1
Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14
Letting
Go and Falling into God
James
Sledge August
19, 2012
Several
decades ago, Mac Davis had something of a hit song entitled “It’s Hard to Be
Humble.” The opening verse, which also
serves at the chorus, goes, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re
perfect in every way. I can’t wait to
look in the mirror ‘cause I get better looking each day. To know me is to love me. I must be a hell of
a man. Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble,
but I’m doing the best that I can.”
You
can find countless T-shirts, coffee cups, and bumper stickers that play on this
hard to be humble theme. It’s hard to be
humble when you’re Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, or from Texas. It’s hard to be humble when you go to (insert
your school name here). It’s hard to be
humble when you own a Border collie, ride a Harley, or – I actually found this
one – crochet.
Whatever
the reason, seems it’s hard to be humble.
We may not like it if you go too far and act like Donald Trump, but our
culture associates humility with weakness and timidity. We’re more likely to pad our résumés than to
leave stuff out. Employment experts will
tell you that you need to “sell yourself” when you apply for a job, and sell of
course means to make yourself look as good as possible. The pressure in our society to be impressive
is tremendous, and we regularly see people get caught because they felt they
needed to lie on their résumé.
Humility
is no easier to come by among church professionals. Pastors compare how big their congregations
are, and rare is the pastor who feels God’s call to a smaller
congregation. I suspect a lot of us
would have a hard time encouraging our congregations to do something we were
certain God wanted if it would cause attendance or giving to go down.
To
make matters worse in the pastoral humility department, we pastors are
sometimes prone to confuse our own agendas with God’s. When we have ideas that
we think are great, we expect everyone else to think they are great, too. Most of the things I’d like to take back or
undo as a pastor happened when I was overly impressed with my own ideas and got
adamant or defensive when Session, some committee, or some other group didn’t
want to go along.
Of
course, while it may be hard to be humble, Christian faith is quite big on
humility, as are most of the world’s religions.
The Old Testament wisdom from Proverbs says, When pride comes, then comes
disgrace; but wisdom is with the humble. Jesus describes himself as humble and he says
on more than one occasion, “All those who exalt themselves will be
humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” And the letter of James quotes the Old
Testament in reminding readers, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to
the humble.”
King
Solomon seems to have gotten the memo on humility. When he encounters God in our reading today
he says, “O Yahweh my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father
David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come
in.” Little child here does not
refer to Solomon’s age but to his status before God. The same is true with regards to saying he is
God’s servant, or, more literally, God’s slave.
And
this humility theme continues when Solomon makes his request of God and asks
not for riches or power or victories, but for an “understanding mind.” Actually, what Solomon asks for is a
“listening heart.” The ancient Hebrews
thought of the heart as the seat of both intellect and emotion, and so the
Bible translators interpret for us with “understanding mind.”
But
I think I like “listening heart” better.
It feels more in keeping with the call to be humble. A heart that listens sounds like a heart that
doesn’t have an agenda, that can wait to hear what God has to say. But an understanding mind sounds like
something I could be proud of, my superior intellect.
But
then again, Solomon pretty much abandons humility as time goes by. If you’re not familiar with the rest of Solomon’s
story, you may not know the whole picture. He is famed for his great wisdom, but
he also becomes a cruel tyrant who oppresses his people in order to build
fabulous buildings, including temples to foreign gods for some of his hundreds
of wives.
Everything
is just fabulous between God and Solomon in our reading this morning, but if
read on for a handful of chapters you will see something quite different. God speaks of tearing the kingdom from
Solomon’s hand, and we find verses that read, Then Yahweh raised up an
adversary against Solomon. The
same God who fawns over Solomon in our passage is working to overthrow proud
Solomon by the end of the story.
Perhaps
the Solomon we meet today is only saying all the right things. Perhaps the writers of Scripture include fans
of Solomon as well as some who didn’t much care for him. Or perhaps Solomon is a little like many of
us, wanting to draw close to God and to do as God wants, yet having something
of a self-destructive streak that draws him away from God.
Solomon
turns away from the path of humility that he knows he should follow. We often turn away when Jesus calls us to
become humble, to deny self, and follow him.
Very often we know what we should do, but do the opposite. We seem stuck in patterns we way we don’t
want, but trying harder and redoubling our efforts to be faithful often seem to
make little difference.
___________
In
recent years I have become rather enamored with the idea of a false self and a true self, a notion I picked up from several writers on
spirituality. I take these terms to
describe something Jesus and the Apostle Paul speak of regularly. Paul writes of the old self dying with Christ
and becoming a new creation. Jesus
speaks of losing our self in order to find it, and of being reborn from
above. I think all of this is about
letting go of an ego-driven, false self that traps us in self-destructive patterns,
and discovering a wonderful, joyful, free, true self.
It
isn’t that egos are totally bad things, but they tend not to know their place. Given free reign they want nothing to do with
humility and are all about being impressive, about adding to the résumé, about
acquiring more. You see, egos are by
their very nature insecure. And so they
always need more: more attention, more accolades, more influence, more
possessions, more certainty, more protection.
Unchecked, they create a false self that is trapped in this pursuit of
more. That is precisely what happens to
Solomon. Despite God’s blessings,
despite being king, despite his wisdom, a voracious appetite for more and more
leads to the horrible exploitation of his people and eventually to his kingdom
being ripped to shreds.
The
examples from my life, and likely from yours, pale by comparison, but our
false, ego-driven selves trap us as well.
To greater and lesser degrees, many of our lives are caught up in
chasing after more, and in protecting and preserving what we already have. It leads to terrible anxiety, and many of us
are stressed out or burned out, but we keep going.
We
pass it on to our children, too. We keep
adding more things that we label “enrichment” activities. Strange that we would call the harried,
stressful lives that some of our children lead “rich.” But that is what the false self tells us, and
we go along, trapped in the pattern.
___________
Over
the years I’ve discovered that many church goers tend to think of sin as the
bad things we do, and salvation has to do with being forgiven for all those bad
things. But I’m more along the lines of the
Apostle Paul on sin. I think of sin as a
condition that traps and enslaves us. In
that sense it is what gives us our false identity, what animates our false
self. In this understanding, salvation
is not so much about letting us into heaven despite our having been bad. Rather it is about peeling away that false
self to reveal the true and genuine self, precisely what I think Paul means
when he speaks of becoming a new creation in Christ.
I
love and often use an illustration I got from a seminary professor. He said the difference between us and God (and
I think the root of our trouble with both God and neighbor) is that God is like
this (throwing arms open), going out from Godself in love. Be we are like this (grabbing and clutching
to the chest), grasping for whatever we can reach and clinging to what we have,
living more out of anxiety than love.
And only God can heal us. Only
God can help us let go.
O
God, give us listening hearts that wait for you, that are attentive to
you. Put your Spirit on us that we may
have faith enough to trust in you and let go.
Empower us to break free from the self-destructive patterns that
imprison us. Help us release our tightly
held grasp, that we may fall into your love and grace, and discover new life there.
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