Obedience to God begins with humility

 

As I reflected on the scriptures for the second Tuesday of Lent, it occurred to me that the “scribes and the Pharisees” are the group in the gospels that everybody loves to hate.  By that I mean that we identify them as a group of people who often seem to be at odds with Jesus—and we seem to know why.  The word most often associated with them is “hypocrite.”  That is, we read a gospel passage such as Matthew 23:1-12 in which the scribes and Pharisees are depicted as being “fond of places of honor at banquets and the front seats in synagogues.”  We hear them described as those who “bind up heavy loads . . . while they themselves will not lift a finger to budge them.”  “Hypocrites!” we say.  Saying one thing while doing another.  We see this in a lot of our country’s politicians, especially in our current climate of uncertainty, intolerance, and hate.

In our zeal to identify this group’s disease, we often miss the fact that they’re not really “bad” people.  Jesus actually approved of the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees.  The indictment which Jesus made is this: “Their words are bold but their deeds are few.”  Their affliction wasn’t so much hypocrisy as superficiality.  They had a lot of the right words; it’s just that the words never penetrated deeply enough to affect their actions. 

Recently, I heard the “religious landscape” of the United States described as “about 3,000 miles wide and about 3 inches deep.”  We have every imaginable variety of religious experience from coast to coast.  We don’t lack variety, but depth.  We’re easily distracted and on to the next new idea that attracts us, even jumping from one religious expression to another.  This “disease” tends to afflict us all.

Lent is an opportunity to let the Lord take us into deep water.  To let the Word penetrate deeply into our hearts so that it profoundly changes them.  To let the Word, not just inform, but transform us, so that our actions are affected.  Our prayer today might be: “Lord, make me a person of depth and humility in you.”

Humility seems like such a contradiction.  We’re easily tempted to think that the way to greatness involves letting everyone know all that we do well.  There’s a constant temptation for most people to put forward their best face and to hope others will see that and admire it.  We want to be noticed and praised.  And we often try to make that happen by the little things we do and what we say.  And many times we tend to exaggerate who we are.

On the flip side, if someone criticizes us and thinks ill of us it has the potential of being devastating.  If we hear that someone said something negative about us, we may go home and be depressed or angry about it the rest of the day, or even the rest of the week because our pride is wounded and that wound can hurt.  It can hurt unless we’ve discovered the incredible gift of humility.

Humility is a virtue that enables us to be real.  It enables us to cut through any false persona we may have and simply be who we are.  It enables us to be comfortable with our good qualities as well as our failures.  Humility is nothing other than being honest and true about our lives and being comfortable with that person.

Jesus gives us a wonderful lesson: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  (Matthew 23:12).  It’s extremely hard to live but is absolutely key to living a happy life.  He wants us to be exalted!  He wants us to be noticed by others.  He wants our light of goodness to shine for all to see and for that light to make a difference.  But He wants it done in truth, not by presenting a false persona.  He wants the real “me” to shine forth.   And that’s humility.

Humility is sincerity and genuineness.  And when people see this quality in us, they’re impressed.  Not so much in a worldly way but in an authentic human way.  They won’t look at us and be envious, rather, they’ll look at us and see the true qualities we have and enjoy them, admire them and want to imitate them.  Humility enables the real you to shine through.  And believe it or not, the real you is someone who others want to meet and get to know.