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Be Humble And Be Raised By God

            “God is a Lord who does nothing but exalt the lowly and lower the exalted.  In short, he breaks whatever is whole and makes whole whatever is broken” (Exposition of the Magnificat, 1520-21).  Martin Luther penned those words some four hundred ninety years ago.  I cited them because they are true and because they reflect the truth of the passages that are before us today from the letter by the apostle James in chapter four.

            We have grown accustomed to the normal path for getting ahead.  “Study hard.  Work hard.  Find the right job.  Scratch, claw, and climb the ladder of success.  If you want to get ahead, be assertive.  Put your best foot forward.”  There’s nothing wrong with trying to get ahead.  God is pleased when we use the talents he has given to the best of our ability.  But in spiritual matters the pattern is reversed.  In fact, the portion of Scripture we are studying provides an excellent motto for our Christian life, Be Humble And Be Raised By God.

            What does it mean to be humble?  True humility is not an outward display of groveling and a steady stream of tears.  True humility starts inside with terror over the power and consequences of sin.  Think of the story Jesus told in the gospel account today.  The younger son squandered his inheritance and hit bottom.  He was lower than low.  He was truly humbled, not so much because he was reduced to shoveling and even hoping to eat pig slop but because what he did to his father and what he did to himself finally conked him on the head.

            Submit yourselves to God … Humble yourselves before the Lord.  We get up on Sunday morning, wash up, comb our hair (if we have hair to comb), get dressed up for church, glance at ourselves in the mirror, and consider ourselves to be fairly decent Christians.  But an MRI of our soul would show that we have to join with that young man and admit that we are dirty with sin, not just in what we do but in what we think and desire.  We are too often double-minded, saying out of one side of our mouth, “The Lord alone is my true love,” but wanting to play the field and whistling out of the other side of our mouth at temptation when it waggles.  Let’s be honest and plead with the psalmist, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me”(Psalm 51:10).  True humility brings us low.  But that’s just what God wants.  Then he can step in and go to work.  Martin Luther wrote: People cannot be thoroughly humbled until they get to know that their salvation lies utterly beyond their own powers and efforts and depends absolutely on the will and work of God alone.  For if people are convinced that they are able to do the least thing toward their own salvation, then they retain confidence in themselves, do not utterly despair of themselves, and are not humble before God. (“Bondage of the Will,” 1525).

            Only a sick person needs a doctor.  Only the weak can be made strong.  Only that which is empty can be filled.  Only the humble person can be exalted.  It is impossible to pour righteousness from God into a person who is full of himself or herself.  That is why James insisted, “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts … Grieve, mourn, and wail.  Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.”  We hang our heads in shame along with the young man in Jesus’ story and mutter, “Lord, every morning I wake up with the same old struggle.  The good I want to do, I don’t do; and the evil I want to avoid, that I do.  How can I even dream of being with you in heaven?  Even my best efforts are not good enough.”

            But that’s when our gracious God steps in.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.  The Lord says, “You are right.  You can’t go to heaven unless I do something about it.  But here is the most amazing news for you.  I have done something about it.  I count my Son’s pure life as yours.  I count my Son’s death to pay for sin as yours.”  And with that promise of God’s pardoning love our tears of grief, mourning, and wailing turn to tears of joy.  Be humble and be raised by God.

            This pattern of God raising up the lowly is repeated again and again in the Bible.  Why?  Because God wants to drill it into the fiber of our being, and because it works.  Isaac was an early patriarch in the family that became the nation of Israel.  He had two sons and assumed that the older son, the mighty hunter, would inherit the special promise to be in the line of the Savior.  But God chose Jacob, the younger son, the trickster, the unlikely candidate, to carry the promise.  The Israelite nation was often attacked by enemies because of their unfaithfulness to God.  On one occasion God chose a man named Gideon as the deliverer.  Gideon himself asked, “How can I save Israel?  My clan is the weakest, and I am the least in my family.”  The Lord answered, “I will be with you” (Judges 6:13).  At a low point in Israelite history, when all seem to be disobeying God’s directives and disregarding his promises, the Bible records the story of Ruth.  People might have looked down on her because she was a non-Israelite.  But God turned her life around, and she became the great-grandmother of King David, in the line of the Savior.  Look at David himself.  The prophet Samuel would have anointed anyone of his seven older brothers to be king, all fine, strapping young men, not David, the scrawny teenager.  But God chose the youngest, David, and made him the greatest king of Israel ever.  What about that young woman named Mary?  Search the Bible and try to find one statement that singles her out as special.  You will find none.  She was a human being and thus a sinner just like all of us.  But God chose her to be the mother of the Savior.  God raises the humble.

            Sometimes God sometimes runs into a lack of humility, people in danger of rejecting God’s claim to be number one in their hearts.  What then?  In love God humbled that person and then raised him up.  I’m thinking of Abraham.  He had everything – wife, wealth, cattle, and a long-awaited son.  He could have leaned back in his recliner, folded his hands behind his head, and said, “I’ve got it made.”  His trust in God was in danger of becoming flabby and out of shape.  But God told him, “Kill your son.”  Abraham’s faith had to go back into motion.  God brought Abraham low with a test of faith and through it raised him up.  The apostle Peter brazenly claimed immunity to trials and tests.  “Lord, I will never leave you.”  He came crashing down like a sequoia in the forest.  Jesus brought him low with a sad look on Good Friday, then raised him up again on Easter afternoon when he met Peter privately, looked him in the eye, and said, “I forgive you.”  Later in front of all the rest of the disciples he reinstated Peter.  Paul was the greatest missionary of all time.  He could have claimed honor for the many converts he won for Christ.   But he wrote, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh … Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is fully unfolded in your weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  God raises the humble.

            Do you think that the young man in Jesus’ story, who ran away from home and came back humbled, lived the rest of his days with a smug smile on his face?  Hardly!  I picture him walking tall with his new robe, sandals, and ring, not arrogantly and flashing bling, but humbly grateful to dad and glad to be home, joyful in the father’s pardoning love.

              The Bible talks about Jesus’ brothers, but the Greek word for brother is wide enough to include cousins.  So, we can’t nail it down with absolute certainty, but the evidence in Scripture seems to indicate that Mary and Joseph had other children.  One of those was James.  Do you think he sounds smug in this paragraph of his letter?  After all, he was Jesus half-brother.  Not in the least.  He sounds serious and sincere when he says, “Be humble and be raised by God.  And when you are lifted up by God, you can hold your head high, not with smug arrogance but humbly grateful to our heavenly Father and glad to be headed to his eternal home, joyful in our Father’s pardoning love.”

            Do you see the interesting dual role we have as we go about our life with God?  We have every reason to be humble when we recall who we are and what we have done.  But at the same time we can hold our heads high, not throwing our shoulders out of joint trying to pat ourselves on the back but grateful to be elevated by God and honored to be children of the heavenly Father.  The smile on our face is not smugness but joy in the Lord’s pardoning love.

            That affects the way we relate to others.  Even if you can buy gas, do your banking, pay your bills, and go shopping online without ever having to speak to another human being, you will come into contact with people, whether strangers or friends, somewhere along the line.  And you know how it is.  You can read people.  You can see it in their eyes even at the check out counter at the grocery store.  We humans are built to make connections with others, and other people are reading you and me.  If you or I knew that we are coming across as someone who looks down the nose at others, or as someone who could care less about others, or as someone who is sad all the time, or so needy that we just have to have someone listen to our story, wouldn’t we want to do whatever it takes to change that?  Let God do the work.  Be humble and be raised by God.  You’ll be surprised at how many friendship connections can be made and what marvelous opportunities you will have to tell others about the thrill of having a God who raises up the lowly!

            At first glance, the call to Christian humility may seem upside down.  We are so used to hearing, “Get ahead by yourself.  Do you own thing!”  Martin Luther captures what we’ve been learning today, “God’s way is to make something out of nothing – life out of death, righteousness out of sin, honor out of shame.  To sum up everything, he wants to deal with the lowly.  Such is the nature of God” (Sermon on Mt 11:25-30, 1527).  Be humble and be raised by God.   Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on March 14, 2010

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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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