The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

+    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s almost Halloween so we’ll start this sermon off with something spooky.

And what’s spookier than the 7 deadly sins?

Who can name the 7 deadly sins? Shout ‘em out if you got them!

That’s right we have: Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

When I tried to do this off the top of my head I only got 4, so you’re all doing great!

What we call the 7 deadly sins originates from the 6th century from St. Gregory the Great, and he calls pride the “ruler” of the other six vices.[1] Pride is notably quite bad - for us, for our relationship with God, for our relationship with one another.

Pride receives special attention in the scriptures, and of course, by theologians early on in Christian history. In Genesis, some see the first sin as one of pride: us humans trying to become like God, placing ourselves in the seat of our Creator (Genesis 3:4-5).

The Prophet Isaiah, in chapter 14 vv. 12-16, describes how Lucifer was cast out of heaven for desiring to raise himself higher than God.

Pride as the first sin. Pride as that which creates Satan, the great adversary! Pride demands it is placed first.

Ironically, it frequently gets first place - as the premier vice of the 7 deadly sins.

Now the cure for pride is humility.

And Christ becomes a hallmark of humility for Christians from the get-go.

Because in Christ we see the second person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Son, the Logos, the Divine Word, humbling Himself to become incarnate as a human.

But why is this an act of profound humility? It is that the Son moves from infinity to finitude, from eternity to temporality, from immortality to mortality. This is called the kenosis of Christ, the self-emptying of Logos in the incarnation.

An old Orthodox hymn captures this juxtaposition beautifully, traditionally sung on Good Friday. It reads:

Today, He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon a tree.

The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns.

He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.

…

He who clothes Himself with light as with a garment stood naked for trial.

He was struck on the cheek by hands that He himself had formed.[2]

As disciples of Christ, the paragon of humility, we are called to cultivate the virtue of humility and to strive against the vice of pride.

And today’s Gospel has a lot to say about that, and is directed at: “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

In other words, me and you.

More often than we may like to admit, we find ourselves as the Pharisee in the scripture today. Who, by the way, is quite the upstanding citizen.

This Pharisee is praising and giving thanks to God; this pharisee neither steals, nor deals unjustly, nor commits sexual sins; he fasts, he tithes 10 percent - and, hey, it’s stewardship season, that’s amazing!

This Pharisee is living a most laudable life! I suspect, like this Pharisee, most of us here are also living a life like this - most of us aren’t engaging in illegal or immensely sinful activity (and even if you were, you are welcome here, the church is a hospital of sinners not a yacht club of the righteous!).

But something isn’t quite right - because we are presented with the literary foil of this Pharisee: The tax collector.

Tax collectors were awful. First, I mean, taxes - come on.

Tax collectors were people who betrayed their own kin - their own country. They were Jews who were either co-opted or for the sake of money acted as agents of the Roman Empire to tax, subjugate, and defraud fellows kinsmen. Often, they were accused of fraud, and took more than they needed from their own fellow Jews.

They were despised, alongside prostitutes and adulterers and lepers: those considered to be too unrighteous, too unclean, to sick for integration in society.

Yet it is precisely these people who Jesus seeks to reach.

Today’s tax collector assumes a profound posture of humility. Not looking up to heaven, beating his breast in sorrow, pleading: God be merciful to me, a sinner!

Jesus tells us that this man returns home justified rather than the Pharisee.

To be justified means to be put in right relationship with.

This tax collector. This betrayer. This one who recognizes that he is caught up in a system of violence and oppression, and begs for mercy. He is justified. In his act of humility, he is put back in right relationship with God, giving him the potential for right relationship with his community as well.

The tax collector enters from a place of humility: he acknowledges his dependence on the mercy of God, and his own sinfulness in need of divine grace. This is what makes his act worthy of God’s justification. This is what we are called to develop!

And what of the Pharisee? Why isn’t he sent away justified? After all, he is doing all that is required of him and more!

The Pharisee is filled with pride.

He understands his actions, his behavior, his goodness, to be a product of his own doing rather than acknowledging God. He places himself above others, and approaches God and his fellow humans from a haughty, “look how good I am!” Perspective.

And that pride poisons how he sees people in his community, who are all made in the image of God.

The Pharisee’s behavior today offers us a mirror to our own behavior.

How does pride manifest in our lives? How do we look at those for whom we have contempt?

Perhaps it’s the poor.

Perhaps it’s ICE agents.

Perhaps it’s the drug addict down the street who rambles at night.

If we are honest with ourselves, we may find more similarities with the prideful Pharisee than the repentant and humbled tax collector.

And I am right there with you all: a sinner, in need of saving, who more often than not is seduced by the vice of pride.

But today we are invited to prayerfully practice the virtue of humility.

One meta-analysis of humility from the field of Positive Psychology notes that: Humility strengthens social bonds, promoting a sense of “we-ness” in relationships. Humility makes relationships resilient under the normal wear-and-tear stressors of life. And, humility may lead to better health outcomes through increased self-regulation and reduced stress responses, particularly in relationships.[3]

Pride turns us into an island unto ourselves. Humility opens us up to an interconnected world.

Pride is individualistic. Humility is relational.

Pride hardens our hearts. Humility softens our hearts by empathizing with those in need.

Pride reduces our ability to have mercy, to do justice, to love God. Humility encourages us to pursue such actions.

Pride makes us righteous by our actions, humility reminds us that it is only by the mercy and grace of our loving God that we can do anything.

Humility reminds us that the good we do we do because God has given us these gifts.

And when we recognize this, and when pray, and when we seek humility, the fruits of the Christian life are given root and can flourish. And we will find ourselves more compassionate. More loving. More merciful. More receptive. More welcoming. More inclusive. More radically  and wonderfully able to be the hands and feet of Christ in this world.

Because fundamentally, humility reminds us the God is God, and we are not, thanks be to God.

And we will go about this imperfectly. We will screw up. And that’s why return again, and say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”

And we get up and try again.

May we, by the grace of God, cultivate the virtue of humility in our lives, that we may know God, and one another, all the more deeply, all the more fully, and all the more joyously!

 Amen.

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/seven-deadly-sins-origins

[2] https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2018/04/05/he-who-hung-the-earth-upon-the-waters/

[3] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/measuring-humility-and-its-positive-effects