Be Clothed With Humility

A Sermon For The Third Sunday After Trinity From Fr. Michael

THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

"Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob and ransomed him from the hand of him, that was stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion and shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more at all." (Jer 31:10-12).

This promise of restoration and redemption for Israel spoken by God to the prophet Jeremiah is one of the most beautiful and imaginative found in the Old Testament. God is the Shepherd of his people, who comes and gathers them into his arms, as a father does a child. This Shepherd redeems as well, ransoming the lost sheep from an enemy stronger than them, but their Shepherd is stronger. And when the Shepherd has regathered his sheep, there will be a celebration like never before. A table will be set in the presence of their enemies, and their cup will overflow with wine (Ps 23).

These verses from the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy are absolutely beautiful, the power and majesty of God ring through with such hope, even for the lowliest of heart. And yet it begs the question: why were the people scattered? And why did the Shepherd choose to go and bring them back?

Jeremiah lived and prophesied at a very bleak time in Israel's history. They were a house divided. The kingdom of Judah and the Northern kingdom of Israel were at odds with one another. This division within the people of God pictured the division between themselves and the God of their salvation; their earthly relationship revealed their spiritual one. They were divided from God because they rebelled against him by rejecting his Law's in the most fundamental ways: in worshipping other gods and mistreating one another in terrible ways. And when Divine patience reached its limits, the Lord of Heaven came in judgment,

"And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken my Law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them: Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I have consumed them."

Israel's turn away from the Lord expressed itself first in corrupt worship, then obstinacy to God's commands, and finally arrogancy and hubris. But what was it that lay at the heart of Israel's turn? It's the chief of all vices, the very root of all sedition and rebellion: the sin of pride. Now, if the first Sunday of Trinity is meant to firmly set our Trinity-Tide trajectory in the virtue of love, then this Third Sunday after Trinity is to safeguard us against pride.

Rebellious pride refuses to depend on God and be subject to him. It attributes to self the sole honor due to God. It is the very root and essence of sin. It is the font from which all rebellion against the Lord flows. Surely Lucifer attests to this, the author of pride, who defiantly attempted to set his throne above the highest heavens in proud independence from God (Is. 14:12–14). And even after Michael the Archangel threw the devil to the earth, the insidious serpent instilled the craving to be as gods into Adam and Eve (Gn. 3:5).

Thereby, man's entire nature was infected with pride through the Fall. St. Paul writes, "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Rom 1:21). Do you see what he' saying? Humanity knew God, they knew who he was, but in their pride and arrogancy, they paid him no attention. They refused to depend upon Him, neither did they subjugate themselves to His wisdom, his commands, or his ways. They became a god to themselves and were crushed under the weight of their foolish pride. They were scattered from the center of the universe, the Garden of Eden: from God's presence. In the same way, Israel was scattered from Jerusalem, plundered by the Babylonians and taken from God's presence.

This morning, there is an essential lesson that we must learn from Jeremiah and his generation. The lesson is this: the vice of pride can and will, if unchecked, lead God's people further and further away from partaking in the Divine Life of God. Please hear me, I'm not talking about non-believers receiving the natural outcome of pride and unbelief. No, I'm speaking to us, the church, the people of God. Listen to what Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, "the besetting temptation of the pious man is to become the proud man."

So, I want to talk about pride for just a moment gleaning from the wisdom and insight of St. John Cassian, who wrote on vice and the spiritual life in the 4th century. And following his thinking, I want to sketch out three aspects of pride: its types, depth, and real adversary. First, there are two kinds of pride, pride aimed at men, and pride aimed at God. There is a pride that elevates us above all others, that believes oneself to be vastly superior to every other person. This is sometimes called vainglory, for this sort of pride is fueled by vanity and narcissism. The vainglorious are tyrants, bullies, manipulators, and destroyers of men. They have no law but their own appetites and are beholden only to self.

The other side of the coin is a form of pride that breeds an unhealthy strand of self-reliance, a stubborn, arrogant pride with no need for anything or anyone, not even God. This is the type of arrogant pride which the Lord hates, "I hate arrogant pride and the evil way and perverse utterances." This is the pride that comes before the Fall (think of Lucifer and the Garden). It outright rejects Divine Wisdom, calls it foolishness while reveling in the wisdom of men. Like Israel, it hears the word of God, ponders it, and chooses to go a completely different route. It knows better. It's smarter and wiser than everybody. I think this is what St. John has in mind when he speaks of 'the pride of life.' And this pride can overtake the Christian.

Which brings me to the depth of damage pride inflicts upon the foolish. For Cassian, the archetypal fool is Lucifer, who experienced the full power of pride's awful tyranny. Remember, Lucifer was once the greatest of angels, with unparalleled splendor and beauty, he was the "morning star" (which is what the name Lucifer means). But, Cassian writes, he was "pierced with the dart of pride, [and] was hurled down from his grand and exalted position as an angel." The tyranny of pride results in the loss of self and place, but it also thrusts us far from the God of Heaven, who is the brightest star of all.

And this brings us to the third point on pride: that every form of pride is finally at odds with the God of Heaven and Earth. Pride fires the first shot in the rebellious war against the Creator. Cassian exclaims, "HOW great is the evil of pride, that it rightly has no angel, nor other virtues opposed to it, but God Himself as its adversary!" The sin of pride against our neighbor is an assault on the Image-Maker himself; this vice extends to heaven. For to sin against creation is to sin against the very Creator as well. Pride is an assault on the good, and therefore it is mightily opposed by the Lord, for "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble."

So, my friends, what is the antidote to this treacherous vice of arrogant pride? Well, it is virtue; virtue is the cure for vice, the root of this word meaning "to fall." Therefore, virtue enabled by the grace of God is how we reverse the trajectory of the Fall. Is this not the exact medicine offered to us by St. Peter? "be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud and give grace to the humble."

You see, pride is eradicated by Humility. But are we capable of this? Not on our own. Not without the Shepherd who has given us the power of the Spirit, who thereby enables us to live the virtuous life, to choose the good, serve righteousness not sin, to put vice to death and to exercise the will in imitation of Christ. Virtue is not the same as morality, these are not synonymous terms. The word virtue comes from the Latin root vir (veer), for man. Therefore Virtus (virtue) is the quality of human excellence, perfection, and truth: it is ontological, or a condition of being.

Virtue speaks of the perfect man, it envisions the actualization of the good, true, and beautiful person: this is the virtuous one. On the other hand, morality (from moralis) is a term to describe good conduct and right behavior. But virtue's gaze looks far beyond good conduct, for its aim is to become as the Perfect Man, Jesus himself. Thus, the Christian life is the virtuous life because its goal is to become like Jesus: perfectly good, perfectly true, and perfectly beautiful.

This is why time and time again, the Scriptures call us to virtue, not merely to become good citizens and nicer people, but to be transformed, transfigured if you will, back into the fullness of the very image in which we were created. To behold God in his fullness, this is the Christian vision, the beatific vision, to become as He is... perfected humanity. Through sin and vice, and especially when we succumb to pride, we fall further and further away from self, from other, and most assuredly from Christ. Virtue is how we put vice to death, and this combat is so vitally necessary. Because pride and all vice impede our ascent to Christ, the attainment of perfection.

Exercising virtue in the Christian life is a super-natural and Divine work, which is why virtue unaided by grace is humanly impossible. We cannot transform ourselves. All the morality in the world cannot reverse nor remake what has fallen. In other words, we cannot attain Christ without receiving the gift of grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. In a sense, to behold God, we must have God. To walk in the Spirit, He must reside within us. To see Christ, we must walk in the same way. This is the imitation of Christ.

We look to the perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who embodies virtue perfected. The Good Shepherd is the virtue of Humility personified. He shows us what Humility is and how we are to heed St. Peter's exhortation to humble ourselves in Humility. First, Humility willingly gets low, it abases oneself. Well certainly, the Lord has made himself low. First, by having even an ounce of concern for rebellious, obstinate, and stiff-necked people. Remember the apostasy of Jeremiah's generation. Did they deserve a good shepherd? Did their pride and rejection of him necessitate his coming to gather them back? Surely not! But Humility looks beyond all of this because at the heart of Humility is love.

Who is the Son of God who willingly makes himself lower than the angels by taking humanity upon himself? The eternal God condescends and abases himself; he comes and sits at the table and receives sinners. By this, Humility not only permits Himself to receive sinners but also to be received by them. Humility thinks nothing of self, but for pride-filled, abstinent sheep who have wandered away, scattered of their own volition by sin and vice. You see, Humility leaves the 99 and goes after the 1 who is lost.

But we mustn't think of the lost sheep as a poor innocent victim of circumstance or lack of direction. To be lost in scripture is to actively fall away from the Shepherd. The Lost Sheep are lost because they have wandered away (Sin, all like sheep have gone astray) Israel had wandered away, choosing to worship false gods and sacrificing to idols, their outward actions reflective of their inward corruption. They were lost sheep because, in their pride, they chose to shepherd themselves and wandered away from The Great Shepherd of the Sheep. They were overtaken by pride, which is always accompanied by obstinacy. These two go together, the proud resist godliness and authority both human and Divine.

Not only does Humility go after the underserved, but he also picks them up and bares them upon His shoulders. Jesus picks us up out of our pride, he removes us from the danger of ourselves and bears us back to safety. And why? Because he loves us and wants us to be with Him, in perfect union with the Divine Life, not scattered across the world by our falling back into wickedness and vice.

And here is the good news friends, The parable of the Good Shepherd sets forth for us, in a striking manner, the image of the pastoral faithfulness of God's searching for the sinner. We see the good which comes from Humility, the virtue of all virtues. Beloved, I pray you find comfort today from the Good Shepherd who, through Humility rescues us from pride and all vice if we merely humble ourselves under his mighty hand and give ourselves, our souls and bodies, to the one who loves us enough to leave the ninety-nine and bring us back to himself. Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who is willing to love us back into the image of himself. Amen+