What does humility look like? In today’s Scripture from Philippians 2:1-13, Paul calls the followers of Jesus to look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others, and he lifts up Jesus as the ultimate example of humility and self-giving love. Imagine what the world would look like if we as Christians lived out Christ’s humility.
Here’s the sermon for September 27, 2020.
Grace to you and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Raise your hand if you think you are the most humble person here today.
Thank you for not raising your hand. If you think you’re humble, you’re probably missing the point!
What does it mean to be humble?
I spent some time this week trying to find good examples of humility, and you know, they’re hard to find! It’s a lot easier to find examples of pride. I suppose that makes sense, because by definition, when someone is humble, they don’t boast about it.
TV shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos have plenty of examples of people being humbled when something goes wrong, but it’s harder to find people who choose to be humble.
There’s a great line in a Weird Al Yankovich song that goes “Well, I know I’m a million time as humble as thou art.” That’s the opposite of humility!
It’s like the pastor who said he had a wonderful sermon on humility, but he was waiting for a large crowd before preaching it.
Today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians is probably the best explanation of what it means for us to be humble.
Often when you’re reading Paul’s letters, you can do some interesting detective work to try and figure out what problems his original readers were dealing with. In the church in Philippi, it seems like there must have been some people with some ego problems.
In fact, later in the letter, Paul actually names two women in the church who seem to have been having a disagreement, Euodia and Syntyche, and he pleads with them to get along for the good of the church.
But here in chapter two, Paul addresses these problems of pride and disagreement by lifting up the virtue of humility. Instead of acting out of selfish ambition or conceit, instead of doing things to make yourself look good, in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Pause for a second and just think about how radical that is.
Instead of trying to stand out and make yourself look good, instead of doing what’s best for you, have the humility to consider others as better than yourselves.
He continues, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”
I want you to recognize how countercultural this sort of humility is. Christian humility is not about being “a doormat for Jesus,” but about being intentional in putting others before ourselves. This is radical.
Think about how our political dialogue would look if the messages weren’t about how great I am, or about how awful the other person is, but about how best to serve others. Think what would change if we didn’t vote based on what’s best for us, but if instead we were of the same mind about choosing the leaders and policies that’d be best for our neighbors’ interests.
Imagine what our church would be like if we oriented our worship styles and our groups and our traditions and our budgets not around what we prefer, but about what our neighbors need.
Imagine how differently this pandemic would have played out if followers of Jesus actually cared more about looking to the interests of others than worrying about our own convenience.
Imagine how the world would change if we Christians were concerned more for the benefits and freedoms of others than for our own rights and self-interest.
Imagine if we worried less about getting the right stuff to fit in, and more about making sure there’s enough for everyone; if we were willing to pay a bit more so people on the other side of the world could earn a fair wage; if we valued each person’s life enough to see them as worthy of love, worthy of a chance to live, worthy of food and water and medical treatment, worthy of dignity, respect, and justice.
I believe this verse has the power to change the world. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
As the example of radical self-giving, as the example of humility, Paul turns, of course, to Jesus, to the way God chose to enter the world and live with us.
Jesus’ birth was humble. He wasn’t born in a palace, he didn’t appear in a flash of lightning; he was born to an unwed mother in a little backwater village. As we’ll sing in a few minutes, there were angels from God to announce his birth, but they didn’t go to Caesar in Rome, or even the governor in Jerusalem; they went to a few common shepherds out working the night shift in the fields.
The Christmas story gives a few glimpses of Jesus’ true identity, but it’s certainly not how anyone would have expected the Creator of the world to come into creation. Even the messy process of birth is surprising – who’d expect a divine being to go through that?!
As Jesus grows up, the Bible gives us a glimpse of his divinity in that one incident where he stays behind at the temple talking theology, but otherwise, Jesus seems to be just a normal first century Palestinian kid.
It’s hard for us to comprehend this idea of God being humble. We expect the Son of God to be constantly doing flashy miracles.
That’s how we’d write the story. In the last 2,000 years, people have come up with all sorts of stories about Jesus childhood, like him making a bird out of clay and suddenly bringing it to life, or magically stretching out a wooden beam to be the right length for his father Joseph to use. None of that’s in the Bible, though. It’s all stuff people have come up with because it’s so hard to grasp the idea of a humble God.
Even Jesus’ first recorded miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana happens because his mother asks him to help with a problem, not because Jesus wants to draw attention. When he calls disciples, he calls ordinary fisherman and despised tax collectors, hardly the best and the brightest. He empties himself of all the glory we expect God to have.
And ultimately, when the powers of the world reject his message, Jesus remains humble even to death, even to death on a cross, an instrument designed to strip a person of any dignity, power, or control they claim to have. A cross is intended to dehumanize enemies of the empire, to prove the futility of rebellion against Rome.
But Jesus transforms the cross.
By giving himself willingly over to death, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the world, Jesus reveals the character of God. God is willing to give up everything for your sake, out of love. God’s glory is seen in giving, in sacrificial love, in humility.
And because of Jesus’ self-giving, sacrificial love, Paul writes, we worship. We praise God. We confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We do our best to follow Jesus’ example of humility. Not that we’ll get it right—we’ll keep doing things out of self-interest. Even the good things we do often turn out to be more about making ourselves feel good, than about true humble service.
But don’t miss the last verse: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Remain humble, for it is God who is at work in you.
In the middle section of this reading, Paul quotes from one of the first hymns of the early church. It’s a hymn about who Jesus is and what he’s done, and most likely, Paul’s readers in Philippi knew these words.
As believers, they were familiar with the idea of Jesus’ humility, but obviously, they needed to hear it again. Just like us, they needed to be reminded of what it looks like to follow Jesus.
In order to live and love and serve with humility, we too need to be pointed back to the ultimate example of humility, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. How quickly we forget the call to humility, and we start making it about ourselves.
Beloved of God, may we too keep being reminded, keep being drawn back again and again to hear about Jesus’ love for us and for the world, and as followers of Christ, may we look to the interests of our neighbors, in Jesus’ name. Amen