Sermon for the 3 rd Sunday after Trinity – June 8, 2008
“ All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you . ”
DID you chew bubble gum as a kid? I did, and it was common for me to see just how much I could get into my mouth at once, chew it, and make a huge bubble. The best gum for that was Bazooka, and it came in individually wrapped pieces, kind of like thick pats of butter, each wrapped with a waxy paper that had a cartoon on it. You got to unwrap your gum and ready the funnies while chewing that pink pillow. I think about five of those came in a sleeve. I could get all five going at once, but it was a challenge.
Other gum just didn't cut it. The worst was the gum you got with a pack of baseball cards. After school I'd go to the five and dime, reach into my pocket and get out a nickel to buy one pack of trading cards. Excitedly I would open the wrapping and see whose cards I now possessed: Hank Aaron, Mickie Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, or the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays. But with the cards you got the gum, a hard powdered sheet of pink glass that you shattered to bits in your mouth, softened carefully so not to cut yourself, and finally worked into a little chewy clump.
The Bazooka was great, but it gave me a jaw ache to chew that great big wad. It took a lot of breath to try and get a bubble to form from that mass of sticky stuff. It was always a danger to breath in and choke on it. If somebody offered you the best thing in the world, ice cream or candy or even a kiss, this gooey wad of chewing gum was the Spartan 300, the Great Wall of China, the Loch Ness monster forbidding any other sweet any access to my mouth.
Pride is sometimes like that gum. Tell me something that humbles me, makes me consider an action I've overlooked, points out a value I hadn't really lived by, or praises someone else for a talent I feel I have in greater quantity and quality: and this big sticky mass of resistance rises up in my chest, blocking my heart, walling off my inner man from some real truth for a change. Pride is like a heart full of gum.
We all know a few scriptures about pride. The Proverbs are full of wisdom regarding this common human ailment. “Pride goeth before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, Than to divide the spoil with the proud.” Prov 16:18-19 “A man's pride shall bring him low; But he that is of a lowly spirit shall obtain honor.” 29:23 And from the Psalms: “They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.” Psalm 12:1-8 St. Paul writes, “ Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 1 Cor 10:11-12
Our Epistle today from St. Peter admonishes us to “ be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” 1 Peter 5:5ff Here something interests me. God resists the proud . This speaks of God's attitude toward prideful people, and how much He rewards those who come humbly before Him. But why? A part of that, I believe, is because the proud resist God .
Let God speak truth to a prideful person. That truth is likely to be correction, pointing out the way toward a better life, identifying a fault or error in one's life, giving due credit to another. That gum ball fans out over the heart of the prideful person and he is impenetrable to the kindly words of the Lord, spoken in love, with joy and life and abundance their objective for this dummy.
But he has a heart full of Bazooka right now, thank you, and can't consider another thing. God resists the proud, and the proud resist God. Pride is a barrier that blocks the way from us to God and from God to us. What is that way? Jesus told us. “I am the way.”
Pride seems to have been the first sin, or at least it was born as an ugly twin to envy. We see it rise in Eve considering godhood while gazing with longing at that fruit tree forbidden to her by a jealous God. But even before her fall, there was sin in the garden... “ You were in Eden, the garden of God… You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God… You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground... By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries; so I brought fire out from your midst; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.” Ezek 28:13-19 Guess who Ezekiel is speaking of. An angel who was to protect newly created mankind. Instead he became a treacherous snake, perverting truth and distorting the reality that God had just created. Pride, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, lust and sloth: the seven deadly sins, but the first two were the sins of Satan himself, who soon introduced them to man. They have choked us ever since.
And to another angel God spoke: “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” Rev 3:14-17 Here the angel is a true protector of the church, and Jesus warns the people through His message to this angel that they are becoming proud, and by pride becoming lukewarm. This is so Episcopalian . We don't jump up and down, cry out “Amen, brother!” or glow with joy or thrill with devotion. So refined are we, so sedate , we may forget that the God of the universe is seated upon that altar, and His Holy Spirit burns within our hearts. Or is that just gum?
St. Paul wrote to Timothy absolute prophecy of the 21 st century church, and thus I know we live in Biblical times. “In the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power therefore.” 2 Tim 3:1-4 This speaks of people who know about Christ, but have rearranged the faith into something that builds their pride and leaves their unrepentant souls full of convenient sin.
For sin is the issue when we deal with pride. Sin is that ersatz precious cargo, that fool's gold of a selfish life that doesn't want to give up the ship. Pride is a battery of deck guns blazing to keep the King's ships at a distance, wanting nothing of this “righteousness” thank you, for we're fine here . Pride distorts reality and makes us almost always more important than others, more than we truly are. It pities myself, brags on myself, feels shame for my misdeeds— shame, not contrition, because shame is just hurt pride that allows no repentance. Pride exaggerates what I am, puffed up and full of myself as the Sunday paper. And it diminishes all else, God most of all , so invisible, far away, hard to understand, and who truly loves all of us alike, all God's children, all going to heaven. God looked at through the wrong end of the telescope of pride seems more manageable and is not really a factor in a person's life. Just read any seminary textbook of today to get your own telescope.
Jesus accepted sinners into his way of redemption. This made the Pharisees whisper to the scribes. He likened Himself to a shepherd who leaves his flock to search out just one lost lamb, lifting it upon his shoulders and returning it to the flock rejoicing. “ Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” This last phrase was for the ones who were sure they hadn't ever done anything wrong. Guess how much gum was in their hearts.
Pride is the chameleon lizard of sins, disguising itself as anything from patriotism to industry to austerity to purity to fun-loving comic to sentimentalist to zealot. Pride's camouflage is perfect, and to the eyes of the proud it is impossible to see in that proud person's life. It's a wall of bubble gum that stretches over every portal where truth is known to makes its attack on unreality, laying siege to my castle, attempting to get me to surrender to love. But I have provisions enough and to spare. I can last it out. Hah!
Truth wore the ragged clothing of an itinerate preacher from the north. Every self-respecting holy man of the true faith dismissed him without a second thought. His words, haunting for sure, challenged the very rock bed of religion and could not be left unanswered. That truth stood before Rome's governor and was not recognized as truth. What is truth, after all? Truth was nailed to a rude timber cross, mocked, spit upon, hated. The ugly twins, pride and envy, had their greatest day.
And then the earth shook, rocks split, the sky was black, the veil torn. And they all went home and kept the Passover feast to remember their escape from slavery.
PFH+