Humility
Sermon by the Revd Clive Hughes, Hanmer Group of Parishes
1 Peter 5.5-7
The first letter of Peter was seemingly written about thirty years after the events of the first Easter, at the start of the 60s AD. Simon Peter, probably in late middle-age, was then living in an empire ruled by the Emperor Nero. He not only had total power, but was (at a conservative estimate) an evil maniac. It’s a combination that usually spells much grief and trouble for lots of people. Nero blamed Christians for the disastrous burning of Rome in 64AD; and Peter himself seems to have become a victim in the aftermath. He wrote this letter to the churches in what is nowadays northern Turkey. He wanted to show how Christians should live in a hostile environment – and to do so in such a way that they are both able to endure and also have a lasting impact for good on that same environment.
One of the things he asks them to do is to “be humble”: something we might find a bit strange. You might remember Uriah Heep’s “ever so ‘umble” hypocrisy in Dickens’s David Copperfield; or equate humility with someone poor, insignificant, or unimportant. It’s not a popular term in an age when Pride is the message we’re getting in our own culture. If you’ve got it, flaunt it! Even if you’re wrong, be defiant about it and don’t give a tinker’s for anyone else’s views. Tell them it’s great and you’d do it all over again.
Humility is at the other end of the scale to pride, so you hear a lot less about it. In his Letter, Peter takes several opportunities to tell his readers to submit in various ways. Again, submission has connotations of surrender, or giving up. But here, it means living in the best and most respectful way possible: giving respect both to God and to each other. He urges the Christians to respect the secular authorities – even Nero’s governors – as well as husbands and wives, young and old, even slaves and their masters. Indeed, it’s summed up in Peter’s desire that they all respect each other. Whoever they were, they had an equal dignity in God’s eyes. So rather than being mocked or despised they should be listened to and appreciated in their different ways.
For example, he said that younger people ought to submit to older ones, not just because they’d lived longer but because they were likely to be more spiritually mature. How much of that respect do we see in the world around us these days, when the media encourages the younger generation in mocking and blaming older people for everything from pollution to political choices?
However, this isn’t to suggest that older people deserve to run the show, even in church circles. For one thing, I find I just haven’t got the energy that a youngster has: and yes, we can also become a bit stuck in our ways. But we have years of life experience, and the ability to measure whether something will likely work or not. Peter is trying to say that a church, like other parts of our society, works best when there’s teamwork between the age groups – vision and zeal and energy at one end, with wisdom and leadership at the other. He appeals to them - and to us – “Clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”. Grace – God’s favour and forgiveness, particularly to those who don’t deserve it.
Grace and humility characterised the life of Jesus, no more so when on the night of the Last Supper he staggered his followers by washing their feet – a job for the lowest ranking slave in a household. He put their well-being before his own; not a bad example to follow. Being humble isn’t to think badly about ourselves, or be grovelling, or inviting others to trample on us – it means simply not thinking of ourselves in a selfish way.
God gives grace to the humble, says Peter, quoting from the Book of Proverbs. We’d need a good dollop of that grace, I reckon, to submit to others rather than yelling at them or resenting them! Being humble before God enables him to give us his grace and the ability to be less selfish. God can’t do anything with selfish people – pride was the sin that turned the once-bright angel Lucifer into the Devil. Pride. It deafens us to the promptings of God. The only antidote to it is God’s grace. Actually, you could say that to be submissive is an act of faith. There’s a risk involved in submitting to other people, isn’t there? But not if we submit to each other, and trust in the God who Peter says cares for us. Look at Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a frail little old woman who met with world leaders, yet insisted she clean out the filthy toilets in her street refuge each morning. Humble.
In the earliest known Christian hymn, quoted by St.Paul in his letter to the Philippians chapter 2, it says that Christ made himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, and humbling himself even to accepting the death of crucifixion. We, the church, haven’t always followed his example. If we want his blessing and grace; if as Peter says, we want him to raise us up in eternity, then we must be willing to submit ourselves to him and to others in his church. Because that’s Christ’s own nature, and our example. The Old Testament prophet Malachi sums it up neatly when he writes: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Amen.