Luke 18:9-14; John 8:12
October 27, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Addressing those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt,” Jesus told a story of two men who went to the temple to pray. One, a sleazy, good-for-nothing tax collector, collaborator with the Romans and swindler of his own people, prayed, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” He had nothing, claimed nothing, and sought everything. He was publicly humiliated.
The other man, an outstanding, righteous, sacrificial, Bible obeying person, prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” He is not only a good man, but a really good man who does what Jesus urged and goes the second mile in his living and his giving. He sees his virtues as gifts from God and therefore sees himself to be more blessed.
Then Jesus sends a zinger in saying, “I tell you, this man, the cheating tax collector scoundrel went down to his home justified rather than the other, the Pharisee.” Jesus says, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
What on earth are we supposed to do with this? Do we go out today trying to out humble each other?
Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector’s humility wasn’t a natural virtue; he had to work on it. It was simply a realistic assessment of his situation. He was a failure at being righteous. He had no hope of setting things right between himself and God. But for the Pharisee, Jesus uses this parable to speak about pride and specifically understanding that pride is a root to sin.
Pride
In most situations, we don’t associate pride as sin. In fact, we see that it’s a good thing to have pride in one’s family, one’s self-worth, one’s town, and even in one’s church. How many times have you read on the rear bumper of a car, “I’m a proud parent of a honor student?” After the Giants won the World Series, everyone bought Giants caps and t-shirts and proudly worn them. And haven’t you heard me say proudly, “FCBC has 81 solar panels on the top of our roof?”
Pride, considered in itself can be a most attractive virtue. We parents try to instill a sense of “self-worth” which is pride in our children. We tell them to do their homework so that honestly, we can be proud of their accomplishments.
We encourage and sign up our children for sports, ballet, art classes and all sorts of extracurricular activities so that they would develop self-confidence, which is pride.
Asian Americans often think that the greatest sin for us is not pride, but low self-image. As people who often find ourselves in a minority position rather than in the majority, we would strive to over-compensate pride so that our children would not develop a low self-image.
We say that the “A” in Asian means all-As in school! We tell them that straight black hair is pretty or height is not always necessary to play basketball or that we can all be Bruce Lee. We preach self-respect, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-ascribed dignity. Rather than to follow Jesus’ commandment to “love your neighbor as thyself,” we have shortened it to a ruthlessly enforced mandate: love thyself!
In the work place, management declares, “There is no more important quality to cultivate among the workers in a company than pride in their products.” In our country’s political life, especially over the past 2 ½ weeks of government shutdown, we see as dominated by the politics of self-assertion. “We are right and they are wrong. We really speak for the voters and the other side doesn’t.” And when the government finally adopted legislation to pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling, we see that it was the pride of one side that caused the shutdown to happen in the first place. And in the world of counseling and therapy, psychologists reinforce self-esteem.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “I do not believe any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world.”
We might think that pride is not a sin but more of an error of bad judgment, the mistake we make judging ourselves in far too positive way, than a sin. But the person who thinks of himself as a genius is on his way to some really stupid mistakes. The warrior who thinks of himself as invincible isn’t a warrior for long. And Asian Americans who think that with their Cal or Stanford degrees under their arms will soon discover that there are Harvard and Yale graduates applying for the same jobs.
What’s wrong if we had just a little pride? What’s so bad about pointing a spotlight on yourself who have done something extraordinary?
Jesus and Pride
To tell the truth, I can’t think of much that is wrong with a healthy—within limits—sense of pride except that Jesus was against it.
Jesus began his earthly work in a desert. The heavenly voice at his baptism proclaimed, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” Yet though he was “full of the Holy Spirit,” that same Spirit led him into a wilderness where for “forty days he was tempted by the devil.”
Alone, in the quiet desert, voices come, and for Jesus, the voice that comes, after the heavenly baptismal voice is that of the devil.
“If you are the Son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” The person who could turn stones to bread could do a lot of good for poor, suffering humanity, and would be herald as a saint but Jesus says, “No.”
Jesus encounters the temptation to pride with his rejection and with his silence. Has this Son of God no pride?
Jesus’ humility was not only seen as the Son of God but also in his vocation as being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). This self-emptying, humble servanthood is the shape of God.
As people, we are conditioned to name human self-promotion as something we need but it ends up setting up ourselves up as god—the sin of idolatry. What the world calls healthy “self-esteem,” Christians sees as idolatry and self-worship. The devil in the desert had it right in telling Jesus that he could be empowered to set the world right, to correct all the mistakes at creation; all that was necessary was to “worship me, the devil” and “all this will be yours.” But Jesus said “No” to all of that.
Walking in the Light
Don’t we all want to have a spotlight on us at times? We like the feeling of self-importance and being special. But when we direct that spotlight on ourselves so much that we begin to set up ourselves as god, we commit the sin of pride. Our own spotlights can easily blind us.
There’s an old Jewish saying, “There is a God and you are not it.”
In this time of returning a portion of what we have received, Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer at the temple is a story about worship. In worship, our pride gets judged and even conquered. We are challenged by the church to stop looking at ourselves and to turn our gaze upon God. We want to walk in the light of Christ rather than under our “love thyself “spotlight.
We are humbled by our vision of a God who is greater than ourselves, yet who has come very close to us, a God who loves us enough to tell us the hard truth about ourselves and our sin. And yet this God in Jesus Christ constantly forgives us for our sin, including the sin of pride. We want to walk in the light of Christ rather than under our “love thyself” spotlight.
Let us pray.
Humble us, Lord, that you might exalt us in your service. Shock us with the truth about ourselves so that you might forgive us for our sin. Descend to us in this church that we might in our times of sacrificial and annual giving be lifted up to you. Amen.