On Contempt and Humility

Sermon

One of the many wonderful things you all as congregation do for us pastors is give us study leave, time away from e-mails and phone calls and meetings so that we can delve into something without the usual things buzzing around us. Last week while on study leave I had the opportunity to delve into four books, two of which I’ve finished and which will show up a bit in this sermon. So thank you for that!

Our first look at this wee story invites us to notice the contempt with which the Pharisee treats the tax collector. A word, then, about Pharisees and tax collectors. In the religious setting of Judaism in the Roman colony of Palestine in the first century, Pharisees were part of the power structure that centered around the temple in Jerusalem, and in the context of the story of Jesus, they were usually his great opponents. They were concerned with holiness and purity, maintaining the exclusiveness of their faith, and calling out those who were not following the rules of the Torah. Those were things Jesus was not concerned about. We might say that in the big picture of things, Pharisees were both the good guys and the bad guys.

Tax collectors were seen as the bad guys. They were fellow Jews who were employed by Rome to collect taxes from the population. The tax collector owed a certain amount to Rome, but he could and did use any means necessary to collect whatever amount from the folks. They were seen as traitors by their own people, but that is simplifying things a bit. Sometimes collecting taxes was the only employment available, and sometimes the tax collector was fair and honest. So we might say that tax collectors could be both the good guys and the bad guys, or at least, the not-terrible guys and the bad guys.

What is not good in this story is the contempt that the Pharisee has for the tax collector. His prayer has a whiff of the humble-brag—thank God I’m not as bad as him. It’s a true statement—the Pharisee does all the right things and the tax collector does none of the right things.

But Jesus lays a trap for us in this parable, and not just in the nuanced characters of Pharisee and tax collector. As one commentator notes, “We fall into the trap when we… feel a twinge of schadenfreude at [the Pharisee’s] comeuppance; in this way, we exemplify the very contempt the parable condemns. But there’s also a more subtle snare in this story, a trap within a trap. For when we draw from it the lesson, Go and be humble, or Pray for mercy like the tax collector (for then you’ll be exalted) — we… substitute a disguised attempt at exaltation for a brazen one. That’s the humility trap: whenever we try to act with humility because we believe humility to be a ‘superior’ course of action, the ‘right’ way to be, the path God approves and exalts — we thereby enact a camouflaged form of pride….” (https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/10/22/the-humility-trap-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-twentieth-week-after-pentecost)

I don’t know if you spend a lot of time thinking about your humility or your pride or your hubris. I do know that contempt did not die out after the first century. We just need to turn on the radio or television, or answer that spam call during an election season to understand the pervasive ways contempt is with us even now.

When Gregg and I were dating and we both had a sense we’d be getting married, we talked about the psychology of relationships (which was a whole lot easier and less scary than talking about our feelings for each other!). Gregg mentioned something he read that contempt was a clear indicator that a marriage wouldn’t last, and the best physical attribute of contempt was one partner rolling their eyes at the other. (Of course when he told me that, I rolled my eyes.)

That idea comes from researcher John Gottman and is explained in this way. “When you communicate with contempt, the results can be cruel. Treating others with disrespect and mocking them with sarcasm and condescension are forms of contempt. So are hostile humor, name-calling, mimicking, and body language such as eye-rolling and sneering. In whatever form, contempt is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust and superiority…. Contempt, simply put, says, ‘I’m better than you. And you are lesser than me.’” (https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-contempt/)

I would go so far as to say that contempt is at the root of almost all that’s wrong in the world. The idea that another person or another group of people is less-than is at the root of racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, all those -isms and phobias that lead to violence and war and estrangement.

Is humility the remedy for contempt? How do we get out of this mess? If we think we will find an answer in these six short verses of Jesus’ parable, we won’t. Parables tell the beginning of a story, but we are left to provide the ending, not with our words but with our actions.

Jesus concludes the parable with the words, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” But we’ve talked about the trap that gets us in that—that striving for humility becomes its own sort of exaltation.

Perhaps we might imagine the ending of this story. What happens to the Pharisee when he sees this tax collector beat his chest in agony over his sin? If indeed the Pharisee is concerned with holiness, might he help the tax collector work toward holiness?

And what happens to the tax collector after his confession? Like a parable, the act of confession is only the beginning. Confession needs to be followed up with repentance, atonement, with change, and when possible, with reconciliation. Is it possible for the tax collector to reconcile with those who have been on the receiving end of his nefarious ways? Is it possible for him to stop working for Rome? Will there be grace in the end?

We do not know. We can’t write the end to this particular story, but we might play out its possibilities in our own living. I think one of the truths that brings grace to the world is this: what we do does not say everything about who we are.

What we do does not say everything about who we are.

That notion is what is at the heart of confession. We all do bad things—some are a little bad, and some are horrible. You and God can be the judge of that. We confess every week in worship because we need to get stuff off our chests, but maybe more importantly, because we need to remind ourselves that the worst we do never wins out over the God-given truth that at our cores, we are beloved children of God.

In her exquisite book This Here Flesh, author Cole Arthur Riley spends a few pages on confession. She writes, “… I think confession is liberation. It is easy to think that in injustice only the oppressed have their freedom to gain. In truth, the liberation of the oppressor is also at stake. Whether it’s the privilege we’ve inherited or space we’ve stolen, what began as guilt will mutate into shame, which is much more sinister and decidedly heavier on the soul. …When wounders… dismantle their delusion of heroism or victimhood and begin to tell the truth of their offense, a sacred rest becomes available to them. You are no longer fighting to suspend the delusion of self. You can just lie down and be in your own flawed skin. And as you rest, the conscience you were born with slowly begins to regenerate…. You realize there are other ways to move in the world. It’s not only relief, it’s freedom.” (137)

If indeed confession frees us, as we live into the grace of that freedom, we need to be intentional about how we live. It’s how who we are translates into what we do. And that brings us back to humility.

Rather than allow ourselves to be entrapped by the humility circle—a striving for humility that itself leads to pride and maybe even contempt for those not as humble as we ourselves—we might think of humility as foundation.

Brené Brown, in her newest book, Atlas of the Heart, reminds us that “‘humility’ comes from the Latin word humilitas, meaning groundedness. …Humility is openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths, imperfections, and opportunities for growth. (245) … I can sum up humility with one sentence…: I’m here to get it right, not to be right.” (246)

For the Pharisee, getting it right might be the acknowledgement that his work is not to look down on the tax collector but to help the tax collector move into a more holy life. For the tax collector, getting it right might be moving out of that particular work, beginning with not extorting or threatening, finding other work, confessing the sin, and asking for forgiveness.

And you and me—in what ways might humility ground us as we work to live out our lives in faith?

Perhaps we need to ground ourselves in our primal identity as beloved children of God, and remember that no matter what we do, no matter what happens to us, God will never give up on us. We could try a little experiment one day and make a point of saying to each other, “You are a beloved child of God, and nothing can undo that.” It’s a thought.

And then, once grounded, we could remind ourselves that all the other people in the world, the ones we love and the ones we hate and the ones we fear and the ones we pity, that they, too, are beloved children of God, no matter what we think of them.

And then, having been grounded in the treasure that is our humanity, we might have the courage to live in humility as Brené Brown defines it—to be open to new ideas, to be honest about our successes and failures, our strengths and our flaws.

And then – who knows what could happen?