His most famous sermon, preached some 264 years ago and still quoted frequently today, included these fearsome lines: "[T]hus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked... [T]he devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would [gladly] lay hold on them, and swallow them up..." [Quoted from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," in Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. 161.]
You've heard the expression, "preaching hellfire and damnation." Well, isn't that a perfect example of it—from the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," preached in 1741 by the renowned New England Calvinist theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards, who went on to become President of the institution we now call Princeton University? Now, if you've never read that sermon, you really should. Whatever you may think of its theology, it's a genuine masterpiece of rhetoric, and as I re-read it last Wednesday, I felt shivers running up and down my spine. If you do want to read it, just google "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and right up on top of that list you'll find the source for the full text, followed by some 78,000 references to it! Now that's a popular sermon!
But those lines, "[T]he devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would [gladly] ... swallow them up"—those lines are not at all my favorite quote from Edwards on the subject of the devil. For as you know, I'm not much on hellfire and damnation.
No, my favorite Edwards quote on the devil comes from a different writing of his, in which he says: "Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility..." [from Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), Part IV, Section I, the first paragraph: available at www.revival-library.org/catalogues/world1/edwards-thoughts/401.htm].
"Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility..."
And on the subject of humility, there's another saying that I like almost as much as that one by Edwards. It's found in the letters of the early Christian theologian and bishop Augustine of Hippo (from Letters 113.3.22, quoted in John Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.11). He writes, "When a certain rhetorician [Demosthenes] was asked what was the chief rule in eloquence, he replied, 'Delivery'; what was the second rule, 'Delivery'; what was the third rule, 'Delivery'"; in the same way, says Augustine, "if you ask me concerning the [chief] precepts of the Christian religion, I would answer first, second, third, and always, 'Humility.'"
Now, this virtue of "humility," which is spoken of so positively by Jonathan Edwards and Augustine, is the theme that lies at the heart of both of today's Scripture Lessons.
The brothers James and John are part of the inner circle of Jesus's disciples, the group known as "the Twelve." But, at least in this passage, James and John are hardly exemplars of humility. Indeed, they seem seriously infected by the virus of spiritual pride. It's their belief that when Jesus comes into his glory the Twelve will be given great power and authority. And they've even persuaded their mother to ask Jesus to grant the two of them an extra special measure of that power and authority. So here we find Mama dutifully imploring Jesus, "Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom."
But Jesus sees right through this ploy by James and John—the ploy of having their mother express a desire that is, in truth, their own. So instead of responding to the inquiring mother, Jesus addresses these two disciples directly. He tells them that their goal in life ought not to be "lording it" over others. Quite the contrary. Their goal in life should be humbly "serving" others.
Now, by speaking to James and John in this way, Jesus is in fact telling all of his followers, including us, to surrender our all-too-human spiritual pride and arrogance and to choose instead Jesus's own path of humble service to others. Jesus is reinforcing the last part of the commandment given to us by the prophet Micah, who said: "And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." (6:8)
Walking humbly—that was precisely what Jesus did throughout his life and ministry. Indeed, the apostle Paul proclaims in his letter to the Christian community in Philippi, in northern Greece, that Jesus is "Exhibit A" of what humility is and of what humbleness means.
Yes, for Paul, Christ Jesus—who even underwent death on a cross, the most humiliating form of public execution that then existed—for Paul, Christ Jesus is the preeminent example of the humble demeanor that the community of Christ is itself to embody.
Now, the Greco-Roman world of which Philippi was a part, definitely did not consider humility to be a virtue. And, of course, neither does our own nation, America. (Try combing the newspaper for a story illustrative of humility, and you'll probably come up with nothing, as I did this past week!) Yes, the humility that Paul calls for in his letter to the Philippians was as counter-cultural and "against the grain" in his own day as it is today. Yet Paul enjoins his readers to "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus" (vs. 5)—that is, Paul enjoins us to try to cultivate a mindset of humble obedience to God, a mindset that refuses every temptation to grasp for power and to use religion as a cudgel; Paul enjoins us to try to put aside self-seeking ambition and every form of arrogance—especially, spiritual arrogance.
Ah yes, spiritual arrogance! Now there's a malady whose foul odor fills the air wherever we turn today—whether it's the spiritual arrogance of a Saudi terrorist's perversion of Islam, or the spiritual arrogance of a Sri Lankan militant's perversion of Buddhism, or the spiritual arrogance of an Israeli settler's perversion of Judaism, or the spiritual arrogance of an American evangelical's Crusader-like perversion of Christianity. It is this spiritual arrogance—or, as earlier generations called it, spiritual pride—that is what our friend Jonathan Edwards so graphically and aptly described as "the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of religion. [Spiritual pride]," he says, "is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit, to darken the mind and mislead the judgment. [It] is the main handle by which the devil has hold of religious persons, and the chief source of all the mischief that [the devil] introduces, to clog and hinder a work of God." (From Some Thoughts, Part IV, Section I, para. 1, as above.)
How true that statement by Edwards was in his own day. And how true it remains today, as America slides ever more perceptibly from being a democracy to becoming a theocracy, whose president is proclaimed by millions of voters to be "a messenger of God"!
On June 9th of this year, a stirring address was given at Harvard Divinity School's diploma ceremony by Eric Gutierrez, a member of the Class of 2005. His subject was, "Walk Humbly: Religion in American Public Life." This morning I want to share with you some excerpts from that speech (published as, "A Call for Faith Tempered by Humility," Harvard Divinity Today, Summer, 2005. pp. 1, 5). They spoke deeply to me, as I believe they will to you.
"Here in the United States," says Gutierrez, "we seem to have forgotten the words of our greatest public theologian, Abraham Lincoln, who exhorted our nation not to claim God for our side but, rather, to pray earnestly that we might be on God's side. We need once again to reaffirm humility as a cornerstone of public theology and as the lodestar for religious participation in public life. We must not conflate our will with the will of God, and we must not mistake God's will for our own religious orthodoxy, cultural bias, personal prejudice, or social conformity....
"Being humble in our relationship to God and to those different from us is not moral relativism; it is humility before the greatness and mystery of God. [Being humble] is not weakness of faith; it is the spiritual willingness to grow in faith...."
But "[r]ather than seeking a more perfect understanding and expression of God's love, grace, and justice, the loudest religious voices [in our society] keep playing theological rock/paper/scissors: My faith[—a strong rock—] crushes your faith[—weak scissors]. My God[—strong scissors—cuts up] your God[—flimsy paper]....
Yes, "[r]eligion can help us explain and understand our world and what we are meant to be and do within it, but it cannot do that if our churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples become shrines to the mistakes of the human heart...." End of Gutierrez.
Now, whether we speak of spiritual pride as the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit of hell, as Edwards does, or whether we speak of spiritual pride as the force that turns our houses of worship into shrines to the mistakes of the human heart, as Gutierrez does, the harmful effects of that spiritual pride on our society and government can be seen everywhere around us.
So a primary task that confronts us as followers of Jesus is the task of offering to our society and world a vision of what spiritual humility is, a vision of what spiritual humility looks like in action, a vision of what spiritual humility can accomplish for humankind. And here's the good news! For us to be able to present such a vision to our society and world, we need only to preach—through word and deed—we need only to preach Christ, the Christ who came to serve the poor and the oppressed; we need only to preach—through word and deed—Christ crucified.
Some 260 years ago, Jonathan Edwards offered his society and world glimpses of such a vision. And I'll close with his words. Edwards says: "Pure Christian humility disposes a person to take notice of everything that is good in others ... and to diminish their failings.... Pure Christian humility has no such thing as roughness, or contempt, or fierceness, or bitterness in its nature; [humility] makes a person like a little child, harmless and innocent, [whom] none need to be afraid of, or like a lamb, destitute of all bitterness, wrath, anger, and clamour..." (from Some Thoughts, Part IV, Section I, pararaphs 6, 11)
Yes, as Edwards says, there truly is nothing that "sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility..."
Let us pray:
O God, we want to be humble, like Jesus. We want to practice servanthood in ways that lift others to well-being and exclude no one. So protect us from the arrogant desire to lord it over others, withholding love and justice. And grant us the grace and the strength that we need if humility is ever to develop within us. This we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, the humble one who is our preeminent example. Amen.