Humility or Humiliation, Part One
Luke 14:1-6
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away. 5 Then he asked them, “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they had nothing to say.
Can you recall a time in your life when you were humiliated? An event that was so embarrassing that it is forever burned into your memory? Some prominent Pharisees invited Jesus to a dinner party in order to humiliate him. For some of them, this was the chief passion of their life—to discredit Jesus and send him packing. They were certain that their plan would be the ultimate trap, for it certainly had all of the elements of entrapment. Luke paints the scene for us—A room full of prominent Pharisees, Jesus seated across from a sick man suffering from an obvious disease, and to top it all off, it was the Sabbath. If Jesus tried to heal the sick man on that holy day, the Pharisees would have had a long list of credible eyewitnesses to prove his blasphemy. To put it in hunting terms, the Pharisees had a ten-point buck in the crosshairs of their rifle at a mere fifteen yards away. They could smell the venison stew—they could smell a religious victory.
But without warning, the hunter became the hunted. With a single question, Jesus turned the tables on them and was on the attack. ‘Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”’ It’s important to note that the NIV translation misses a spark of divinity here. The ESV accurately translates the original language this way. “And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees…” In what way was Jesus responding to the Pharisees/ They had not asked him anything. Jesus was not responding to any audible question, but rather he was responding to their thoughts. This was not the only time Jesus responded to the sinful thoughts of another, but if you just read the NIV you would miss this point. Jesus responded to their thoughts with a simple question.
This should have been an easy question for them to answer, after all, the Sabbath question was the very basis of their entrapment. They had wanted Jesus to heal the man so they could stand up, point their fingers at him and tear their robes in mock grief. But instead, Jesus skillfully laid a trap for them. Suddenly they were in the crosshairs of the rifle. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? How hard could it be? The Pharisees had assembled a dream team of legal experts. If this were the hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, it would have been like throwing him a softball question. “Mr Alito, could you please quote for us the preamble to the Constitution.” This should have been a slam dunk for these legal hotshots. What words of wisdom did they speak? What eloquent legal advice did they render? “They remained silent.”
Why were their mouths so tightly shut? Because now Jesus had them cornered. If they answered “yes” to his question, then their purity as Sabbath-keepers would be in question. But if they answered “no”, then they would appear callous and uncaring. Their silent response is what politicians call, ‘deniability’—as long as they don’t say anything their words cannot be held against them. We can only imagine the deafening sound of this silence. The legal experts should have been speaking out boldly and rallying for a victory—instead they sat stunned, like deer caught in headlights. Jesus used this teachable moment of silence to reach out and heal the man and then sent him away. The physical healing would have been as obvious as restoring sight to a blind man. This man suffered from dropsy, which is am old scientific term for edema—or swelling of the tissues. It is likely that one of his major organs was diseased or failing which resulted in massive edema. He would have stuck out like a sore thumb sitting among these prominent Pharisees, with his swollen stomach, bloated face and painful limbs. The instantaneous healing of one or more organs would have also eliminated his swelling and returned him to a normal appearance.
Jesus rounded out his three-pronged attack with another piercing question. “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” Now he really had them trapped because the law allowed for this same exception on the Sabbath. These legal experts knew full well that it was lawful to rescue an animal on the Sabbath. Their response? “They had nothing to say.” If they stood on firm legal ground, why didn’t the Pharisees speak up this time? Because their pride had already convicted and humiliated them. Following this question there was no opportunity for deniability. All they could do was to sit silently and absorb the pounding humiliation.
Pride is like that, is it not? A person’s pride is trap waiting to be sprung upon them. Mohammed Ali claimed to be the greatest boxer of all time. He loved to shout, “I’m the greatest!” Once he got on an airplane and the flight attendant asked him to buckle his seat belt. Ali said, “Superman don’t need no seat belt.” The flight attendant said, “Superman don’t need no jet, so buckle up.”
I don’t necessarily ascribe to the seven deadly sins, but in this case I think there is wisdom in them. Here is the list, in order of sinfulness from the least to the greatest—lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, jealousy and…pride. 15th century Dutch painter, Bosch, painted his version of the seven deadly sins. Vanity or pride was represented by a woman gazing into a mirror being held up by Satan. Bosch captured two truths in his painting. The first is a high degree of self-centeredness. The woman staring into the mirror is not just concerned about her looks, but rather she is consumed with herself. Prideful people lie somewhere along the continuum of being preoccupied with self all the way to a full blown obsession with self. The second truth illustrated in this painting is the work of Satan. Clearly Satan would have us focus on ourselves because every ounce of focus on yourself is an absence of focus on God.
We all know someone who is prideful, don’t we? Chances are that person is sitting close to you right now. Who is it? Is it the person seated to your left or the person seated to your right? If you answered either left or right then you are in big trouble because you just proved my point. A prideful person effortlessly sees the failings of others but has a difficult time seeing them in themselves. The correct answer is not the person seated to your right or left, but the one sitting in your seat. Whether you know it or not, you are one of the most prideful people you will ever meet. Don’t believe me? Then let’s take this short quiz. Answer yes or no to the following questions.
· I enjoy being the center of attention. Y N
· I think I deserve better. Y N
· Much of my conversation is filled with “I.” Y N
· I find it difficult to admit that I’m wrong Y N
· I’m stubborn–I don’t like to be corrected or changed. Y N
· My feelings are easily hurt. Y N
· I am impatient with other people’s mistakes. Y N
· I don’t get enough appreciation for all that I do. Y N
· I’m offended if I do something for others and don’t receive a “thank you.” Y N
· I seldom ask for help, because I can do the job better myself. Y N
So how did you do? You did pretty good, did you? Well I left off the last question.
· I feel pretty good that I didn’t check “yes” to every question! Y N
There’s no escaping it—and this is just a sampling of possible ways for pride to rear its ugly head. The best thing to do is to just admit our pride—no one is immune. I agree with the list of the seven deadly sins—pride is the worst of them all, but even more than that, pride is the mother of all sins.
We have all heard about the ongoing stem cell debate, which is very relevant in our focus this morning on the sanctity of human life. A stem cell is a precursor to all other cells. Like this diagram illustrates, stem cells are ‘pluripotent’ which means many-powers. Stem cells have many powers in that they can turn on a certain mechanism and become a specific type of cell like nerve, muscle or blood cells. Pride is like a stem cell—it is the precursor of all sins and can turn itself into every other sin. Pride is also pluripotent—it has many powers—because it can morph into anger, lust, greed, jealousy, etc. Pride is the mother of all sins and therefore the most dangerous of them all.
This is not just a scientific fact,
but a daily reality. Why do I get angry at my kids? Because at the moment of my
anger I am concentrating only on myself. For example, if my children are
fighting with one another, there are many ways I am thinking about myself and my
needs. The noise of their argument is very annoying to me. The argument is
inconvenient to me because I have to stop what I am doing and go break up the
fight. After all, I might have to stop reading my Bible so I can go to the next
room and yell at them! J The
argument is also an attack on my parental authority because they are disobeying
my orders not to fight. So this little argument is annoying me, inconveniencing
me and challenging me—all at the same time. These are the 
emotions
I carry into the next room and dump on my children in the form of anger. Who am
I concerned about right then? Me, poor old me. Look what my kids are doing to
me! I should be concerned about their character, but I am not. I should want
them to love one another, but I don’t. I want what’s best for me and I will make
sure they know that. We are sick creatures!
The same line of reasoning could be applied to every other sin. My lust is all about me. My greed is all about me. Pride is the precursor of all sin and humility is the greatest missing virtue. We live in a culture that worships at the altar of pride and vanity and runs from humility. I did a quick search through the full catalog of books at Amazon.com. I found 268 books with the word ‘humility’ in the title. That number was actually higher than I guessed, but I remembered that Amazon has an extensive list of Christian books. Any guesses on the number of books with ‘success’ in the title? The answer—26,994. There are 100 hundred times more books on success than on humility. That’s probably a good rule of thumb—we are all 100% more likely to strive for success than to strive for humility. Humility is not a cultural virtue. No one ever tells us to strive for humility—to make every effort to be humble. But that is Jesus’ message.
We can all relate to this struggle with pride, but what is the cure? Perhaps we should apply the punishments to the seven deadly sins offered in Dante’s Inferno? Here again are the seven deadly sins and their corresponding punishments.
Lust: Smothered in brimstone and fire
Gluttony: Force-fed rats, toads, and snakes
Greed: Boiled in oil
Laziness: Thrown into a snake pit
Anger: Dismembered alive
Jealousy: Put in freezing water
Pride: Broken on the wheel
Grim, aren’t they, and probably illegal to boot. Some goody two-shoes has went and made up some silly old law about not boiling people in oil! I have to admit, I am a bit partial to the last one with the wheel. So that there is no doubt about it, I want to show you what they mean by being “broken on the wheel”. I am not recommending we start building a giant wheel, but I am suggesting that brokenness is the only cure for the pluripotent mother of all sins—pride.
Brokenness is precisely what the Pharisees were not willing to do. I said before that Jesus trapped the Pharisees by healing the sick man and questioning their Sabbath regulations. They may have felt completely trapped, but even they had a way out—the way of brokenness and humility. Each person seated at that dinner had the same choice. They could have humbled themselves by admitting their pride, their hypocrisy and their duplicity. Each one had a choice between humility and humiliation. You and I have the same choice every day. So why is it so hard to choose humility? We will answer this question next week in part two of this message.
Rich Maurer
Januaey 29, 2006