Homily

Jesus tells the disciples here at this point in Luke’s Gospel that “knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God has been granted to you, but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.” And what he means is that if people give the parables some thoughtful consideration, if they ponder the elements of the story and how they fit together they will come to see some light and they will find the truths that the parables carry. But if they do not honestly give them serious thought then Jesus’ parables become a waste of time for people who already know everything.

To be thoughtful, to spend some time considering a parable, or a news item, or a political election, or what my life means in this world and looking for light and truth—this is not the way our society seems to be heading. And if we talk about being thoughtful and looking for truth and light in the teachings of Christ, this is definitely not where our society is heading. The ultimate cause is pride. The ultimate result can be eternal loss.

Pride is at the very root of our modern problem. If my life is all about me, centered on me, attentive to me, my thoughts, my will, my desires, my rules, my existence as the center of my universe—then God, Who actually has a capital “G” at the start of His title, that “G” becomes a small, lower case “g” because God then becomes just another object in my universe, one more thing to deal with, or not deal with. It is not necessary to openly contradict God. It is not necessary to openly oppose God. It is not necessary to deny God. All it takes is to put yourself in the center, and then, as the serpent told Eve in the garden, you yourself will know what is good and what is bad. You won’t need God to tell you. And ever since the day Adam and Eve decided that the snake might be right after all, Satan’s job became a whole lot easier.

Pride is an easy master. It does not require us to denounce God. All we need to do is put ourselves first, and then we can sort out where we want to put God. Pride does not force us to hate or attack others. All we need to do is put ourselves first and then we can decide what we want to do about other people. Pride does not force us to follow in this direction or that one, follow these rules, or those rules. If doesn’t matter to pride, as long as you are at the center of your universe you can decide for yourself. Pride doesn’t even care if you believe in God and pray to Him, as long as when it gets down to the nitty gritty and you have to take a stand that you put yourself first.

Over these past decades the Gospel of Pride has been ever more loudly proclaimed and ever more warmly embraced, and it has accomplished changes in our culture that few people would ever have foreseen coming 100 years ago. People look but do not see, hear but not understand. How do you get people to believe that divorce is good for children, that sex outside of marriage is not only good but even the most normal of all activities? How do you get people to accept that you can have a marriage between two people of the same sex, and that marriage is not a commitment that lasts for a whole lifetime? How do you convince people that that vulgarity, pornography, lying and shoplifting are not acceptable behaviors? How is it possible for people to take the lives of others people, or even the life they have growing within them and see it as not only permissible but even as their right? Think on that: my right as a human being allows me to take your unborn life. And we say it’s okay, we can’t get in the way of people’s rights. We can’t tell other people what to do, even though, all the time, they are telling us what we need to do. What do we know? We don’t even know if someone is a man or a woman unless they tell us.

I think we are stuck in a gradually increasing and unwavering grip of cultural and national pride, and I offer as evidence the two main candidates we have running for President. Can anyone convince me that their goal in seeking office is to serve the people? How do we end up with two candidates like this? Our culture of pride. Not the good pride, but the sin pride. How is it that we should be surprised? They are the fruit of the way we live as a country every single day. Seeing we do not see and listening we do not hear or understand.

How does cultural or national pride come about? Bit by bit, person by person, the individual pride of each person contributes to the whole. Pride is as easy as falling off a ladder, but that doesn’t make falling off a ladder a good thing. Pride says if you don’t give me what I want you are against me. But humility says that if I don’t give you the truth I don’t care about you.

That is what we need. We need to counter pride with humility. Christian humility means that I know my place—my place with God, my place with my neighbor. God has placed me at the center of His attention and when I live in that understanding no self-importance I can manufacture for myself will ever give me any lasting satisfaction. And if God tells me to love my neighbor as myself, then in humility I accept His command and I strive to do His will, not my own will. Being louder, angrier, and more abusive will not dampen our cultural pride. And dear friends need I say it? Politics has its place in society but I’m afraid that in our time politicians have no interest in lowering our national pride because they use it to get elected to office where they can serve themselves.

St Paul said in today’s epistle that he only glories in the cross of Christ Jesus, which is the perfect symbol of humility. Every time we make that sign of the cross this morning may it serve as a call for us to seek humility, not because we are lowly and unworthy servants (although we are) but because our glory is indeed only in Christ, not in ourselves. Only in that glory can we become our best selves, and grow in a genuine humility which counters the pride and foolishness of the society we live in, as we serve as an example to others of a wiser and more human way to live in this world.