Occasionally I
depart from my usual practice and post a whole sermon related to the day's
lectionary. Mark 9:30-41 deals with the
hubris of the disciples when they argued about who was greatest. In Matthew's parallel passage (18:1-4) Jesus
not only puts a little child in front of them, he warns them that they must change
and become humble, like the child. My
sermon is about the hubris of the disciples.
Although I preached it two years ago, slightly modified from a sermon I
had preached elsewhere in 2008, I am sad to say that it seems more relevant
today than ever.
The Remedy for Hubris
Sermon preached at Christ the King Fellowship Presbyterian
Church (PCUSA)
June 12, 2016
Elmer E. Ewing
2 Samuel 11:27b-12:13a
Matthew 18:1-4
It is spring, when kings go
out to battle…but the king is not going.
Not this year. Years ago the
women used to sing how he had slain tens of thousands for God and country. The body count may have been inflated, but
the king has earned the right to stay home and plan wars for others to
fight. Besides, the current campaign is
going well without him. His
troops are devoted to their king, and his commanding general is brilliant on
the battlefield. Sure, the general is
ruthless and devious—but he knows which
side his bread is buttered on. With a
king so popular, the general will do the king’s bidding.
It is spring,
when even an older man’s fancy may lightly turn to… thoughts unworthy of a
king. The king gets up from a nap and
walks on the roof. On a distant roof he
spies a woman—a young
woman. She is bathing. The king enquires
about her. No one questions his right to
ask—not out
loud, they don’t. He’s the king. The king learns that her husband is away, at
the front—fighting
for the king. H'mm. She must be lonely. He sends for her, that he may…comfort
her. She is helpless before him. He has all the power. The king is not above the law—he makes the law, interprets the law,
decides when the law applies and when it does not. He is the decider. He enjoys executive privilege. He is the king. Then comes the message: “I’m pregnant.” And the world changes.
What happened to
David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, the ruddy lad with beautiful eyes,
who humbly tended his family’s sheep?
What happened to David, anointed by Samuel as God’s choice to be king? What happened to the heroic David, who ran
alone with sling and stone to confront the mighty Goliath? What happened to the honorable David, who
twice spared the life of King Saul, the very man who was trying to kill him? From such heights, how could David have sunk
so low? So low as to force himself on
the wife of one of his faithful soldiers, and then conspire to have the soldier
killed by the enemy? Hubris. Hubris is the word.
David was king,
and he began to consider himself the greatest person in the country. So great that he had the right to do
anything. He saw himself as the center
of existence. He was the very picture of
hubris—hubris: arrogance, self-inflated conceit. The theologian Paul Tillich had a more
complete definition: “Hubris is the self-elevation of [human
beings] into the sphere of the divine.”
“Hubris” is a
relatively new word. It wasn’t in the
dictionary I had in college—Webster’s New Collegiate, copyright 1953. But dictionaries change, because language
changes. In the 1950’s prominent theologians
like Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr were using the word. Maybe they started a trend, because hubris
appeared in our 1978 Scrabble dictionary, and by now it is in every dictionary. In 2005 hubris was voted Word of the Year in
an online poll run by the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Type “hubris” into Google, and there will be
millions of hits. The word is here to
stay.
More accurately,
the word 'hubris' is not new, just reborn.
It goes back 25 centuries. In
Greek tragedy, hubris was always the fatal flaw that doomed the hero. The hero would reach for what belonged only
to the gods, and that was his or her undoing.
The word hubris
is not in the Bible, but the concept is there—yearning to play God, to be above
the limits that apply to mere mortals.
It was hubris that made Adam and Eve want to eat the forbidden fruit,
because eating it would make them like God.
Hubris led the disciples to argue about which of them was to be greatest
in the Kingdom of Heaven. And it was a
clear case of hubris that made David suppose he could have his way with
Bathsheba. Hubris—self-elevation into
the sphere of the divine. A perfect
description of what overcame David.
David wielded absolute power, and as Lord Acton said, “absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” The name of such
corruption is hubris.
George Will, the
prominent conservative columnist, reviewed Peter Beinart’s book on the history
of how hubris has controlled American foreign policy. I haven’t read the book; but according to
George Will’s column, Beinart sees hubris in the way the map of the world was
redesigned by President Wilson after WWI.
He sees it again in the Viet Nam War and in many smaller military
actions (Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Kosovo), and in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Say the word
hubris, and famous names roll off the tongue: elected officials of both
parties, CEO’s, movie stars, generals, athletes, financiers, religious
leaders—the list is long, the examples are legion. The greater our power over others,
the greater the temptation to hubris; but we simple folk are by no means
immune. It is easy to see the speck of
hubris in the eye of another person while overlooking the log of hubris in our
own. We need to focus on identifying the
hubris in ourselves.
Hubris involves
building myself up by tearing others down, climbing to the top by stepping on
anybody in my way. Hubris is my attempt
to make myself the center of all things; to gratify my own needs and wants at
the expense of the rightful needs of others; to control my own destiny rather
than leaving myself and the world in the hands of God.
It is common to
say that hubris is a form of pride, which is the word generally used in the
Bible to describe it. The two words are
related, but not quite the same. The
athlete is proud of his talent. Then he
decides he is entitled to boost his talent with performance enhancing
drugs. He has gone from pride to
hubris. The political candidate is so
convinced he or she deserves to be elected that it seems okay to use unfair
accusations or dirty tricks, and pride has become hubris.
You may be proud
of your daughter, which probably means that you love her, take great joy in
her, and are thankful for the kind of person she is. If such pride develops until you demand that
your daughter be granted special privilege in school or work, then you could be
edging over into hubris. You may be
proud of your school’s athletic team—you watch every game you can, you cheer
for them, follow the athletes, and rejoice when they do well. When you swear at the referee, or maybe let
him know how much he needs a visit to his optometrist, you are sliding down the
slippery slope to hubris.
It is fine to
feel good about yourself—after all, you are a child of God. We just need to be careful when we want to
feel like God’s favorite child, like Joseph in his fancy coat, lording
it over his brothers; like the teacher’s pet.
A good worker takes satisfaction—call it pride—in a job well done. When that worker is so proud that she
belittles anyone who dares question her accuracy, or she puts down other
workers to make herself look better, then pride has begotten hubris.
George Will
ended his column on hubris by saying this: “Hubris is a vice arising from
ambition, which is, in moderation, a virtue.
Hubris is a by-product of success, of which America has had much. By producing folly, of which America has had
too much, hubris is its own corrective.
There is, however, a high tuition paid for such instruction.”
Pride (or
hubris) comes before a fall.
Unfortunately, when we practice hubris, it not only brings us
down, it often has consequences for others.
Hubris typically has victims.
Bathsheba was a victim, her husband Uriah was a victim, and more and
more victims were sucked under by an ever-widening whirlpool. David’s sons were affected, and several of
them developed their own cases of hubris.
Eventually the whole kingdom was involved in a royal coup, and after son
Solomon’s death the kingdom was ripped in half by hubris.
Even for us commoners,
it is not hard to find examples where the hubris of the parents is visited upon
succeeding generations. Bad things
happen to the victims of hubris.
Oppression is connected to hubris, among nations and among
families. Extreme oppression, suffered
long enough, may break the human spirit.
Victims come to blame themselves; victims of spousal abuse often feel
they deserve to be beaten. They feel
worthless, like dirt, debased. At one
time or another in our lives, to some extent, I dare say most of us have been
guilty of hubris and at other times have been victims of hubris. Hubris hurts.
So, what to do about hubris—starting with our own? We need to see our own hubris for what it
is. Give David some credit—when Nathan confronted him with his
guilt, David saw himself for what he was.
“I have sinned against the LORD,” he said. A lesser king would have had Nathan’s head
lopped off. To admit that we are wrong
is a defeat for hubris. Hubris wants us
always to be right. Hubris must win
every argument. Our hubris never
concedes our own mistake, let alone the fact that our hubris exists. Hubris just complains about others—never
content with the world, always a victim.
But don’t wait for God to send old Nathan to point an
arthritic finger. That may be too
late. We must be the constant observer
not only of our own actions, but of our own emotions and thoughts. This is not easy or pleasant; it is not done
quickly or once-and-for-all. Take time
daily for self-examination.
Self-examination and repentance go together. It is by the grace of God that we are able to
do them.
Sometimes we
need a visual aid. In response to the
hubris of his disciples, Jesus set a visual aid in front of them…a little
child. Then Jesus told them to be humble
like a child if they wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. Reflect on what it means to be humble. Jesus was humble. He said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart …”
In Philippians Paul reminds us that being found in human form, Christ
humbled himself. Think what it means to
be humble as Jesus was humble; as a little child is humble.
This rare departure from your usual practice of offering a short meditation is very valuable. The sermon you offered in its place moved me to tears, or, at least, moisture and its accompanying feeling, by its beauty. It explores the territory thoroughly. By doing so, it is a strong example of a complete delivery of the good message: it is excellent evangelism. At the risk of fracturing this completeness, I wish to lift out what I experience as the heart of the matter: "We must be the constant observer not only of our own actions, but of our own emotions and thoughts. This is not easy or pleasant; it is not done quickly or once-and-for-all. Take time daily for self-examination. Self-examination and repentance go together. It is by the grace of God that we are able to do them."
ReplyDeleteThis comment also serves as a test whether these days the author, Elmer Ewing, can still see comments made about his blogs, despite changes in this blogging system.
In gratitude both for this sermon's insights into God's grace and for that grace,
Wayne