Humble Pie

Humble Pie
Proper 26, Year A, October 3o

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. (Matthew 23:1-12)


This week, in Sacred Conversations, our discussion about faith and practice morphed into a discussion about driving in Boston. There was a lot to be said about that topic, as you might know. After our meeting, I vowed to be a better Christian while in the car. That lasted about day, when someone cut me off on the pike and pounded on my horn and yelled to no one, “What Makes You More Entitled than ME?????”

Clearly, I forgot about my vow. And the fact that everyone else on the road is also a beloved child of God. Sigh. Time to chew on a little humble pie.

Sometimes, my dearly beloved thinks that I am a “know it all.” Granted, I do KNOW a lot, but it appears I am not always right. We often will get into these, arguments, errr, conversations, over something we remember differently, and usually end up betting who is correct. I always bet a pair of shoes. However, I am often over-confident and zealous in my righteousness, which renders me less than lovable to Liz, not to mention, at times hurtful. A slice of “humble pie”1 is usually in order.

Eating humble pie, if you aren’t familiar with the phrase, simply means, taking some time out to be humble, to not lift yourself up as superior over all, but rather, focus on what it means to be humble.

Humble. The root of humble comes from “humus” or the earth. So to be humble, in my opinion, is to remember our primeval origins--we come from the soil. (Not that I am saying we need to treat ourselves like “dirt”). We are adamah--the literal translation of “Adam” in hebrew is “adamah” or earth creature.

It is from the earth, the humus, that our Creator shaped and formed us, in God’s image,in beauty, in simplicity, in pure lush love. Humility--it doesn’t mean becoming a doormat. Rather, it means, remembering our very essence as part of the whole creation of God.

Which, all too often, we forget--that we are part of the whole, a strand in the web, a thread in the tapestry. Isolated, we are just that--a strand without identity, a part without a place, separated, isolated, alone.

And when that becomes our truth, then, yes, we have to hunker into ourselves, and start to self-aggrandize, become entitled, tuck ourselves into a silo and be the holder of All Knowledge, because to be wrong is to be vulnerable and susceptible. Well, at least for me.

In today’s text, I am not sure what is going on internally with the Pharisees and Scribes. I am not sure where they lost their way on being a beloved child of God. But Jesus is very clear in pointing out their hubris, their empty practices of faith, so much so that he calls the crowds and the disciples to follow what they say, but not what they do--”They do not practice what they preach”.

In fact, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of placing a heavy burden on the shoulders of others that they aren’t willing to lift themselves. What is that burden? The yoke, or burden is the Law, the Torah--symbolizing the kingdom of heaven as compared to the kingdom of this world.

The Pharisees had the point of the Law all mixed up. When the Law was given to Moses, to pass on to the people, the people knew they were the chosen ones of God. They knew they belonged to God. The point of the Torah, which more accurately means “instruction” rather than a list of rules that cannot be broken, was to help God’s people to live into their wholeness as a community, and to be a source of understanding justice.

Unfortunately, the Pharisees had twisted the law around so that the only way one could be a child of God was to follow the rules, as they saw fit. The irony in keeping the Law is that, for a Law-keeper to be righteous, many others must not keep the Law themselves. A righteous man, for example, must be a man, not a woman. He must abstain from everything that my cause him to be unclean. He can’t have contact with blood, which is impossible for women during menstruation. Midwives delivered babies and were made unclean because childbirth is a bloody process for the attendants as well as for the labouring mother.

A righteous man must not handle uncooked meat, yet he must also eat meat on the Sabbath, which requires others to handle the meat and cook it for him. Handling cured leather is lawful, but raw skin is not. Therefore, someone else must skin the hides from animals and cure it. The list goes on and on.

The point is that to be righteous before the Law requires ensuring that others have no opportunity to be similarly righteous. The division between Law-keepers and Law-breakers is profound and ultimately results in the oppression of the very people upon whom the Law-keeper relies for his righteous status.

Practicing the Law, in the ways the Pharisees set forth, does not set everyone free, in other words.
In other gospels, Jesus chides the Pharisees for getting caught up in the minutiae of the Law so much so that they overlook the purpose of the law, which is to ensure justice among all people. The Law, then, should not set some people above others, creating distinct classes in society, yet this is exactly how the Pharisees and religious leaders have interpreted it.

Hence, Jesus serves up some humble pie, capping off this text with these words: The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

It’s clear that Jesus is calling the religious authorities out of their hypocrisy. His criticisms are all about the ways religion can morph into something that is more about elevating ourselves, than about what we can do for God or our neighbor. Basically, he is saying, “it’s not all about you.” It’s about us loving God and our neighbor with all we have and with all we are.
I am pretty sure that none of you are here today to show off how pious and exalted you are--where in the 21st century, going to “church” is not part of the collective norm. In fact, I would bet that most of you show up here on Sunday mornings because you want to be better people and more whole. Which is a very good thing.

Where that can be dangerous, I think, is when church becomes “all about me”--what do I get out of it, how can I grow, what is meaningful for me....and forgetting that being in Christian community is really, learning how to love God and our neighbors--and then actually DOING it.

Yes, this place called Church is about growing in faith, and practicing that faith so that justice becomes real for all. And sometimes that results in putting what “I want” on the back burner to be thoughtful of what is good for the whole. It’s really not all about “us” or “me”, but about how we can be peace and love and welcome to the corner of the world in which we live.

As a child, I remember making mud pies with much relish and mess and joy. They were humble, these pies, and yet so much fun--each one different, and all made of the same stuff. I like to think that when we live in humility, we really are remembering that the ground of our being is being held in the hands of the One who created each of us, in her image, all from the same stuff, all beloved children of God, full of light and love and welcome.

And that humble pie, well, it isn’t all that bad then, is it?
Amen.