Hubris and Humility

Last week I had a bite of reality.  I was diagnosed with pneumonia which was and is a first for me (consequently no edition of News and Views last week).  It stared with cold-like symptoms and the pneumonia bug, opportunistic, sneaky little devil it is, took up residence and has been hanging on by its finger nails since.  I have, for a long time, been proud of my ability to resists colds.  I can count the number of colds I have had in the last ten or fifteen years on one hand.  It was a matter of pride me.  Well as they say pride goeth before the fall and fall and it certainly did.

On reflection, I realize that pride can come in small and large ways but it is still pride.  Coincidentally, if you believe in coincidences, the Gospel reading from last Sunday here, ended with Jesus saying, “whosoever exalts himself shall be abased and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.”   So, here I was with a case of pride about what I thought was my great immune system which did not turn out to be as great as I thought it was.  Now you can say what harm did it do for me to do that and that is true.  It didn’t affect anyone else but me.  After all I didn’t think less of people who were susceptible to colds, not much anyway.  However, it did bring home to me the fact that pride can be very insidious.  If I felt that way about a small think I can easily be thinking that way about bigger and more significant things.    

It seems inevitable that we humans will compare ourselves to others.  How am I doing in x or y.  Well, I seem to be doing better than him and not as well compared to her and so on and on.  It can be anything from success (as the world defines it of course), a bigger house, a nice car or cars, a better job, higher on the career ladder.  It can be physical characteristics, better looking, bigger, or stronger.  It can even sneak into areas that you least expect.  Well, I’m a better Spiritual Director than that person or I am a more spiritual person than those people.   Boy I sure am more mature than she is.  Wow, I am closer to God that they are.  It really is insidious and perhaps that serpents in the garden is still at work albeit with a different kind of fruit than it used on our first ancestors.

I have been interested in the idea of humility for many years.  It comes with its with its evil twin hubris.  They are perhaps the opposite sides of the same coin, but perhaps not.  Hubris is, I believe, the consequences of comparisons.  I am better than others.  Indeed, I am so much better that I can do it all on my own and I don’t need anyone else and indeed I don’t owe my success to anyone else.  I certainly don’t need or owe anything to God.  One definition of hubris which catches the sense of it is:

a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance. In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris.

To return to the Gospel passage from Sunday, we have those who exalt themselves being humbled in the next life and visa versa.  It may not be accurate to say that to exalt oneself (pride) is the opposite side of humility but they certainly are related.  I would say that humility is the cure for hubris or foolish pride.  I have been attracted to various writing about humility over the years, perhaps because I knew it was secretly an issue with me which I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself.  The first thing about humility that I remember reading was that a truly humble person can’t be humiliated.  I clung to that as an anecdote to past and future humiliations.  However, the best definition of humility that I have come across is, “to see things clearly.”  I wasn’t clear initially what that was getting at. 

However, on reflection and consideration it became clearer.  If I can see myself clearly, I will know and acknowledge that I am not the master of my fate.  I will know that I am truly not in charge and whatever small gifts I have are not due in large part to the benefits I have received in life which I didn’t earn.  I will begin to acknowledge that, in one way or many ways, they are gifts from God.  It is foolish pride to challenge God or the gods. 

Another definition about humility which I can across recently addresses this.  It defines the characteristic of humility as, “the self-forgetfulness which makes room for God.”  That is the challenge; how to make room for God in all aspects of life.  That is something I continue to struggle with and probably will.  However, if I try really hard I might do it better than others. 

Blessing on your journey with pride and humility.

Pining for the Fleshpots of Egypt

Lorna and I took a short trip away from the cottage this past week end.  The purpose of the trip was to visit St Mary’s Anglican Church in Summerside PEI.  The Rector/priest-in-charge was a student in our Parish here a few years ago. 

We had a positive experience worshipping there on Sunday which offered us a choice of using the more modern way of following the service on the screen at the front of the church or using the traditional way of having prayer and hymn books.  I chose the screen and Lorna chose the books.  That is something I may explore at another time.  However, I want to talk about our experience having breakfast before the service.

We had breakfast at the Starlite Café and Dairy Bar in Summerside near our motel.  I was a trip down memory lane with the café being a blast from the past, specifically the nineteen fifties.  The décor which except for its pristine state could have been original.  There was a juke box consul at every table with appropriate song selections for 25 cents (on reflection I don’t think a juke boxes would have cost that much in 1950’s but that’s a quibble). There were adds for Fanta Orange and Grape sodas (we both had forgotten about Fanta Grape).  There was the mandatory poster of Elvis in the army and much more.  There was also two 1950’s gas pumps which neither of us were old enough to have operated back when they were new.  I believe the price for the gas was 67 cents a gallon which was too high but still ridiculously low by today’s standards.  One source I checked on-line (certainly not available in the 1950’s) quoted the price at 18 cents a gallon which sounds more like it.  I would not have been surprized to see the Fonz from Happy Days in the next booth. 

In any case it was a trip down memory lane for both of us (there wasn’t the other infamous kind of a trip generally available until a decade later).  Memory lane was well travelled by almost all of the customers being of an age that would have grown up in the 1950’s and Lorna and I certainly enjoyed reminiscences of the past.  I think we were both a bit nostalgic about those times.  They were idyllic in many ways when fathers worked in jobs that supported the family and enabled us to live a comfortable lifestyle and mothers stayed at home raising the children and you could go out and play in the neighbourhood with friends and not come home until it was time for lunch or dinner.  Who would not want to go back to those times when everything was great or at least seemed that way to those of us lucky to be in the right circumstances.

However, we are also having a viewing experience which gives us another perspective on those times.  We are currently watching the first season on Mad Men on DVD.  Neither of us have seen the series and we purchased the DVD’s of the first season for our cottage viewing, now that we have updated from VHS and have a DVD player which was purchased last year. 

This presents a very different view of these times.  It is actually set in the early 1960’s.  However, most of the cultural values were what can be classed as the 1950s.  The only people of colour are elevator operators or cleaners or serving in similar jobs.  The series is about advertising men (mad men as they called themselves) and it was truly all men.  They women were secretaries, telephone operators and women did stay home and raised the children in suburbia and gave up any thoughts of careers when they got married.  The Mad Men are portrayed with all the worst characteristics of the male; they drink excessively and drive after drinking, they viewed woman as potential sex partners and tried to ensure that the potential did not go unfulfilled.  Gay men were definitely in the closet and lesbian women were also deep undercover.  And everyone seemed to smoke all the time.  It was not something that encouraged nostalgia in either of us.

Both views are, of course, not true reflections of reality.  They are viewed through the distorting lenses of time and selected memories.  However, both perspectives could be something that does make some people hanker for the good old days.  Why can’t we have a time when men were men and women were women and everyone knew their place and accepted it without question.  Why can’t America and even Canada be great again? 

There is a great danger is longing for our fantasies of what life was like and wishing we could remake the world in the image of our selective and distorted memories.  That was what the Israelites experienced on their journey to the Promised Land.  They murmured against the hardships of their journey with the monotony of manna from heaven and the pined for the fleshpots of their former lives in Egypt with its security and familiarity.  They conveniently forgot about the hardship and cruelty they had experienced under the slave masters.  Yes, the grass did look greener back along the banks of the Nile. 

Of course, they blamed Moses who had (mis)led them out of Egypt.  The hero had become the villain.  It seems to be our nature to look for someone who will save us and has the answers to all our problems.  Someone who will point the finger away from us and at the Other who is the source of our problems.  That was what many followers of Jesus was looking for; someone who would feed their bodies if not their souls, someone who would defeat the Romans; someone who would cast out their demons and cure their leprosy. However, his early promise seemed to be a bust.  The triumph of Palm Sunday turned into the despair of Good Friday.  We are still hoping for someone who will take us directly to that triumph. 

The nineteen fifties of our imagination never were but we are still looking for someone to lead us back to the fleshpots of Egypt.  The journey to the Promised Land is long and there are no short cuts but the journey is worth it. 

Those fleshpots never were that good, were they? 

Blessings on your journey

Who is Your Samaritan?

Happy Labour Day (notice the Canadian Spelling of Labour with a u) to everyone in Canada and the United States.  This is one of the many holidays that we celebrate in common.  There is much in common between our two countries even though the differences seem to have become more of a breech in recent years with the great contrast between our two ‘Great Leaders’.  However, even Trudeau the Younger seems to be revealing that he also has feet of a clay-like substance.  Where are the Happy Days that we were promised?

That being said or ranted (albeit only a little rant which I didn’t set out to write) I must admit that this Labour Day Weekend was unusual for me.  I had to beg-off or bow-out of the two worship services I was scheduled to preside at yesterday because or flu-like symptoms that stuck around.  Lorna and I have for the first time in our joint memories, been sick at the same time with the same symptoms.  I noted this morning that our coughs were like a call and response.  However, we are both on the mend and we sound sicker than we feel this morning.  In respect to the worship services, fortunately was reminded that I am not indispensable and one of the lay readers stepped up and short notice and replaced me.  I do want to note that this was the first time since I was ordained that I was not was my not able to fulfill my scheduled Sunday worship duties. 

Bottom line is that I have a sermon that was undelivered and there is the eternal question if a sermon is unpreached, did anybody hear it?  In response, here is it for the most part as I would have delivered it so it won’t fade too quickly into the place where most sermons go to their eternal rest.

The Gospel reading in our prayer book is the well-known account of the ten lepers who are healed by Jesus and only one returns to give his thanks after he sends them to the priest to be declared clean.  The catch line in the story is, “and he was a Samaritan”.

  

I’m not sure if that should be read as a question or an exclamation.  When we hear of this account it is natural to think of the parable of the Good Samaritan which has resonated down through the millennia since Jesus told it.  Again, it has the same message; it was the Samaritan who did the right thing – who was the neighbour to the traveler.  The priest and the Levite stayed on the other side and looked the other way.  Have you ever done that when someone has approached you on a street for a hand out.  How easy it is to look the other way and ignore the request.

However, why did Jesus use the Samaritan in the parable, and why was it surprizing that it was a Samaritan who returned to give thanks to Jesus for his miraculous healing?

The bottom line was that Samaritans and Jews did not generally get along with each other.  That is something of an understatement.  Well, actually you could say that the Samaritans were closely related to the Jews.  They considered themselves to be descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who were the sons of Joseph. 

These tribes were considered half tribes making up the twelve tribes of the Israelites.  So, in effect it was what could be considered a family feud.

What then was the basis for this feud?  Well, it probably won’t surprize you that it was religious.  The Samaritans’ bible was the Samaritan Pentateuch based on the torah, the first five books of the Hebrew bible.  You only have to look at Christian Church history to know how many wars and battles and schisms have been fought over what tis the true bible and in what language it should be written.  It still comes as a surprize to some people that Jesus did not speak the Queen’s English or Latin or even Greek.  But I digress somewhat.

If that was not enough, there was more to this feud than just the Holy Book or Books.  There was also a dispute over which place of worship was the true place.  This is mentioned in the account in John’s Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well who encounters Jesus.  She tells Jesus that the mountain is the centre of their worship.  Of course, the centre of the worship for Jews was the Temple in Jerusalem.  She poses the question to Jesus when she realizes that he is the Messiah. Jesus affirms the Jewish position, saying "You (that is, the Samaritans) worship what you do not know" which seem to settle the question for Jesus’ view of the true religion.

There was also the question of the Samaritans worshipping idols in addition to an impure form of temple worship.  Of course, the problem of idol worship and false Gods such as Baal, was an ongoing one with the Jews which the prophets railed against and prophesied doom if the chosen people did not repent and return to the one true God.   

  

There were other differences in beliefs and practices but bottom line is that they both worshipped YHWH and had the same foundation to their religious beliefs.

It reminds me of a great sketch I heard once - I think it was one of Garrison Keillor.  In the story, as I remember it, two men meet and begin to talk.  They discover they are both Lutherans.  They go through the various branches and divisions of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and so on and find they that they are both members of each division.  Finally, they come down to a rather obscure branch and find they find themselves on different sides of the branch.  The one responds to the other, “die apostate”!  It is amazing how we can find things that divide us rather than things that unite us. 

Who would the Samaritans be in your life?  Who would Jesus have to substitute for the Samaritan to make his point in telling you the Parable of the Good Samaritan or the one leper who returns.  Who would he have to identify to shame you into realizing you are finding division rather than unity with your brother and sisters?  Would it be a Palestinian if you were a Jew?  Would it be an American if you were a Canadian who felt superior to those Americans who are so divided in their politics and seemingly everything else?  Would it be those refugees that land on one of our borders?  Would it be you next door neighbour who isn’t a good neighbour? Would it be a member of your congregation who acts in ways you do not approve of?  Would it be a member of your family who you find embarrassing?  Would it be a member of your family who comes out as gay or lesbian?

And he was a Samaritan. 

Jesus commands us to love one another as he loves us.  He commands us to love one another and yes even to love our enemies.

Who is your Samaritan?