbor grew out of a
self-understanding based upon the grace of God rather than the
monastic's own virtues or accomplishments.
Humility was a way of finding one's place in relation to God and
neighbor, a way of loving both without allowing the need for
attention, honor, gratitude, or even being right to interfere.
These were all characteristic of the imperial Christianity the
desert dwellers were trying to escape.
Jesus said,
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and
humble in heart .... "
(Matt. 11:29)
Learning from others is to see Christ in each other.
What this Jesus in the neighbor teaches us through his life and
words is how to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God,
as the prophet Micah had taught
(see Micah 6:8).
For these early monastics Jesus had less in common with the
emperor (even a Christian emperor) than he shared with the
peasants, beggars, and even thieves they encountered in the
desert.
A story is told of one of the most prominent of the desert fathers,
Abba Arsenius.
As a young man Arsenius had been tutor for the children of emperor
Theodosius I.
He was born into the senatorial class of Roman society and received
the best classical education.
At the age of thirty-four he left all that behind to become a monk
and remained one until his death fifty-five years later.
One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own
thoughts.
Someone noticed this and said to him,
"Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such good Latin and Greek
education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?"
He replied, "I have indeed been taught Latin and
Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this
peasant."
Humility gives us new eyes with which to see others.
The standards of the world no longer apply.
Each person we meet bears Christ to us in a particular way.
The Coptic monks in Egypt stood in awe of Arsenius for his
learning.
Arsenius approached them with respect and awe because he saw in
them the Jesus who had described himself as "gentle and humble in
heart." In doing so this monk from aristocratic
roots became like the one he sought.
Perhaps the clearest indication of humility among the desert
communities was an unwillingness to judge others.
Once again this approach to human relationships was based on the life
and teachings of Jesus.
"Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.
For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you
give will be the measure you get.
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the
log in your own eye?"
Matt. 7:1-3
Since Christ could be found in every person, no individual could
stand in judgment of another.
Besides, Jesus had told his disciples that they hardly knew enough
of the human heart to love each other.
They most certainly did not know enough to judge each other.
In addition, their unwillingness to judge their neighbor grew from
a compassion that could transform lives in ways that judgment never
could.
Even serious infractions committed by others were seen
only as specks that could hardly be compared to the logs that
continually impeded their own vision.
Abba Moses could not have come from a more different background
than Abba Arsenius.
Moses was a tall black man of African descent who had formerly been
both a slave and a thief.
Thomas Merton recounts a story from the life of Abba Moses this
way.
A Brother in Scete happened to commit a fault, and
the elders assembled, and sent for Abbot Moses to join them.
He, however, did not want to come.
The priest sent him a message, saying: "Come, the community
of the brethren is waiting for you."
So he arose and started off.
And taking with him a very old basket full of holes, he filled it with
sand, and carried it behind him.
The elders came out to meet him, and said: "What is this
Father?"
The elder replied: "My sins are running out behind me, and
I do not see them, and today I come to judge the sins of
another!"
They, hearing this, said nothing to the brother but pardoned him.
Abba Moses simply demonstrated in graphic fashion what
his sisters and brothers in the desert taught.
Such humility was the mark of a monk.
Humility sees that each person is a bearer of Christ from whom we
can learn and a child of God whom we must not judge.
It also acknowledges that none of us is God and no
matter the depth of our spiritual practices or our holy habits we will
never match the holiness of God.
This is not bad news for those steeped in humility, however,
for it drives us straight into God's arms of grace and
mercy.
There is one problem with living into humility and seeing Christ in
our neighbor.
It is the problem of being self-serving in one's own goodness.
In Matthew 25:31ff
Jesus tells what the final judgment will be.
He says the nations will be gathered before God and separated like
sheep from goats.
"Then the righteous will answer him,
'Lord, when was it that we saw you. . . ?'"
(Matt. 25:37)
"Then they [the others] also will answer,
'Lord, when was it that we saw you... '"
(Matt. 25:44)
One of the striking features of Jesus' parable of the final
judgment is the unself-consciousness of both those who are to be
rewarded and those who are to be punished. "When did we see
you?" they both ask.
The righteous simply served the needs of anyone who came their
way.
The unrighteous plead that they would have helped if only they had
known that they were serving Jesus.
The problem faced by the desert monastics was how to maintain this
unself-consciousness when they already saw Christ in each person they
met.
How could they keep self-interest and reward from being their primary
motivation for doing good?
The solution, they discovered, was to be honest about
the self-interest that taints even the most altruistic behavior, then
throw themselves on the mercy and grace of God.
Once again the answer is humility.
There came certain folk to an old man in the Thebaid,
bringing with them one vexed by a devil, that the old man might heal
him.
The old man said to the devil, "Go out from this that God
made."
And the devil made answer:
"I go, but I ask thee one question, and do thou
answer me: who be the goats, and who the lambs?"
And the old man said,
"The goats indeed be such as I: but who the lambs may
be, God knows."
And hearing it, the devil cried out with a great voice,
"Behold, because of this humbleness of thine, I
go."
He went out that same hour.
It is not our goodness that drives out the powers of evil from our
lives and the lives of others.
Knowing that our goodness is often self-serving, it is our
willingness to be associated with the goats that opens a space for
God's grace to be active in and through us.
What a relief to no longer have to be judge of the world.
What an opportunity to learn from everyone we meet.
What a sense of freedom to no longer be defined by the circumstances
of our birth, our education, our position, or our possessions.
What a joyful paradox that knowing we deserve to be counted
among the goats, God's mercy admits us into the divine
presence.
Shortly after the beginning of the fifth century, the desert
communities were destroyed and the monks either killed or scattered.
Humility is the ability to know ourselves as God knows us and to
know that it is the little we are that is precisely our claim on God.
Humility is the foundation for our relationship with God,
our connectedness to others, our acceptance of
ourselves, our way of using the goods of the earth and
even our way of walking through the world, without arrogance,
without domination, without scorn, without
put-downs, without disdain, without
self-centeredness.
The more we know ourselves, the gentler we will be with others.
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