Introduction

This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19-20, 2009, the weekend of the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

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Readings

Jeremiah 11:18-20 or Wisdom 1:16 – 2:1, 12-22
Psalm 54 (4)
James 3:13 – 4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

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Prayer

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation[s] of [our] heart[s]
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, [our] rock and [our] redeemer.” Amen. (Psalm 19:14, NRSV)

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Message

One of my favorite childhood books
was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.
It’s the touching tale of Wilbur,
a pig destined for the table as breakfast bacon and dinner ham.

He is saved from the autumn’s slaughter
by a spider, Charlotte,
who befriends him and who weaves her web–literally–
to rescue him from his fate.

She spins a variety of words into that web
and helps create a stir
that labels Wilbur as a summertime miracle.

Then when Wilbur goes to the county fair in the fall,
Charlotte stows away in his crate.
At the fair, she prepares one more time
to share a word about Wilbur.

In her search for just the right word,
she asks Templeton the rat to bring her a clipping
torn from the pages of a newspaper.

“I hope you brought a good one,” Charlotte said.
“It is the last word I shall ever write.”
“Here,” said Templeton, unrolling the paper.
“What does it say?” asked Charlotte.
“You’ll have to read it for me.”
“It says ‘Humble,’” replied the rat.
“Humble?” said Charlotte. “‘Humble’ has two meanings.
It means ‘not proud’ and it means ‘near the ground.’
That’s Wilbur all over.
He’s not proud and he’s near the ground.” (Charlotte’s Web, p. 276)

Ever since I read this book,
whenever I run across the word “humble,”
I always picture Charlotte and Templeton,
spider and rat, talking about Wilbur the pig.
And I’ve learned that Charlotte is spot-on with her definition of the word.

In fact, “humble,” “humility,” “humus,” and even “human”
share a common ancestry in the word for “ground.”

I think it’s a word that suits us
as well as it fits Wilbur.

We are human.
God makes us from the ground with his bare hands.
He breathes his spirit of life into us,
making us just a little lower than the angels,
while we remain simply living, breathing humus,
shaped and molded into God’s image.

He makes us to live together in the community of the Spirit
as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
We are children of God our Father,
worshiping him and serving one another in his name.

When we simply sink down
and rest ourselves in this place,
in the life God gives us as his gift,
we cannot help but find ourselves
close to the ground–humble–
worshiping God and serving others in humility.

How do we know that this is God’s will for our lives?
We listen to Jesus’ words,
and we overhear him tell his disciples
not to argue and compete with one another
for status and honor,
not to strive to escape their humble calling to serve.

He tells them and us,

“Whoever wants to be first
must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35, NRSV)

And what does this look like?
He gently picks up a child,
places that one in the midst of the twelve, and says,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name
welcomes me,
and whoever welcomes me
welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:37, NRSV)

The humble life of the servant
is not an endless, pointless clawing to the top,
but a gentle, prayerful journey to the bottom, to the edges,
along the path of submission to the will of God.

And there, among those who have no power, no influence,
no say, no sway,
we find children looking to us for care and protection,
we see people standing alone,
people in pain,
people ignored by the high and the mighty.

And when we look into their faces,
we see not only an amazing variety of expressions,
but reflected in those faces
we behold the many facets of God’s image.

That’s why Jesus promises us
that when we serve others,
when we welcome them
into the arms of God’s community,
we in fact welcome Christ himself.

This is the blessing of humble servanthood.
This is the promise God makes and keeps in our midst
when we call him our God
and then live obediently as his people.

But our leaning is to try to live on our own terms,
to practice obedience only to our own desires.
In the end, this is nothing new.
The traditional word for it is idolatry,
placing our selves, our own self-made gods
at the head of our own lives.

This past Wednesday,
our confirmation class began its study
of the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue,
the Ten Words that God gave his people.

We read in Exodus that God said,

“…you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol,
whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is on the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I the LORD your God am a jealous God….” (Exodus 20:3-5a, NRSV)

A jealous God.
One who doesn’t like to share.
He has made us and we are his,
so when we start to slide him off to the side
and slip our own little idols into his spot,
he is not pleased.
He will find ways to topple those idols
and to restore himself to his place in the center of our lives.

James alludes to the Commandments passage from Exodus
when he writes,

“Or do you suppose that it is for nothing
that the scripture says,
‘God yearns jealously for the spirit
that he has made to dwell in us?’
But he gives all the more grace;
therefore it says,
‘God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.’” (James 4:5-6, NRSV)

And there it is again!
A promise that God does not glorify the proud,
but instead blesses with his gifts
humans who, like Wilbur, are humble, near to the ground.

And then our reading picks up at the next verse:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God.” (James 4:7, NRSV)

This calls us to place ourselves under God,
to humble ourselves,
to acknowledge that he is our God
and we are his people,
to say that we have no gods before him,
especially not the idol-gods we make in our own image.

And then, just a few verses past our reading,
James proclaims to his readers, to you and to me,

“Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will exalt you.” (James 4:10, NRSV)

This is the same promise that Jesus makes to us
in the words he spoke to his disciples:

“Whoever wants to be first
must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35, NRSV)

We can trust God.
He gazes upon us
from the faces of the people we serve.
He gives us grace in our humility.
And like Charlotte, who wrote a saving word for Wilbur in her web,
our Father speaks his saving Word, our Lord Jesus Christ,
entwining him and us together in the web of their Spirit,
so that we may know the humility
of submission and servanthood. Amen.