It's a humbling experience

Sermon-Year B-2 Advent-12-7-08
The Cloud of Unknowing,
"O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."
How many of you watched or listened to some or all of the Senate Banking Committee hearings this week? Where the CEOs of the Big Three were being questioned by senators and then congresspersons about the loans they were asking for? Did anyone, um, feel sorry for those guys? I did. They were grilled. And yelled at them. And told basically that they were fat, bloated, inefficient, causing the death of the planet, and killing the American economy. Personally, it was painful watching it, because these three CEOs had to sit there and take it. I read an editorial about a week ago where it said that when Lee Iacocca went to congress 30 years ago asking for Chrysler to be bailed out he had a swagger and an attitude-whereas these 3 guys had to sit there and be humiliated in front of the whole country. No attitude, no indignation, no demand for respect or consideration. No matter how mean anyone was, no matter how painful it felt, no matter what anyone said to them-they had to sit there and say, “yes sir, may I have another.” I felt sorry for them. These were the captains of industry being eviscerated in front of everyone. They offered to give up their jets, their salaries, the control of their companies and still they had to be lambasted. It was painful watching. Do you think these 3 guys will survive?
I’ll be talking to some young person who’s just quit their first job, and they’ll say, “I had this boss who was giving me a lot of grief, and I don’t take that from anybody-so I quit.” And I always smile, because I remember saying exactly the same thing a million years ago. Someone treats you poorly-or you think they do, and you say to yourself, “I don’t have to take this” and you walk away. And you think, I’ll never take that kind of embarrassment, that shame. I’ll walk out first.
And then something happens as you get older. You realize that you will be ashamed, and humbled from time to time. And that we will survive. Sometimes we deserve it, quite often we don’t-but it always hurts. The memory of it, even years later, still stings. Remember a time when someone dressed you down, made you feel small, took away your dignity-and you just had to take it? Maybe it was at work-a job you couldn’t afford to lose; maybe it was in a relationship-it would cost you more to fight and win than to lose; maybe it was in a store where an employee or a customer treated you badly and publicly-for no apparent reason. And did you survive? We have all been there-stuck in that moment where we were being humiliated, and we- just-took-it. And you said nothing. This hurts too much, I’ll die of embarrassment. But we didn’t. We survived.
John the Baptist is trying to prepare the world for a savior who is coming. Clearly he doesn’t know who this savior will be nor what he will look like. But he knows that “one” is coming. And then John the Baptist says something very odd, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.”
I wonder if that was hard for John the Baptist to say-to acknowledge that despite all that he had given up, all that he had suffered, all that he had sacrificed, that the one who was coming would be greater than he? More powerful. I wonder how painful that was for John the Baptist? You know, he was considered a great prophet in his day. He had an army of followers. He was feared by kings and worshipped by the multitudes for his holiness. How would he feel when he saw how ordinary, how common his successor looked? Do you ever wonder, “was John the Baptist disappointed” when Jesus showed up? John preached a harsh message, a strict discipline, a tough attitude-my way And the high way. And Jesus-didn’t. How galling did that have to be for John? The Bible says that after these two cousins were born their paths crossed only one other time-at Jesus’ baptism. Who was humbled then? John baptized Jesus-who was the authority? John was older, more popular, more recognized throughout Israel. Did Jesus survive this public embarrassment?
Listen to what Charlotte Joko Beck, a famous Zen writer says,
“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor, or employee, every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath.”
Right now a lot of folks in America are learning humility-the hard way. It is painful to lose our jobs, to change our lives, to live on less, to give less, to cut back, do without. It hurts to lose our homes, and our 401ks, to watch our savings dwindle, to ask for help and to have people do us favors. It’s hard when we aren’t in control, when we need others, when we can’t be as independent as we always saw ourselves. It hurts to have others help us, and to have to ask for help. But it’s teaching us something about ourselves and about life. And about God. It hurts to be humble. It just hurts. It hurts when we have to swallow our pride and eat crow. And it’s Advent. This is the season of John the Baptist and Mary the Virgin-two people whose greatest gift was their humility, their willingness to be used by God, their willingness to let someone else be greater than them. This is the season when we talk about preparing for life changes and heart transformations.
It’s hard being humbled. It hurts.
1975 I left Kansas City, after a lot of success, moved to Chicago, and in a month’s time got a great apartment a plum job. Two months later, fired and, broke, I returned to Kansas City and faced my friends and family-feeling like a failure. It was 33 years ago. I did not think I could live after that. I survived.
Ask the CEOs of three of the biggest companies in the world how it feels. In humility, comes change and growth. Through the storms and pain, we listen to the teachers. Years later we look at the failures, the losses, the times of embarrassment and humbling, and we think to ourselves-I survived. I grew stronger. I became a different person.
This is Advent, the season of preparation and getting ready. It’s the season of repentance and expectation. And, it’s the season of learning and humility. When we reflect back on our lives, we realize that we have endured and faced other times of embarrassment-and we survived. We look at ourselves and see that we have made it through failures and losses and come out on the other side. It’s Advent. This is the season we look at the scars on our hearts and know that they are preparing us for greater things to come. We don’t just survive. God didn’t bring a savior into the world because we were worthy or to help us “just make it through”-he brought his son into our lives because we could not see past those scars, those hurts, that shame. It’s Advent, the season when we realize that we can live.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is amere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.”


Mark 1:1-8
1:1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
1:2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
1:3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'"
1:4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
1:5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
1:6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
1:7 He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.
1:8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."