Advent Paradoxes: The Sovereignty of Humbleness

December 10, 1995

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Scripture: “He humbled himself and became obedient unto death...” Philippians 2:8

The theme for today, this 2nd Sunday in Advent is HUMILITY. It’s a good theme for any time of the year, for any season, but maybe especially for this season of Advent, as we try to get ourselves ready for the surprising, unexpected, and still, even after 2000 years of familiarity, STUNNING modesty of the ambiance in which the Savior of the world was born. What a paradox!

Last week we touched on the surprise of His willingness to come. You’d think He would have long ago given up on us...He surely had every right to—THAT paradox is matched by the FORM of His coming...in such utter, self-effacing lowliness.

 “Counting equality with God not a thing to be grasped”, Paul writes, or quotes....it could well be an early Christian hymn that Paul incorporated into his letter to the Philippians—many think so.... “Counting equality with God not a thing to be grasped, he emptied himself...HUMILITY... taking the form of a servant...”

It still baffles us, I think...true humility always does. It catches us off guard....It discombobulates our sense of balance. I think it embarrasses us, actually...I guess because we’re not used to seeing the truly powerful act that way.

Someone has said, “Nothing is as strong as gentleness; nothing so gentle as real strength.”

Now, that’s, frankly, not a sentiment congenial to the unsensitized mindset. It’s not. And it’s not a sentiment in current vogue, either. People don’t just naturally think along those lines....not in today’s society.

Can you imagine that quote being pasted up in an NFL locker room...nothing is so strong as gentleness...?

Can you imagine it being espoused by Mike Tyson, or Deion Sanders? Humility may well be the least coveted virtue on the contemporary stage. “I am the greatest”, was the mantra of one former heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

“We’re Number ONE”, says...Nebraska...and on January 2nd they’ll seek to confirm it. Of course, to be fair, it’s counterbalanced. Somebody asked the other day,“ Do you know the difference between God and Steve Spurrier?” Answer: God doesn’t think He’s Steve Spurrier.

Humility is just not a rampant commodity these days. It’s rare enough so that its expression jars what we’re accustomed to.

It strikes a discordant note in our expectation...We’re used to advertising that trumpets the superlative---“No other pain reliever has been proven more effective”....

“The toothpaste dentists recommend most”....

“You can’t buy a better product”.... Humility in the public domain is not easy to find.

And you can be certain... no politician today who wants to be elected, would think of entering a race without availing himself, or herself, of Madison Avenue techniques for image enhancement.      

Well, I don’t need to belabor it...On and on it goes, in politics, in marketing, in entertainment...the louder the better...often, the more blatant the better. And we push the limits farther and farther, from Geraldo, to Sallie Jessie, to Howard Stern. Where will it end.

We seem to think that’s what pays, that’s what gets results, that’s what it takes to assure triumph.

How out of focus the figure of Jesus is in that picture! How absolutely incongruous! AND HOW REFRESHING! Nothing new about it, actually. He was out of focus in his own day, in the First Century, against that culture, just as He is today, against OURS...AND WE SENSE THE PARADOX OF THE CONTRAST.....

After all He was entitled to thump His chest. Of all the people who ever lived who could have appropriately manifested a non-humble spirit, who could have been justified in tooting His own horn...of all the people who ever lived who had a right to brag about character, and accomplishment, JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS THAT PERSON. And yet that’s precisely what you don’t find when you look at the Record closely.

There was a humility about Him, an authentic self-effacement, a genuine modesty, especially in the Synoptic accounts, which instantly jumps out at you, and which was enormously impressive to His contemporaries.

More than one commentator has noted that what you read about in the Gospels is not the FAITH of Jesus. What you read about in the Gospels is the beautiful HUMILITY of Jesus.

“O, good Teacher”, said a young man, running up to Him with a feverish plea for an answer, “O, good Teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?”

Remember how Jesus countered his question? “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

IMAGINE! The best man who ever walked on the face of the earth... “Why do you call me good?” He was forever deflecting personal compliments back to the Source....an honest, authentic humility....moving in its very artlessness.

Notice, now. I said honest, authentic humility. There’s the key. Not everything labeled humility IS authentic.

Nothing is more persuasive than the real thing; and nothing is more rotten and putrid than the counterfeit.

What is the real thing? How do you tell it without a program? What is genuine humility?

Well, it’s probably easier to delineate what it’s NOT. It’s very clearly NOT some kind of groveling, boot-licking spirit. The worst enemy Jesus ever had couldn’t say that about Him. But that’s how we sometimes think of humility, as a cowering, whimpering attitude.

George Morrison quotes the English poet, John Keats. In a letter Keats wrote to a friend, he says, “I tell you the truth, I hate humility.”

It’s not hard to understand what he meant. In the context of the letter, it’s clear. He was referring to a cringing, servile manner of behavior, one that is willing to wallow in the dirt, and fawn unabashedly for acceptance, whatever it takes to get it.

We’ve known people like that.

Remember Polonius in Hamlet? He had the false humility, the simpering, subservient bearing of a sycophant. The young people have an even more graphic way of expressing it.

Remember the dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius?

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel? By the mass, ‘tis like a camel indeed. Methinks it’s like a weasel. It is like a weasel. Or like a whale? Very like a whale.

That’s not humility; that’s obsequiousness.

The classic literary example, of course, the extreme, is Uriah Heep, Charles Dickens’ brilliant caricature. You can almost tell what he’s like from his very name...Uriah Heep.

He’s so cloying, he’s sickening; he’s a despicable creature, more like a cringing dog than a human being...THAT’S NOT GENUINE HUMILITY.

Jesus of Nazareth never groveled before anybody. He never cringed before any living person. Even in His darkest hour, even when the pressure on Him was turned to the breaking point, there was a dignity about Him that never left Him. It was palpable.

Pontius Pilate felt it. The rabble who came to arrest Him in the Garden felt it. So did those veteran soldiers who nailed Him to the Cross. The Centurion in charge of the crucifixion detail was actually moved to an awed reverence...

“Truly”, he said admiringly, “this man was a Son of God.”

Grovel? Not on your life.... Not even on your death. How does the old Spiritual put it? “He never said a mumbalin’ word....”

No, real humility, the genuine article, is as far removed from fawning self-abasement as it’s possible to get. THAT’S NOT THE HUMILITY OF JESUS.

Nor, was His humility based on any sense of SIN. It is with us, without a doubt. Nothing for you and me is quite as humbling as the power of sin. If you have ever been brought to your knees, been brought crumbling to the dust by the realization of something you did... or didn’t do... maybe something you thought wouldn’t be found out, something you thought surely would remain secret...and didn’t...or maybe something you did with premeditated malice---AND THEN THE GRAVITY OF IT HIT YOU... the pain your action or inaction caused....

If you’ve ever had that happen to you, then you know how devastatingly humbling such an experience can be. IF YOU’VE NEVER BEEN IN THAT POSITION, THEN YOU’RE A RARE BIRD, INDEED. I’m not sure I want to stand too close to you. You’re DIFFERENT. We’ve all been humbled by our moral failures. When with sincerity we’re able to cry, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner”, that’s a blessed hour of true humility.

Jesus, on the other hand, was humble without the impetus of guilt. You’ll look in vain to find in Him any trace of a scar on His conscience.

One of the old hymns we used to sing---I don’t think it’s in the new hymnal—I wish it were...I WOULD BE TRUE, for there are those who trust me.

In that hymn, there is this phrase: “O Thou whose deeds and dreams were one.”

He’s the only one of whom that can be said. He didn’t have to deal with remorse.

He didn’t have to deal with regret. He never had to say, as we so often do, “If only I had done this”, or

“If only I hadn’t done that....”

Of all the prayers He made, He never had to pray, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”

He was sinless, and yet He was humble. Untainted by moral evil, He still exhibited more true humility than any person who ever lived.

Humility may be prompted by sin, may come out of our response to its insidiousness, may be the blessed result of our finally admitting it, FOR US, but the humility of Jesus,

His genuine humility, with its strange power to appeal to the best that’s in us, is not based on that.

AND ONE MORE THING IT’S NOT. We’re still clearing ground.... I’m sorry. Humility is a slippery commodity. The minute you’re proud of it... it’s gone.

There’s a wonderful old story about a monk sitting at supper with his fellow monks in the monastery dining hall...They’re talking about this very thing. He bangs his fist down on the table and says, “By God, I can out humble any man in the room.”

There’s just enough truth in it to be dangerous. Genuine humility is not self-depreciation...It’s not putting yourself down.

It’s not denigrating yourself. Nowhere in the Record do we see Jesus doing that.

There were some things He made light of, some things He ridiculed. There were some things He disregarded, things other people took seriously that He didn’t take seriously at all.... Thank God.

But there was one thing He never once made light of, and that was the work He was given to do. HE TOOK HIS MISSION VERY SERIOUSLY...magnified it, focused on it, hunkered down on it, if you will, and refused to let anything get in the way of carrying it out.

“I must do the work of Him who sent me, while it is yet day”, He said.

Or again, “My Father works, and I work”....an unswerving commitment to duty.

THAT WAS NOT NEGOTIABLE. And here’s the amazing thing. In speaking of His work, His mission, He used the loftiest terms imaginable, even so far as associating them with Himself... with His own person.

That’s astounding! Who He was and what He was to do were merged.

Other teachers call people to their message. JESUS CALLED PEOPLE TO HIMSELF.

 “Come unto me...and I will give you rest...”

 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” Talk about quiet confidence.

How do you reconcile that with humility? The self-assertiveness of Jesus is the most encompassing, the most thoroughgoing self-assertiveness in all history.

Yet in the very next line of that same passage, He says, “For I am gentle and lowly in heart...”   HOW DO YOU PUT ALL THAT TOGETHER WITHOUT CONTRADICTION.

Clearly the humility of Jesus was not a belittling of Himself. If anybody else in the world said about himself the things Jesus said about Himself, you’d either laugh him off the stage as a buffoon, or haul him off as a lunatic.

But with Jesus those lofty statements are simply an accurate self-description.

What He claimed and what He was were the same. No contradiction. He was simply telling the truth about His identity.

So what are we left with? We’ve spent a lot of time on the negative.

Not based on obsequiousness, not based on self-putdown, not the result of sin—at least for Jesus---WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH?

What can we say about humility, this elusive quality which when perverted can be so off-putting, and distasteful, yet which when authentic has such a moral appeal, the power to lift our hearts toward a higher way.

Jesus clearly had it, and we sense it in His life, shining through both words and deeds, through His whole demeanor with a persuasive attractiveness.

May I suggest a story right out of His ministry that I think can serve as a clue, both to the source of Jesus’ authentic humility, AND AS A COGENT CHALLENGE TO US?

It’s that simple beautiful story of the time the disciples asked Him, “Master, who is the greatest in the kingdom?”

What a smart-aleck question, by the way. The very form of it reveals their immaturity. The truly humble don’t go in for comparison with others. They were growing, but they still had a long way to go.

Remember how He handled it? He called over a little child, and placed the youngster in the midst of them, and said, “Whoever humbles himself as a little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Wow! Scholars argue today over the authenticity of Jesus’ words in the Gospels....Did He really say this, or is it merely attributed to Him by His followers...

Is it something He truly said, or is it something somebody thought He should have said? Oh, man... if this isn’t authentic, nothing is. It’s vintage Jesus. And it’s the living example of humility as Jesus understood humility.

A little child is eminently trustful... it trusts a father’s wisdom; it has complete confidence in a mother’s care...it rests emotionally secure in the certainty that there is someone it can count on to arrange and provide.

That’s humility, the humility of childlikeness.

There’s nothing groveling about it. There’s nothing self-deprecating about it. A child is not humble because it knows guilt; a child is humble because it’s a child.

It’s humble because it trusts so completely, because it’s ready at any moment and every moment to respond without reservation to whatever the trusted one asks of it.

Sometimes we see it demonstrated in the life of a grownup. It’s a powerful thing... and gripping. I like G.K. Chesterton’s account of the death of Thomas Aquinas. Have you read his book about Aquinas, the great Roman Catholic scholastic theologian, the one whose earliest teachers, not realizing his brilliance, called “the dumb ox”?

Aquinas brought together in effective synthesis Medieval Christianity and the philosophy of Aristotle, an astounding accomplishment. He was the supreme intellect of that century and maybe of human history.

He was called to Rome from Paris by the Pope for consultation, and on the way, traveling on foot, became ill. His companions took him to a monastery where he was put to bed. But his fever rose, and his condition sank. It became obvious that he was near death. He called for a priest who quickly came in to minister to this man whose giant mind had changed both Church and world.

Chesterton says that when the priest came out of the room, he was ashen-faced. He writes, “the confessor who had been with him in the inner chamber ran forth as if in fear, and whispered that the confession of Thomas Aquinas had been that of a child of five.” That’s genuine humbleness.

And you see--- That only touches the hem of the garment of Jesus’ humility. No one was ever more mature and grown up. AND YET NO ONE WAS EVER MORE CHILDLIKE.

His humility was the result of His total trust. It was founded not on His relationship with people, but on His relationship with GOD. Because THAT was solid, there was no need to brag, or cringe, or fawn, or manipulate, or puff Himself up, or tear Himself down.

There was no need to be more, nor LESS than He was. He could be true to Himself because He knew He was God’s...WHOM HE CONSTANTLY SOUGHT TO HONOR.

It was His humility that made Him quick to attribute to God His successes, and the same humility that fortified Him to stand up against  injustice, and corruption, and the mistreatment of the weak.

He was being humble when He showed exquisite tenderness to the fallen prostitute, AND WHEN He fearlessly drove the money changers from the Temple. In each case He was operating out of a complete and unself-conscious TRUST.

Both His self-effacement and His self-assertion sprang from a common channel of utter faithfulness to His Father’s will.

So we have this picture drawn for us by Paul, our Scripture reading for today... we finally come to it... a picture of the Redeemer of the world, the Savior of humankind, the Prince of this age, and all ages... laying aside the luxury, the pomp, any expression of grandeur, in order to be true to God’s way of bringing an estranged, lost people back home.

He humbled Himself... isn’t that the story of Advent?

Isn’t that the heart of Incarnation—God with us?—He humbled Himself, coming to His beloved in trusting, childlike form...then being obedient, being faithful, sticking it out... all the way... unto death, even death on a Cross.

We’re the recipients of something big, you know... something so big, it’s... humbling.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!