Being humble is greatly misunderstood. On the one hand, humility can feel like false modesty, a passive-aggressive means of self-promotion which attracts attention through acting like I don’t want it. On the other, humility can feel like weakness, a defensive self-effacement that allows me to fade into the background and escape the judgment of others. Today’s readings take a different look at humility as a measure of my relationship with God.
Humility as a religious practice sounds harsh because in its outward form it involves a conscious placing of the self beneath another, as the Latin root humus (ground) suggests. In religious communities, the vow of obedience is closely tied to humility; a monk subjecting himself to the rule of the order and to unquestioning obedience of the abbot does so in order to learn humility. The purpose is not to be cruel, nor is it to kill the ego or reduce the monk to an unthinking automaton, but to create a space within which he can build a productive and prayerful relationship with God.
What do I mean by this? In my spiritual life, it is easy for me to get distracted by the outward forms by which I practice my religion. I love the ritual, the comforting regularity of daily prayers and Sunday worship, the beauty of sacred music and art. When the forms become more important to me than the substance, then I have lost touch with the real purpose of my spirituality: to hear God’s voice and discern his will for me. In today’s old testament reading, 1 Samuel 2:27-36, God scolds the priest Eli for living high off the meat of sacrificed animals:
Why then look with greedy eye at my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering…?
It was common practice among many religions of the time which practiced animal sacrifice for the priests to feed themselves from “leftover” sacrificial animals, but this was considered an act of devotion, a partaking of the sacrifice not entirely dissimilar from the Christian Eucharist. The key to understanding God’s objection to what Eli is doing is in the phrase “the choicest parts.” It is one thing to feed himself and his sons with a modest portion of the sacrificial meat; it is something else to hold back the best parts, to truly sacrifice only the leftovers to God’s altar. A humble priest would take only what he and his family need, accepting the meat as a symbol of his service to God, not as a perk of office. Eli let the form trump the substance of his relationship with God by abjuring humility. Today’s gospel reading, Luke 20:41-21:4, continues this theme with Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes who “…for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”
Humility is really about how I see my relationship with God, and ultimately boils down to a simple question: Am I trying to serve God, or am I trying to have God serve me? I’ve quoted before the old saying that God answers prayers with what we need, not what we want. Humility, for me, is one tool I use to bring what I need and what I want from God into congruence. If I am in a state of true humility, then God’s will becomes my own—not because I have forced myself to “give up” my personal hopes and aspirations, but because I want the same things for myself that God wants for me. That is the essence of being humble.
