The Ascent of HumilityI begin my sermon today with a quotation from the Rule of St Benedict. St Benedict said the following to the monks with whom he shared a common religious life:And so, my brothers, if we wish to reach the highest peak of humility and if we wish to attain quickly that heavenly exaltation towards which we climb by means of the humility of this life, we must set up for our ascent the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream, on which the angels appeared to him, descending and ascending. For we should surely interpret their descent and ascent as referring to the descent we make by self-exaltation and the ascent by humility. That ladder is our life in this world which God raises to heaven if we are humble in heart.“The descent we make by self-exaltation…”We find ourselves today, once again, in the midst of a story about a confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders of the day. This time, we see Christ dining at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. And after once again healing on the Sabbath Day (an incident which is skipped over in our reading) and observing the Pharisees taking the seats of honour, Jesus tells a parable:When you go to a wedding feast, don’t choose the places of honour because someone more important than you might show up. Then with shame you will have to occupy a lower seat.But instead choose the lower seat first, so that, if a better seat becomes available, you might be invited by your host to move up higher.Now, there is of course a truism about life here but there is also a loaded subtext. For Jesus is in fact using this parable to critique the religious establishment of the day.I spoke last week about the legalistic spirit of the religious rulers of the time. Here we see another aspect of this legalism which is spiritual pride. The Pharisees chose the places of honour, quite literally, when they dined at table. But this spoke of their more general desire for religious exaltation.What specifically were the Pharisees seeking? We can find an answer in the words of Christ elsewhere in the Gospels. In one other place in Luke, for example, he says, “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the market places.” And in the Gospel of Matthew, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the places of honour at feasts and the best seats in the synagogue”.Perhaps the most famous example we might give is from the Sermon on the Mount: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others to be seen by them…when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others…when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues, and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.”In other words, the Pharisees and hypocrites of the time were using their religious observances and statuses to be exalted in the eyes of others. They were doing what they were for a show, so that others might think highly of them and praise them.Consider also one further feature of Jesus’ parable: “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honour, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person’”.Now, this is exactly what had happened. Spiritually speaking, the Pharisees and religious rulers had arrogantly taken the highest place and when someone more distinguished arrived they were unwilling to step aside and let him take the glory that was rightfully his. That distinguished guest was of course Jesus himself, the Messiah of Israel. So arrogant and hard of heart has these Pharisees become that they had taken even the seat of the Messiah and would not yield when he arrived.Now, before we move on too quickly, let us examine our hearts. It is a very human thing to want to be seen by others, to want to be praised, to want to be exalted in the eyes of men, to consider fame, status, or notoriety attractive and desirable. We often seek such things in the church itself – to be seen as successful in ministry, to have an important and visible role – or we might desire such things in our professional, social or family lives.But Christ is telling us that this is the way that leads to spiritual death. If this is our motivation, if this is our true desire, it can only lead to spiritual blindness and humiliation. In the words of St Benedict, it leads to the descent we make by self-exaltation.The Ascent by HumilityThe good news is that there is a far better and more excellent way to be exalted – the ascent by humility. Firstly, it must be said that the aim of this ascent is different to the descent by self-exaltation. The aim of this ascent is not to be praised by men but to be exalted by God and to approach more nearly the throne of his grace.Observe how these two ends are actually opposed to one other. We cannot seek both the praise of men and the favour of God. This is why Jesus tells us to be wary of conducting our religious observances in the presence of others and says, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you”.So, it is not just that we are seeking the same thing by different means. It is that the pure of heart seek not the praises of men but the presence of God. This is surely a means for combatting the spiritual pride that inevitably arises in our hearts: to practice in secret, to not seek to be seen by others, to focus on our own spiritual walk and our own desire to know the presence of God in our lives. This is what it means to take the lower place. For the host will be God himself, who will say to us as we seek him in humility, “Friend, come up higher”.Within the mystery of God, this law has been most excellently illustrated in the Incarnation itself. “Have this mind among yourselves,” wrote the Apostle Paul to the Philippian church, “which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross”.By becoming obedient, Christ himself gave up the riches of heaven and his status as equal with the Godhead, and took the form of a man, becoming a servant, being made obedient to the Father to the point of death on a cross. The humility by which we are called to ascend is, therefore, a humility that partakes mysteriously of the nature of God himself. It is a participation in the life of Jesus Christ.The Apostle Paul goes on to say, “Therefore, God has highly exalted him, and has given him the name that is above every name, so that, at the name of Jesus, every knee should, bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”After humbling himself, Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father. We are encouraged through his teaching similarly to ascend to God, that we might know him more closely and imitate him more nearly.To put it very simply, then, we ascend to God through love: love for him and towards him, and love for our brethren expressed in acts of service. This is truly the meaning of Christ’s words when he both warns and encourages us: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”.There are a legion of saints and holy people who have illustrated this principle throughout the history of the Church. Many of them, by the very nature of their humility, will be known only to God alone. They are those who have truly shut the door to the world and given their lives to secret acts of prayer and charity for the love of God.But occasionally, we have an example of an obscure and poor saint whose love for God and life of service has been chosen as an example to encourage and inspire the rest of us. You might be familiar with the short spiritual work called The Practice of the Presence of God. This work is about a man called Nicholas Herman. Herman was, according to his biographer, ‘a lowly and unlearned man’. A footman and a soldier, he eventually became a Lay Brother among the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666 and was afterwards known as “Brother Lawrence”.Brother Lawrence gave himself to simple acts of love and service, done in the name of God and for the love of God. He used to note how even acts which he found boring and tedious such as washing the dishes in the monastery kitchen could be offered up to God in love for him. He became so used to the practice of the presence of God that eventually he found no difference between the established times of prayer and the hour for work or rest. For the presence was with him continually and always, as he offered each moment, each task, to God.Now, of course, nobody would ever have heard of him had not the people around noticed his otherworldly holiness and certain of them decided to make a note of it for future generations. Such was his humility that he never had it in mind to pass on what he had learned. One of his biographers says, ‘Will anyone find fault with me for ranking together the great Masters and Doctors with an obscure lay-brother, when one finds in his simple words and life the same full purity and perfection of Christian precept and practice, which the greatest lights of the Church have handed down to us, and which all alike have drawn from Jesus Christ, Who hides himself from those who in their own imaginations are wise and prudent, revealing Himself to the humble and lowly of heart?”We must imagine not. Friends, let us not seek to be exalted in the eyes of men. But, rather, let us serve others in humility
