Ah, humility. Another "Lenten" word that does not fall easily on the ears of us Moderns. As Nouen asks, "who wants to be humble?" But if we are to come to some kind of understanding of the nature of the God we worship we need to look pretty carefully at just what it mean to be humble, to live the life of a servant, to seek not to be first, but to be last, to become like a little child. None of these holds a great deal of allure at first glance, that's for sure.
Nouen writes of the "downward pull" of Jesus - his coming to live among us through the Incarnation, his humbling himself, his suffering, his dying a humiliating and painful death on the cross. This is the way Jesus fully discloses the sacrificial love of God - the way of humility, of servanthood, of suffering, leading to joy and to resurrection.
How odd this seems to us mere mortals. And how difficult, indeed impossible, it seems to us. But as Christians it is a way, a path, that we are called to be on. The descending way, the way of discovering what is really important, what brings us in closer relationship with our fellow human beings, what brings us in closer relationship with God. It is the way that calls us not to be at the top of the heap, but to walk with love and compassion alongside our fellow travelers on the journey.
To be humble is not to be a cowering, servile, obsequious character like Dickens' infamous Uriah Heep, a toad- like man we love to loathe. A humble person, a person who recognizes his or her true dependence on God, who values her fellow human beings, who puts puts the other guy ahead ahead of himself, who seeks to make the world a better, more compassionate, loving and forgiving place - now there is a person of real stature. There is a force to be reckoned with. There is someone who shows us that the downward path - the path away from self absorption and self promotion is a path, oddly enough, of great strength.
But it is not a path easily undertaken. As Nouen points out, there are a lot of weeds to clear out. All those weeds that choke the path, that trip us up: those weeds of power-seeking, the weeds of needing to "prove" ourselves, to be the best, the prettiest, the smartest, the cleverest, the most popular, the most likely to succeed. To choose this weed-strewn path is a courageous and difficult choice, and as Nouen points out, we will each have our different ways of seeking out this "descending way of love." This Lent we can think about how that way will be for us.
We can start by sharpening up our weed-whackers!
Audrey
Thank you Audrey!
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