Our Old Testament reading this morning came from a book you may never have heard of – the book of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, the book of the Church. It didn’t make the cut into the Protestant Old Testament, although Catholics see it as canonical, but for us it is part of that collection of books we call the Apocrypha, which we are told to study “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet not apply them to establish any doctrine.” But once in awhile the Lectionary throws up a reading from the Apocrypha as an alternative, and I think, particularly where it resonates with the Gospel reading, it’s no bad thing to have a look at it.
Anyway,
this book was written, or possibly compiled, by someone known as
Joshua Ben Sirach, who was a Jewish scribe who had lived in
Jerusalem, and who may have been living in Alexandria when he
compiled the work between about 180-175 BCE. We know who wrote it
because, uniquely among the Old Testament and Apocryphal writers, he
signs his work. And there is a prologue to the Greek version,
written by his grandson in 130 BCE who translated it from the
original Hebrew! There are far more Greek manuscripts of it
available than there are Hebrew ones, although a large portion of the
Hebrew version was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Anyway,
that’s all very interesting, but what was he about? Basically, it
was a collection of ethical teachings, rather like the book of
Proverbs. I must admit I’ve not read all the book, although I have
skimmed the first few chapters, and he writes a great deal about
Wisdom, pretty much equating her with God Himself, as the apocryphal
writers are apt to do. And a great deal of it, as in the passage we
just heard read, is to do with pride.
Pride,
we are told, begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride begins
when a person abandons the Lord. Pride, says ben Sirach, is like a
fountain pouring out sin, and whoever persists in it will be full of
wickedness. A fountain pouring out sin. Strong stuff, no?
The
thing is, though, he’s right. Pride is the worst of sins – if
sin can be said to have any “worst”, because it is the one that
totally turns us away from God. C S Lewis had a lot to say about it
in his book, Mere Christianity, and I propose to quote from it,
because he says it better than I could: “According to Christian
teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.
Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere
fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became
the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete
anti-God state of mind.”
Lewis
goes on in this vein for some time, saying that Pride is essentially
competitive – I’m not too sure he’s right there – and then we
come to the heart of it:
“But
pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity
between human beings, but enmity to God.
“In
God”, says Lewis, “you come up against something which is in
every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God
as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison –
you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know
God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and,
of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something
that is above you.”
Of
course, Lewis points out, it’s not pride to be pleased when someone
pays you a sincere compliment – as long, that is, as the compliment
doesn’t lead you to believe you’re cleverer or prettier or a
finer person! As long as you delight in the praise, and don’t
start thinking you must be a grand person to have merited it. And he
also points out that it’s fine to be proud of your school or your
father or your children as long as you don’t start thinking you
must be a grand person to have been to such a school, or had such
parents or children. The “Aren’t I clever, knowing a famous
person” syndrome is alive and well today!
And
obviously Pride, as in the carnival of that name, is fine, too –
again, as long as you don’t think yourself rather superior for
being part of it, or, indeed, rather broad-minded for enjoying it
even if you aren’t gay!
Jesus,
of course, knows all about it. In our Gospel reading, we saw him and
his disciples – dare I say being amused by the people who obviously
thought they deserved the best place at table, and being asked to
move down…. As Jesus said, it makes far more sense to go down to
the bottom, less honoured, places at the table and be asked to move
up than to try to grab a place at the high table and be told in no
uncertain terms you don’t belong there! Although I can see, as I’m
sure you can, a danger lurking there whereby you rather
ostentatiously go to the lowest place and look, expectantly, for the
host coming to move you up a bit! And, indeed, it’s all too easy
to see how, if you were to give a dinner for those who couldn’t
return it, you could feel rather good about yourself in the wrong
way: “What a good person I am to help out at Robes”…..
As I
said, Jesus knew all about it. Look at the story he told of the
Pharisee and the tax-collector who went to pray at the same time, and
the Pharisee was all, “Oh God, I thank you I am not like this tax
collector; I tithe and I fast and I’m generally a Most Superior
Person, thank you very much.” But Jesus said it was the tax
collector, who knew himself to be a sinner, who went away right with
God on that occasion.
I
heard a story once of a Sunday school teacher who was discussing this
parable with her class, and at the end, she said “Now, let us thank
God that we are not like this Pharisee”. Hmm – all well and
good, until the moment I found myself thanking God that I was not
like that Sunday School teacher!
No,
pride and God are basically incompatible. Or rather the wrong sort
of pride is. It can be very insidious – we go, imperceptibly, from
being delighted that we have become God’s person, that we have been
cleansed, forgiven and made whole, we go from that into thinking that
we must be a pretty good person, really, to have allowed God into our
lives.
Or,
worse, we take this sort of thing to heart and, knowing that we are
apt to be a bit proud on occasions, we think we must be truly
terrible people, and quite beyond redemption. Which is another sort
of pride, isn’t it – pride in one’s own sinfulness!
You know, this sermon feels very thou-shalt-nottish, which is not at
all where I want to leave it. Pride is a very great sin, it is the
sin that brings us into total opposition to God. Ben Sirach warns
us, that whoever persists in pride will be full of wickedness. That
is why, he tells us, the Lord brought terrible punishments on some
people and completely destroyed them. And not only people, he says,
but nations and empires, too. And if I were to leave it there, we
would all be in a very sad case.
But
there is hope. After all, we aren’t supposed to try to pull
ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We aren’t supposed to strain
and strive and continually fail and hate ourselves for so doing. No,
my friends, not that. Never that.
If
we try to overcome our faults in our own strength, we will fail. And
we will become proud of ourselves for trying – I try far harder
than he does, of course. I’m sure God will reward me better than
him.
No,
that’s not the answer. And continuing in our pride isn’t the
answer, either. Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of feeling
proud, some of the time. But if we continue, we will cut ourselves
off from God, and perhaps end up worshipping what we think is God,
but is in fact a god, made in our own image, who thinks we’re
really rather brilliant!
God
knows what we’re like. God knows our struggles, our failures, our
weaknesses, our tendency to think we’re rather good for allowing
Him to heal us…. And God goes on loving us and forgiving us and
healing us. No matter how often we take our eyes off him to look at
ourselves, or to look down on our neighbours, as soon as ever we
realise what we’re doing, as soon as ever we turn back to God with
an, “Oh, sorry!” or “Oops!” then God is there, forgiving us,
healing us, helping us to grow into the person we were designed to
be. “The Creator,” says ben Sirach, “never intended for human
beings to be arrogant and violent.” And that being so, the Creator
will help us become humble and peacable folk, the peacemakers who
Jesus told us were to be given the kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
