Holy Humility

In our opening Collect we ask God to help us to not be anxious about earthly things, rather to love things heavenly even amidst changing times, because that which endures gives eternal life now, and in the hereafter.  We need to pray this quite often, because we humans are prone to anxiety about the reality in which we live and the things we can’t control, at the cost of our health and serenity. Look at Jonah – so rebellious about the redemption of his enemies that he’d rather die than live with God’s will for them.

  “Coming Around”  by Thomas John Carlisle

  And Jonah stalked
  to his shaded seat
  and waited for God to come around
  to his way of thinking. 

  And God is still waiting
  for a host of Jonahs
  in their comfortable houses
  to come around
  to His way of loving. 

The same anxiety afflicts the laborers in today’s Gospel, bickering about merit or lack thereof, unfairness and resentment. What is fair? If we are honest, sometimes “fair” is “fair” when we get our way, not so much when we don’t. In Jesus’ mind, “fair” is hiring the workers that others reject, making room for everyone according to their abilities, and working together for the common good.    

Sometimes we are so absorbed by our present worldly reality that we forget our place in God’s reality. We forget we are beloved without merit; we forget others are, too, even our enemies. Remembering this eternal truth gives us holy humility, which is the capacity to accept our place in God’s love, right next to others, who are of equal value to God. Such humility is anathema to the world that values merit, aggression and dominance. To most human value systems, might makes right, the humble ones are dismissed as meek and are run over as if they don’t exist. Jesus changes that with his teaching that humble ones shall be first, and the dominant ones will be last in God’s reality. How much happier we are when we detach from that rat race enough to value who we are in Christ, and to gently accept all others are also beloved. This is what Paul encourages his Philippian Church: “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, … standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel.“  

Let us go and do likewise.

Amen.