Pentecost 17B 20/09/2015 When Leonard Bernstein was conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, a reporter asked him to name the most difficult instrument to play. Without hesitation, Bernstein replied, “Second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who wants to play second fiddle with enthusiasm, that’s a real problem. Yet, without the second fiddle, we have no harmony in the orchestra.” (1) Pride is perhaps the one thing above all things that we have no right to have because we did not create ourselves. Pride by its very nature sets itself up in competition with God who made us. It supplants who God is and what he has done to redeem us on Christ’s cross and replaces it with a “me-first” mentality. God alone created us and anything good about us. At the end of the creation week, the scriptures declare, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Scripture further records: “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. (James 1:16-17) Therefore, we can say that human pride is a baseless thing. It is like Little Jack Horner within us screaming for attention and declaring, “What a good boy am I!” But, we are not good as St Paul reminds us: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24) Pride is like the gaudily dressed fellow on a Mardi Gras float. He looks good but for only a moment. The reality is that he is hiding behind his self-created grandeur. The proverb says: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”(Proverbs 16:18). Golfing great, Arnold Palmer, tells a story about the price his pride demanded in the 1961 Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia: “I had a one-stroke lead and had just hit a very satisfying tee shot. I was in real good shape. As I approached my ball, I saw an old friend standing at the edge of the gallery. He motioned to me and held out his hand. I proudly took his congratulatory handshake. As soon as I did, I knew I had lost my focus. On my next two shots, I hit the ball into a sand trap, then put it over the edge of the green. I missed a putt and lost the Masters because for a moment pride overcame me. It was a stupid mistake.” (2) Arnold Palmer won a lot of Masters subsequently but he will never forget that one! Pride is not just a brainless emotion; pride can be a humiliating and expensive one. A certain parish priest told his congregation, “I have just composed the most magnificent sermon on humility you will ever hear but I will not preach it until I have a congregation big enough to deserve it.” That is how pride works! A master of disguise, pride can dress itself up in the Calvinist who boasts about his eternal security or in the Arminian who speaks about his salvation through constant personal righteousness. In each case, they forget their master, of whom the scripture teaches is the giver of faith as St Paul reminds us: “Salvation is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in Page 1 of 3
advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10). Sometimes pride attends church and goes home bragging about what it did there, or seething about something it didn’t like there. Pride forgets that church is never about us. It is only about Jesus who calls it “my church” (Matthew 16:18). “Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud” (Proverbs 18:12). Pride originates in the human heart.The heart is the throne room of pride. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). This is what makes pride so hard for us to spot within us. It comes from the seat of deceitfulness. The spiritually healthy heart is one that bows down in humility and rises in praise and adoration for God alone. Journey through Saint Paul’s life via his letters and you see pride overcome. In 57 AD, Paul asserts his perception of authority to the Romans: “Inasmuch as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I make much of my ministry” (Romans 11:13). Two years later, in 59 AD, he writes to the Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle” (I Corinthians 15:9). Four years later, as Paul grows older and wiser in the Lord’s service, he writes to the Ephesians, “I am less than the least of all God’s people” (Ephesians 3:8). Then, after two more years of spiritual maturity, Paul tells young Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15). As Paul progresses in years and service for Christ he becomes smaller and smaller and Christ becomes larger. As his sense of self-importance sinks, so his praise and adoration for the God who so wonderfully saved him rises, and his desire to serve God grows. If you would be like Paul, crush pride and cultivate a passion for directing all your praise toward Christ. “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (v. 35). The disciples discuss among themselves who would become “number one.” Having just heard Jesus say that he must be betrayed and killed, their biggest concern is about who will be the next leader. Their conversation was insensitive at best. That they would forget so soon the impact of this one they followed should tell us something about human nature that none of us should like to hear. The Lord takes this moment to teach them a lesson about pride and servitude. If you want to be first among your brothers, he tells them, aim for being last. If you would be the greatest, start out by being a servant. It turns this world’s way of thinking upside down. Well, actually, it turns it right side up! The lesson seems simple but the disciples do not understand. Later, near the end of his ministry, Jesus returns to this theme and demonstrates what he means by stooping to wash the disciples’ feet. On the day after he washes their feet, Jesus takes up the cross, society’s ultimate symbol of sin and shame, and dies the death we all deserve. After his resurrection, God exalts him and makes that cross the world’s ultimate plus sign. If the Jesus you follow allows you to feel comfortably angry promoting your own agenda, then either he is not the Jesus of Holy Scripture or you are not following closely enough. All who follow Jesus are called to be servants whose lives are marked by humility and service to others. “Humility comes before honour” (Proverbs 18:12). Our Lord “humbled himself” all the way to the cross. There is a difference between pride and honour. Nowhere does God’s word say that we are not to have honour. He forbids only that we would be Page 2 of 3
proud of our honours. Vanquishing a prideful heart does not mean that we are to consider ourselves of no use. To the contrary! As Christ’s disciples, we are endowed with extraordinary gifts from on high. We do not say, “I am no good. There is nothing I can do.” Rather, we say, “God has made me better than I once was and has equipped me with this gift. Therefore, I must use it for the advancement of his kingdom.” In that spirit, we live mindful that whatever we have we have received from Christ. Nor does crushing pride mean that we are not to be ambitious about improving ourselves. Considering what it cost Christ to redeem us, we owe it to him to be the very best we can be in every way. We will settle for no less than that. People who are truly great know their greatness is not in themselves but that it is God’s greatness living through them. Therefore, they will work to improve themselves so that they can give their best for the master. What, then, are the rewards of replacing pride with humility? Jesus says, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (v. 35). The reward is simply that just as God “exalted (Jesus) to the highest place,” so also God will exalt all who surrender their pride at the foot of Jesus’ cross. The more we can remove pride from our hearts, the more we will be used and exalted. The end of pride is the beginning of a new life in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God that we can resolve to defeat pride and live in humility before the face of him who left heaven to take our cross upon himself. Amen. Fr Robert Newton 1) Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute January 3, 1997, p. 8 2) Arnold Palmer, A Personal Journey T. Hauser A. Palmer 1994
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