Pentecost 17: A Welcoming Spirit is Grounded in Humility

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22

Psalm 54 

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

Last week, in our thinking about welcoming and hospitality, we ended by reflecting on words from what scholars believe to be an early Christian hymn, and which St Paul included in his letter to the Philippians: “[Christ Jesus] though he was in the form of God…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself.” (cf. Philippians 2:6-8)  Paul prefaces these words with a particular call to his sisters and brothers at Philippi: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:3-5)  Paul is calling them to humility, and a particular kind of humility which resolves itself in a charitable and kindly view of others.  In his words Paul almost seems to echo this morning’s Gospel in which Jesus once again predicts his death – his humbling of himself, and in which he too commends humility among his immediate followers: “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35b)  He then made his point graphically, by placing among them a child – perhaps the lowest in the social pecking order of the ancient near-east; “children were akin to ‘non-persons’ ”, one biblical commentator has observed.  Jesus places this “non-person” in the midst his disciples and instructs them in hospitality, in effect that they were to humble themselves by playing host and offering hospitality to the most humble among them.

Now, we’ve all been told at some point that humility is a virtue.  However, in the ancient world – the world of Jesus and in which Christianity was born – this was hardly the case.  Both its Greek and Latin equivalents meant something like “crushed” or “debased”, and it was associated with failure and shame.  One might be humble before the gods or before emperors, but after all they held the power of life and death.  Equally, you gained honor yourself when in turn others humbled themselves before you.  But to show humility toward a social equal or worse, an inferior, was not only a bit ridiculous, but it smacked of immorality.  The writer John Dickson presents the situation in this way: “humility before an equal or lesser was morally suspect.  It upset the assumed equation: merit demanded honour, thus honour was proof of merit.  Avoiding honour implied diminishment of merit.  It was shameful.”  It was Christianity that would eventually shift this paradigm, because what the Church discerned in the person of Jesus, and eventually proclaimed, was a life of absolute humility.  The eternal and divine Word, emptied himself in order that human beings could be welcomed into a renewed relationship with God, and that welcoming found its most focused expression in Christ’s offering up of himself in service and ultimately in being subjected to the lowest place, and the most shameful end the Roman world could envisage: death on a cross.  And so for Christians, the message rings out loud and clear  there is no shame, there is nothing shameful in humbling one’s self even for the least of God’s creatures.  Christ’s humility is ultimately an act of hospitality through which all are welcomed into the divine life, as the Prayer Book itself highlights: “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.” (BCP, p. 101)  Yes, Christ’s humility is ultimately an act of hospitality by which we are all invited to live into our own divine inheritance, but also by which we are called to recognize that divine inheritance in others and honor it.

If the ancient world understood honor, merit and shame, as the mechanisms through which one’s identity was established and through which the strict distinctions of society were maintained and reinforced, it should hardly be surprising that Christianity commended humility as a way of undermining that entire system.  And isn’t that really what Jesus is trying to say when he speaks in the language of humility?  He is saying that there is in him inaugurated a new system, a new way of living, which he himself modeled and which he called the kingdom of God.  And that, for those who have pledged themselves to this new way, the old categories of merit, greatness, importance have ceased to have any meaning; in fact they’ve been inverted – “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35b)  Moreover, this new way of being, this new way of living out the dynamics of human relationship and interaction is profoundly bound up in the dynamics of welcome and hospitality:  “Whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me.” (Mark 9:37a)  The humility which Christ teaches and to which we are called, is not humiliation – there is a difference; neither is it groveling self-abasement.  It is instead a realistic and joyful appreciation of who we are as individuals loved and redeemed by God, in all our brokeness and in all our glory.  Our dignity is not compromised by serving others or by welcoming those whom society may label as non-persons.  In fact, it is by doing so that we model in the world what Jesus himself lived and modeled: “Welcome one another”, Paul writes to the Romans, “just as Christ has welcomed you.” (Romans 15:7)  Christian humility liberates from the social games of position or prestige, it liberates us from worrying if we are losing face, if our honor is at stake by associating with certain groups of people or by performing certain duties, because our honor – our prestige, if you will – is not based on the conventional social values and norms of power or authority, on questions about who is the greatest (cf. Mark 10:34) or most important.  The practice of Christian humility liberates us from all these social games, as we recognize our dignity – and that of others – not as part of a socially imposed system of relative worth or merit, but as human beings made in the image of likeness of God, and absolutely nothing can compromise that.  It is, as St Peter writes, “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”. (1 Peter 1:4)

A welcoming spirit is grounded in humility, a humility like Christ’s, which is not afraid to go beyond the borders of the conventional or prescribed in order to serve and include.  It is not afraid of losing face or conventional honors.  It knows no sense of humiliation in placing itself at the disposal of others because in doing so we are welcoming and serving the divine in them, as well as the divine purposes of God’s kingdom, and what – what indeed – could be greater, could bring us more real honor – than that?