"There's Joy in the Cellar"
Humility: the true precursor of self-knowledge
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Text: Philippians 2:5-13
It was a crisp and cool, bright and clear Sunday morning two weeks ago when I was given the opportunity to fly to Nova Scotia, and I did so at a fairly low altitude that allowed me to see things I had never been able to see before. As I flew along the coast of the Bay of Fundy towards the Minas Basin, standing out in front of my eyes was this most magnificent view of Cape Blomidon. I had never seen it like that before.
The earth was bright orange, reminiscent of something I saw in South Africa, and captured in a play by Athol Fugard and John Kari titled The Orange Earth. Here was this outline of the Cape in bright orange, the sun reflecting off it! Above it, newly fallen, crisp, white snow, and all around it, the crystal blue of the Bay of Fundy. It was simply breathtaking! For a moment it felt as if I was suspended above this gorgeous scene, looking down on it as only one other could. It was special; it was unique. I'll probably never see that same sight again.
Similarly, the following week, when I flew back into Toronto, it was night time, and again, it was crisp and clear and cool. All the lights sparkled and were luminescent against the newly fallen snow. I could see the majesty of the city before me (and I could swear that some of the lights were designed in North York to spell out Toronto Raptors! Maybe I was deceiving myself!) It was spectacular to see the grandeur of our city: the lights taking us all the way to Niagara Falls and the mists that were rising from them.
I couldn't help but wonder what God sees when he looks at us. I also thought how easy it is for us to be so self-absorbed, so caught up in our own little plans, so self-deceptive at times, that we do not realize that we are but a speck on the horizon - one minuscule part of a majestic creation - and how, because of self-interest, our vision is clouded and we cannot see who we really are. Yet, I realize that to find out who we are in the life of this universe, to see how God sees us is not something that we can do philosophically. It is not as if through the power of our own minds we can fully understand and conceive what we are like and what our place is like on this earth.
We need Christ to help us do that. It is the very person of Christ who gives us a perspective of who we are. It is like this: How do we know if we are tall or short or oversized or undersized if we do not have somebody else to compare ourselves with? If we were alone on this earth, we would not know if we were tall or short or wide or small. It is only in comparison that we gain perspective. Therefore, we need Christ as an example, as a point to show us who we are.
Likewise, we can become very easily self-deceived. We can think more of ourselves than we ought. We can have a distorted image of our own selves, and we need someone to help us see ourselves more clearly. To fully understand who we are, we need Christ. How easy it is for us to become relativistic and to think that there are multiple ideas and wills rather than truth! How easy it is for us to take that relativism and fit it in the narrow confines of our understanding. We also have a distorted view of the world unless we have a truth that enables us to see how things really are!
In the Book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul put it so beautifully. He said, “I want you to fulfill my joy that you might have the same mind and that you might know and experience the same love.” You see, Paul understood that there is one will, one divine will, and it is that one will in our lives that we should seek to understand and discern. We cannot understand ourselves, the universe or our place within it unless we have an understanding and appreciation and a faith in that one will. But that one will is not a metaphorical thing; it is not a philosophical thing. Paul says, “You must have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.” In other words, the will of God is demonstrated and seen in the person of Christ, and we can only really know and fully appreciate our place and ourselves in the light of that one will found in Christ.
The great Bernard of Clairvaux put it the most beautifully and eloquently of all when he wrote:
So long, then, as I am not united to God, I am divided within myself and at perpetual strife within myself. Now, this union with God can only be secured by love, and the subjection to him can only be grounded in humility, and the humility can only be the result of knowing and believing the truth, that is to say, having the right notions of God and of ourselves.
You see, for Bernard there is no question that the precursor to any true understanding of either Christ or ourselves is humility.
That is why in a great song of the early church, recorded in Philippians Two, Paul uses this language to describe Jesus: “Who being in the very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient, even to death.” You see, the Apostle Paul understood that humility is a true precursor of knowing ourselves. Even Christ's self-knowledge was born out of true emptying, out of the true sense of self-giving, out of humility before God the Father.
Where does that leave us? I think with a number of questions. And the first question is: What is our place on the earth? A few weeks ago, I clicked on to a website and there was a pop-up that I least expected. It asked: “What would you have liked to have done when you grew up?” It was from a search firm, and so I thought I would click on it. It causes you to think back to what you wanted to be when you were a child. Of course, the idea is to sell you services so you can be what you want to be - that's the idea.
So, I thought, “what did I want to be as a child?” Well, there is no question that I wanted at some point to be a doctor, but I faint at the sight of blood. I wanted to be a fireman, but I am scared of flames. I wanted to be a movie star, but I look more like a teddy bear than Cary Grant. I wanted to be so many things! I wanted to be a great soccer player more than anything in the whole world, but I am slower than a turtle. In other words, I had to know my limitations.
But you know, I thought what was needed in my life - even to realize that I had been called to serve God - was an understanding of my limitations. Now, I know that all the gurus of the world try to help us understand what it means to find our power, to find our inner strength, to understand all our gifts, and we could probably go to a convention center this morning and pay $25 to have someone tell us how to find our true selves and become really powerful. But the truth is that it is our limitations that we need to understand as well as our power and gifts.
Throughout his life the great Rembrandt painted 63 self-portraits. You could accuse a man like that of being narcissistic, but it is the exact opposite, for what Rembrandt wanted to do through each of these paintings was to understand who he really was. He felt that every one of them revealed something about himself. As he looked at these paintings, he said, “Even in the dark cellars of my life, as well as in the rooms that are full of light, I find out who I really am.” He understood that by looking at these paintings of himself he could discern who and what he really was.
Now, even Jesus became aware of his limitations. Even Jesus recognized that he had to humble himself. Jesus took the form of a servant. He knew that in the “dark cellars” of taking on human nature much was revealed about himself and about humanity.
The great Dmitri Vail, one of the greatest artists, created magnificent portraits with lines so fine that you think it is a photograph until you get close and see the brush strokes. In the Dmitri Vail Gallery in Texas, so I have read, there are magnificent portraits of some of the greatest entertainers, from Bing Crosby to Cary Grant to Frank Sinatra. There are those of presidents, like Ronald Reagan, and they are magnificent in their luminescence! But if you go to the end of the corridor, at the conclusion of the exhibition of all these magnificent paintings, there is one dark, turbid, grey-brown innocuous picture: It is Dmitri Vail's self-portrait. He painted it when he was at his darkest, when he was at his lowest, but you know, it is so magnificent, because it stands out against all the others for its humility and its sense of darkness. He understood his limitations.
We can only truly understand our place in this world if we understand our powerlessness, if we understand the “dark cellars” and the dark rooms, and if we know the limitations of our sin. But what is our place in this world relative to everybody else? Paul goes on to say, “I want you to have the same mind that was in Christ,” but then he continues, “in lowliness, I want you to make sure that you consider others more important that yourself.”
Paul had an understanding that in this life we human beings need to appreciate others as having a higher standing than ourselves. This does not mean that they necessarily are cleverer or wiser, better or richer, more powerful, more holy, more righteous. It doesn't mean that we consider our neighbour in such a way that we are envious of all the things that they have and that they are. What it means is that we think of the other first. And as I read the Gospels - and I have been reading them very closely the last few weeks in preparation for Lent - something struck me as never before, and that is that the life of Jesus is not only characterized by the moments that he exhibited power, we all know of those: when he calmed the storm; when he turned water into wine; when he healed the blind; when he raised the dead; when he walked on water; when he cured the leper.
We all know of those, but it is those moments when he decided not to use his power that are so striking. One of the temptations was when the Devil said “The whole world can be yours” and Jesus did not succumb to that temptation. When they looked at him on the cross and said, “He can save others, but he cannot save himself,” Jesus did not exercise his power, even though he could have brought down ten thousand angels from heaven. When Lazarus died and Martha ran to him and said, “If only you had been here my brother would not have died.” But he wasn't there.
Oh, there were many moments when Jesus could have used his power, when he could have cut off the ear of a centurion, but it was Peter who did it, not Jesus. There were many moments when he decided not to use his power, but to reveal his weakness. Why? For us! That is why. For others! That is why. Had Jesus exercised that power, had he, as in Greek, not practised “kenosis,” or “emptied” himself, there would have been no cross, and if there had been no cross, there would have been no salvation. He did it for us. He limited himself. He gave of himself. And when he could have used all the power in heaven and on earth, he didn't.
My friends, it is precisely this that makes the Christian faith so radically different from the spirit of the ages. The spirit of the ages appreciates the use of power. It glories in the exercise of the ability to subjugate others. It manifests itself in the power and the sin and the wrath of thinking of self first. But, the Christian Gospel is based on Christ, and Christ humbled himself for others. To truly know our place in the world that humility is necessary, but you only see that in the light of Christ.
What is our place and relationship then, to this Christ? One of the greatest writers at the turn of the 20th century was Thomas Hardy. He was so popular that if he handed in a manuscript to almost any publisher it would be well received. In fact, he could demand any advance for his work, so great was his writing and his skill. But, what is amazing about Thomas Hardy is that despite the fact that he had written great books like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and so on, this man, who was a bit of a stoic and definitely a bit of a pessimist, nonetheless had humility, and with every manuscript submitted he sent a self-addressed, stamped envelope to have the rejection returned to him. Such humility! He understood who he was. Maybe, as William Barclay and others have speculated, part of the grandeur of Hardy was the fact that he wrote from the point of view of humility.
There is something more. When we approach Christ, we should have that same humility. You see, contrary to popular opinion, the Christian pilgrimage is not an upward journey. We always think of it that way. Always getting better, always improving, and always seeking. We point fingers, do we not, at those who are not moving upwards? And it is often the self-righteous who will look at those who they see as not quite ascending in the way that they are ascending. That is all wrong, all wrong!
The Christian pilgrimage is not an ascent, it is a descent. Listen to the language used here: “He did not claim equality with God as something to be grasped, but took the form of the servant even to the point of death.” Then, listen again to the language Paul uses: “Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name, so that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend… and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” These are the closing words of David McMaster's sermon last Sunday.
For Jesus it was a descent, but a descent that caused him to be lifted up. I think the most beautiful painting that Rembrandt ever did (and you can tell Rembrandt is on my mind) was the story of the return of the Prodigal Son. In dark brown and orange hues, it is an incredible picture, for here is the father with outstretched hands, the prodigal comes before him, gets on his knees and places his head on his father's lap, and the father embraces him - the son is received, the son has come home.
When the son was on his own and was rich and powerful and felt he could rule, he was not in the presence of the father. When the son thought he was self sufficient, when the son thought he could walk and stand on his own, he was not with the father. He was only with the father when he was on his knees. And when he was on his knees, he was embraced.
The Christian pilgrimage is the pilgrimage to our knees. At that moment, Christ embraces us. At that moment, we see ourselves for who we are. When we look up into the face of Christ, we see where we are in the world. We see where we are with others. We see where we are with God.
And so my friends, when there are moments that you feel like Rembrandt - you are in the dark cellars of your life and when you feel like Dmitri Vail that you can only picture yourself in dark terms, and when you feel yourself humbled and unworthy, remember that it is on your knees that God embraces you, for in the cellar there is the most incredible joy. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.