Liturgy: “Let’s Get Ready to Humble”

What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.

This Week’s Lectionary Readings
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

This week’s liturgy is contributed by Dr. Joshua Blander, assistant professor of philosophy: 

Scripture is filled with demands for humility from those who want to be faithful followers of Jesus. But what do we think that humility is? A low estimation of our worth? A type of weakness? An invitation to have people walk all over you? Worries about the psychological health of religious people has caused many thinkers to reject views like these which are rooted in self-abasement. Increasingly, discussions of humility focus on proper self-assessment, e.g., properly determining our value in order to know where we stand in the pecking order of the world. Call this the Goldilocks view of humility: don’t think of yourself too highly or lowly; think of yourself just right.

For the Christian, there is a problem in all of the views mentioned above: they don’t square with the description of humility in Scripture. In Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, he enjoins the Christians there to practice humility by intending to “regard one another as more important than yourselves.” (Phil 2:4, NASB). This way of regarding others is an exemplification of humility. Paul indicates that we should treat others as though they and their projects were more important than we and our projects are. His language suggests that we should not engage in any kind of assessment of whether their projects are, in fact, more important than our own. We should not be worried about who is important, whose projects are the best, or anything involving assessment or ranking. Instead, we should focus on caring for others without a thought for whether it is to our advantage to do so, whether these are important people, whether they have anything to give us in return, and so forth. He advocates a posture of caring for people in our community regardless of whether others might think it is shameful or dishonorable to do so. Humility, then, is not at all about self-assessment, but aims at continually treating people as though they are worthy of our attention.

What evidence does Paul offer in defense of this severe demand on our attitudes toward ourselves and others? He argues that God is humble.
Wait…what?
That’s right: God. Is. Humble.

In Scripture, humility often appears in discussions of the proper posture we should have toward God and toward our neighbors. If these were our primary pieces of data, we should be inclined to conceive of humility primarily as a virtue belonging to us as creatures, one that informs how we should relate both to God and other human beings.

But that isn’t what Paul says here. Immediately after the passage in which he describes how we in the church should exercise humility, Paul points out that “this attitude….was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” (Phil 2:5-7) This self-emptying act of God (kenosis) was itself an act of humility. And this act of humility occurred prior to His incarnation. In other words, Jesus isn’t acting humbly insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as He is God. God humbles Himself in order to become incarnate as a human bond-servant (or slave). Therefore, it seems like Jesus, as pre-existing and pre-incarnate Christ, is humble. Humility is not merely a human virtue, but a virtue exemplified first and most perfectly by God.

The ancient world seemed to understand well the implications of humility. Because it suggests a willingness to be enslaved or humiliated, nearly everyone regarded it as a vice. Contrast this with the attitude of Jesus (aka the Second Person of the Trinity). Jesus’ willing entrance into the world as a slave, and his willingness to endure a shameful death, suggest that He was not concerned with maintaining status, privilege, or honor, but was willing to be humiliated and shamed in order to serve and demonstrate His love toward the creatures who were made by and through Him. In His incarnation, Jesus effected one of the most dramatic moral reversals in history – no longer should humility be regarded as a vice, but as a great virtue, and perhaps the greatest one of all.

When Paul urges the Philippian church to practice humility, he is challenging these people to imitate Christ. This moral imitation demands that we attend to the shame and suffering that Jesus was willing to endure for our sake, and ask ourselves whether this is consistent with the many ways in which we overlook and dismiss others when we think they aren’t worth our time, or seem beneath us, or make us feel ashamed when we are with them. When we are brought into the community of Jesus-followers, how will we treat others? Will we forgive our debts as our debts have been forgiven, in imitation of God? Or will we live like the slave in Matthew 18 who, after his own debts were forgiven, sought out another slave who owed him money and choked him because he couldn’t pay? Will we love without regard for the cultural or personal cost of loving others, as God has loved us? Or when our own prodigal son comes home, will we look at him scornfully and demand that he lower himself before us?

Our imitation of God’s love and God’s humility demands that we forgive and love without regard for shame, glory, power, weakness, position, authority, or anything else. We forgive and love because we are to imitate the God who is humble. We are to be humble because He first humbled Himself, for us and for our salvation.