Exalting Oneself

“A man planted a vineyard.He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed. He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others." Mark 12:1-9

Pride Sucks

Jerry received a promotion and now he was Vice President of the Internal Division.  No one was really sure what this meant and Jerry’s job didn’t change, but he was immensely proud of his position.  He told everyone. His wife got tired of his boasting so she decided to deflate him a bit. “Everyone is Vice President of something, now.  Heck, at the supermarket they have a VP of peas!” Jerry thought on this for a while and thought she must be wrong. He called the supermarket and asked, “May I speak to the Vice President of peas?”  The receptionist asked, “Fresh or frozen?”

Pride is defined as arrogance or a sense of self-importance, especially when it is aggrandized. It is also considered to be a horrible sin.  It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, one of the big seven. It is the sin of Achiles, hubris, which destroyed him and his people. It is singled out as a horrible sin in the Bible:

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.  Proverbs 16:18

God opposes the proud  James 4

The pride of your heart has deceived you, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, “Who will bring me down to the ground?” Obediah 1:3

So, pride is bad, let’s not do it, done, sermon over, we can go home?

The Proudest One

Well, I just have one niggling thought in my head.  Was Jesus proud? I mean, a guy who goes around saying, “The Father and I are one.”  “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “No one knows the Son but the Father and no one knows the  Father but the Son and those whom the Son chooses to reveal him to.”

If I started saying things like that, “Steve is the way, the only way.  No one knows God except Steve. Want to know God? Listen to Steve! No one else understands God! In fact, I AM God and God is me.”  You’d have problems with me, and rightly so. And you’d approach me and say, “Steve, we think you have a little problem with pride.”

Well, why not?  After all, we call our pastors “Reverend.”  If I am a reverend, a “revered one” then perhaps these claims aren’t too crazy.

Some might rightly say that such statements are okay for Jesus, but not for me.  After all, I am NOT the way. I don’t have all the signicant truth. But Jesus did.  Let’s not argue the claims for a moment but just say that Jesus spoke the truth and he really was equal with God in heaven.  But those statements are still arrogant, aren’t they, even if true? Aren’t those remarks supposed to kinda rub it in against his enemies?  To put him in a higher place? That’s pretty arrogant, isn’t it? Pretty prideful? So how can we honor our leader, who has committed one of the Seven Deadly sins?  On a regular basis?

What is Pride?

Well, here’s the secret.  We don’t actually have pride figured out.  At least, when the New Testament talks about pride, that’s not the same thing we talk about pride.  The funny thing about the Seven Deadly Sins, is that they are actually the sins of Roman culture, the sins of stoicism, rather than the sins of apostolic Christianity.   That doesn’t mean that there isn’t some overlap, but they don’t represent what we see in Jesus’ teachings.

When Jesus speaks of arrogance or the early teachers speak of pride, they are actually talking about something else.  The core idea is still there-- thinking more of oneself than one should. But it has to do with one’s social movement.

One of the curious changes that take place between the New Tesament and later developments in Christianity is the transformation of social position to an indivudual, internal issue.  “Lust” in Matthew 5 is about a look of covetousness, a staring, longing look, but later interpreters understood it as a thought. “Hatred” has to do with insulting someone, not just thinking awful thoughts about another.  Even so, “Pride” isn’t just thinking that one is greater, but acting like it.

A story in the book of 2 Chronicles explains it well.  There was a king named Uzziah. He became king at 16 years old, which already calls for trouble.  But he wasn’t a bad king. He was a good warrior, he built up his capital, he didn’t build statues to himself or anything. Unfortunatly, when he got to be a certain age, being king wasn’t good enough for him.  He wanted more authority. So he walked over to the nearby temple and starting offering sacrifices. The priests stopped him and said, “Whoa, king! You’re a king, not a priest. You can’t just take over our job.  God has you in your place and we are in ours.” But he started ranting, because why shouldn’t he do it? I mean, he was king. And he could do anything he wanted in his kingdom, right?

Well, only to a certain degree because just as he was ranting he developed leporsy, which lasted the rest of his life and so he made a pretty poor king at that point as well.

Taking Authority

Pride, in the Bible, has less to do with feeling important, but taking on importance.  Taking authority that doesn’t belong to one. Taking over situations which really belongs to another.  Taking over land and property that really belongs to someone else. Manuvering for a job that someone else already does well at, or was promised to someone else.

Pride is also treating someone as less important than us, when in reality they are equal.  Assuming that because of their social station or financial situation or position in society that they can’t do something you can.  Or they shouldn’t do something.

On the final day of Jesus’ life, he confronted a group of people about their pride.  People who used their authority to crush people under them. He told them about a group of farmers who rented the land, and they owned the owner justice.  But every time the owner send someone to check to see if justice is being done, they beat him, they threw them out, they killed them. So the owner sent his son to test them, to see what kind of people they really were.  It turns out, they were full of pride. So full of pride, they would rather take away any right to live of the person who confronted them, rather than set aside their own position because they were unworthy of it. Because they displayed their unworthiness through the death of an innocent, God opposed them.  Because God opposes the proud.

Lessening Others

Recently, there was a panel discussing Race and Homelessness in Portland.  There were a variety of people there, but the person who upstaged everyone else was white and had no experience of homelessness.  He took that authority, because no one stopped him. He was guilty of the biblical sin of pride-- taking on authority that didn’t belong to him, to speak for people of color who were homeless when they were right there on the stage next to him.

I sit in meeting after meeting about homelessness and how to help the homeless and how to organize the millions of dollars given to help the homeless.  A variety of people from the community are invited, but the one group that has the most stakes, the most experience are not invited-- the homeless. Because who are they to think that they could use money to help homeless people?  But anyone who thinks they can help homeless without that perspective being central is prideful.

I went to a meeting of the police comission of Eugene this week.  They all spoke of how they should punish people who are sleeping in public space because they have no where else to go.  No one said, “Hey, what if we let them be. Their live span is 30 years shorter thanours, perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way.”  Because their authority and the biased fear of the community was more important than the right of someone to live. That is pride.

I homeschooled my children and when we felt they were ready, we would put them into public school.  My oldest went to public school in 9th grade and my youngest in 7th grade because she asked to go. So we made the arrangements, but I didn’t want her to go to the school my oldest daughter went, because in that school she was bullied and attacked because they assumed she was arrogant-- after all it was a mostly black school and she was white and quiet.  She wasn’t arrogant, she was autistic, but I didn’t want my younger daughter going there. So I fought with the administration, but they put up a wall. I could not put her in school, but if she goes to public school, she is going to that same school. I was furious.

Why was I furious?  Because I was full of pride.  The proper response was if a child is bullied, we deal with the teacher and deal with the students doing it.  But I was using my authority as a parent and as an important person to do something other people couldn’t do. Frankly, I was pulling my white daughter out of a mostly black school because I was afraid for her.  I was a racist parent. I was acting with pride, trying to take authority I didn’t have.

We have enough power it is easy for us to do this.  We decide who is worthy and who isn’t, who should be listened to and who shouldn’t, who is worthy and who isn’t.  We think we treat everyone the same, but when we live with a certain amount of authority, it is hard to do. We are all little king Uzziah’s taking little pieces of humanity

I highly recommend that we all read this book, White Fragility.  It talks about how we can easily participate in dehumanize people of color, without even thinking of it.  When a person of color says, “That is racism” and we instantly respond, “No it’s not”, without thinking about it.  I’d recommend we listen to this sociologist who carefully explains how we can better listen, and how we can better repent of the small acts of pride.

The funny thing about pride is that unless we are doing some great act of arrogance, like trying to take over the world, we don’t see that we are taking over anyone else’s place, denying their humanity or experience.  I didn’t see that I was dehumanizing a school-full of people of color. But it was my responsiblity to wake up to it, to realize how I was treating others.

The first step to overcome pride is to wake up to it.  To see what we are doing, how we are stepping on others, especially to prop up ourselves.  Because “God opposes the proud.” We cannot display the love of God when we step over others to maintain or increase our importance.

The Tree of Sustenance

Suppose you were watching a movie with a lot of cultural reference jokes.  Let’s say, Shrek.
You are watching Shrek except that you never have read a single fairy tale. So the whole movie
references fairy tale after fairy tale, children’s story after children’s story.  They make a Pinocchio joke,
a Snow White reference, characters from the three little pigs, and you don’t get any of it. It is truly
a bizarre, unfunny tale.

This is how most of us read the Bible.  
The Bible is packed with references to ancient myths, histories, folk tales and literary references
to other portions of the Bible.  In fact, the book of Revelation alone holds approximately 2000
references to passages in the Old Testament and countless references to Jesus’ teaching, but
most people want to think of it as a unique vision of their newspapers.  When we miss the context
of a literary work, we usually miss the intent of that work. We can read something over and over
again and just don’t get it.

So let’s look at the background of a passage we are very familiar with. The parable of the Mustard Seed.
First, we gotta go back, waaaaay back...

Psalm 104

This is a description of how God established creation through the image of Eden.  In the middle
section of the poem is a detailed description of how God continues to supply all creation with water.  
God supplies water through springs and rain, the mountains and streams distribute the water and the
trees and animals are sustained through that distribution.  It describes an ecosystem, begun by God
and perpetuated by all creation. In the midst of this description the mountains are seen as a home for
all creation with the line, “Beside them the birds of heaven nest, lifting up their voices among the
branches.”  So the birds thrive because of God’s provision through the mountain, through the trees,
through the streams, from the spring. It all works together.

Ezekiel 31

God through the prophet speaks to Egypt, saying, “You are just like Assyria.”  An analogy is given
that Assyria was like a huge cedar tree that took on a huge amount of resources, but supplied the
animals and birds.  In this analogy, the birds are the nations of the world whom Assyria took on as
clients. “All the birds of heaven nested in its branches,” the text says.  God provided the resources of
the earth to Assyria, and Assyria’s responsibility was to fairly distribute them among all the nations.

However, as we continue to read, we find that Assyria didn’t do that.  They withheld the resources for
themselves, causing their tree to rise higher and higher and leaving the nations to survive on scraps.
 In reality, the Assyrians destroyed and tortured whole civilizations in order to retain everything for
themselves. So, says Ezekiel, God chopped down that tree and the birds thrived on the remains.  
Because the nations of the world could thrive better with Assyria dead than alive.

Daniel 4

Emperor Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a tree which grew high and “the birds nested in its
branches”.  But the tree was shown to be inadequate and it was chopped down. Sound familiar?
Daniel tells the Emperor that the tree was him and he was in danger of seeing his power drained.
 Daniel’s recommendation was that the Emperor “give to the poor” generously, and to give glory to
God as the creator of his empire. That his empire had a divine purpose— to distribute to many,
especially the poor, so that all might thrive together, according to the creation-plan of God.

Mustard Tree

That’s the background.  Now let’s get to the meat, Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed.

“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like
a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes
the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can nest in its shade.”  
Mark 4:30-32

Here, we see the key phrases that brings to mind the previous passages. “Huge branches that
birds nest in.” In the ancient Greek translations, the group of phrases use the same words as the
three passages quoted above.  

The mustard seed parable is half about the growth of God’s kingdom.  It is also about the nature of
the kingdom. The kingdom is the distribution of the resources of God, according to the mercy and
love of God.

The kingdom Jesus speaks about begins tiny, with one man distributing God’s healing, food,
deliverance and forgiveness to as many as he could reach.

The kingdom will have reached it’s apex when whole nations, ethnicities, corporations, churches
and religions join in God’s distribution network, making sure that everyone obtain what they need to
both survive and thrive.  As the kingdom’s distribution network grows, so does the world thrive.

Who Got This?

Interestingly enough, the early church understood this immediately.  The first church, as described in
Acts, distributed food to the poor in Jerusalem, and when their was controversy whether enough
people are being feed, the church leaders made sure that everyone was provided for.

Paul himself in Galatians said that though he disagreed with Jerusalem leaders about some issues,
they agreed that distribution to the poor was an essential aspect of the church.

Even the Romans agreed in the third century that they needed to persecute the early church, but that
the church “provided for our own poor as well.”

In the fourth century, as the church was getting organized, a group could not be officially claimed to
be a “church” unless they had a distribution network for the poor in their system.

What about us?

I do not identify the “kingdom” with the churches we see.  Because part of the core nature of the
kingdom of God is distribution to the poor, needy and outcast, as Jesus displayed and taught.  Not
everyone who teaches Jesus displays this basic understanding. Many who proclaim the name of
Jesus, teach or display a withholding of resources, sowing a distrust of the poor or outcast.  These

y: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">churches are not a part of the kingdom of God as Jesus described it.

And there are many secular organizations that do demonstrate the principles of God’s kingdom.  
Even as in Jesus’ teaching of the Sheep and the Goats shows, many who have done the acts of the
kingdom will be a part of it, even though they didn’t know who Jesus was.

Let us not think that our task is primarily or mostly “spiritual”, focusing on just prayer and word.  If we
do not organize and provide for the physical needs of the people in our community, we are not a part
of Jesus’ kingdom.