In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We have it on good authority, my brothers and sisters, that the Lord resists the proud and gives his grace to the humble. So if we want to live under the sway of divine grace, it is imperative that we be humble. Indeed, the Lord warns us that unless we humble ourselves, become as little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So the great quest of the Christian life, then, is the quest for humility.

Let me suggest to you that this is maybe the greatest dilemma of the life in Christ. You see, there are certain good qualities that human beings, at least some human beings, have attained by willpower: bravery, for example, or honesty, or obedience, and with the notable exception of St. Augustine, chastity. The history of moral concern points to numerous examples of human beings who have become brave or honest or obedient or chaste, by industriously working at courage, honesty, obedience, or chastity.

The one virtue that seems impossible to attain by the effort and force of will is humility. Now, the reason for this is not difficult to discern. The very opposite of humility is pride, and pride is a perversion of the will itself. That’s where pride abides; it’s in the will. So try to overcome pride by willpower. You see, it’s impossible, by sheer willpower, to stop from being proud. In this case, the strengthening of the will only increases the perversion of the will. It’s a simple fact that we cannot try to be humble. Some of us have tried it for years. The very effort, however, is an act of pride. Indeed, it’s possible that the worst pride is the pride about one’s humility, and only a few of us have overcome that. [Laughter] That was supposed to be funny; most of you didn’t catch that one at all. I don’t know why I waste these things on you, really, I mean. [Laughter]

Although pride is our worst enemy, there’s absolutely no way to rid ourselves of it by our own efforts. We cannot make ourselves humble, even by humbling ourselves, which we’re supposed to do; that won’t make us humble, because before long I’ll start looking for signs of humility in my life, but it’s always my pride looking for them. It’s a great irony that humility cannot be pursued by the pursuit of humility, but it’s also a great blessing that it can be obtained on the sly, as a side effect. I cannot attain humility by concentrating on humility, but let me suggest that the quest of humility may be furthered, may be advanced, by concentrating on certain other things.

This morning I would like to suggest three things on which to concentrate. Let’s start with sobriety. I can cultivate sobriety. Now, the most sobering thought of all, I submit to you, is the thought of death. My! That is a very humiliating thought, death! The word “humility” is derived from the Latin noun humus, h-u-m-u-s, humus, which means ground or dirt. Now, we know from Genesis 2 that we are taken from the dirt; each of us is a work of ceramics. In fact, that’s the Greek noun that’s used in Genesis 2 in the Septuagint: keramos, mud! Mud. The Lord is a worker of ceramics. And we know from Genesis 3 that to the earth we will return. In the words we pray each vespers, the Psalmist says, “You take away their breath, and they die and return to their dust.”

We don’t have funerals in this parish very often. I’m kind of glad of that, being just about the oldest one here. But every time we do attend a funeral—and I’m sure all of you do attend funerals, if not here—it can be a very humbling experience if we but use the occasion to ponder the depth of the stark truth of our own mortality. The world, you see, can do without us, and not very long from now it will.

I want to review for you what the Bible says about the man without any possible comparison who was the greatest political figure of all time. No one even comes to his kneecaps in comparison. And that is Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great, the greatest military—except for Robert E. Lee on that point [Laughter]—but certainly the greatest political figure of all time, the man who changed the face of Europe and Asia, a man who with his own sword in fact created Europe, or we’d all be speaking Persian right now. But Alexander the Great, with his own sword, extended his empire from the Danube to the Indus, the greatest political figure of all time. What does the Bible say about Alexander the Great? Listen.

Now it came to pass, after that Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, who first reigned in Greece, coming out of the land of the Kittim, had overthrown Darius, king of the Persians and Medes. He fought many battles and took the strongholds of all, and slew the kings of the earth. And he went even to the ends of the earth and took the spoils of many nations, and the earth was quiet before him. And he gathered a power and a very strong army, and his heart was exalted and lifted up. He subdued countries and nations and princes, and they became tributaries to him.

After these things, he fell on his bed, and knew he should die. And he called his servants, the nobles that were brought up with him from his youth, and he divided his kingdom among them while he was yet alive. After he reigned twelve years, Alexander died.

Thus the first eight verses of the opening chapter of the first book of Maccabees describe the most important political figure in the history of the human race. The last words about him: he died. There’s the humbling experience.

Second, let us go from sobriety to humor. I believe that integral to the attainment of humility is what I’ll call the quest for comedy. For some people, it’s a much shorter journey than for others. Let me suggest, my brothers and sisters, that laughter is a great gift from God. It’s one of the reasons why we have to be very careful what we laugh at. To laugh at the wrong things is the perversion of a gift. It’s like sex outside of marriage: it’s a perversion of the best. To laugh at the wrong things is the perversion of a great gift, because it’s the true vocation of the comedian to keep the human race humble. I can think of comedians even in my own lifetime who seem to have known that—Will Rogers, for example.

A good comedian is something of a prophet. He is blessed with the charism of helping people take their minds off of themselves and point their attention to that dimension of life that may be called the graciously ridiculous. It is this mention of life that is indicated in the very name Isaac, which means “he laughed.” Three times the book of Genesis explains the name “Isaac” in three different instances of laughter. Isaac was the patriarch who was a special prefiguration of Christ our Lord. That’s why the Fathers of the Church speak about the cross of Christ—and this is the word used by Tertullian—as ridiculum. You can hear the word “riddle” in there, don’t you? One fears that the person who has lost the ability to laugh may never become humble.

In 1831, Thomas Carlyle speculated on this point. Let me read you some good lines from Carlyle.

The man who has once heartily and wholly laughed cannot be altogether irreclaimably bad. The man who cannot laugh is fit only for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

You see, laughter is a way of not taking oneself seriously, and the person that laughs at himself is at least pointed in the right direction with respect to humility.

Now if we go from sobriety to humor, let’s go from humor to love. Point three, there is the love for one another, the love of others. We see this at work in the story of the woman who came to Jesus to plead for her daughter. We recall that in the gospel of Mark—well, actually in Mark and [Matthew]—Jesus calls her a dog. In the gospel of Mark, she responds by calling herself a puppy. This was a joke on her part, and Jesus recognized the joke. In fact, in the gospel of Mark, it says he’s going to heal her daughter because of the rhema, the turn of phrase that she uses. Matthew doesn’t have that nuance.

Her motive for this self-humiliation was what? Why didn’t she get all upset and all uptight and defensive from being called a dog? She’s concerned with her daughter whom she loves. She humbled herself out of love for her daughter. In fact, I think that’s probably one of the major ways to become humble: to become a parent. Children will do that to you.

The story of the man with the epileptic child that we read this morning holds the same lesson. Jesus upbraids the man for his lack of faith. He comes pleading for his son, and Jesus says, “Wicked and simple generation! Unbelievers!” That’s the Lord’s response. And how does the man himself respond? With a touch of humor: “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.” There is humor in this response, but it’s a humor that is spawned of love.

The woman who went to Jesus for her daughter and the man who went to Jesus for his son had one thing in mind: the welfare of someone else. One stops thinking about himself, and thinks about someone else. Neither this woman nor this man goes storming off, indignant at being put down. They forget themselves, rather, because of the love they bear their children, and forgetfulness of oneself at least points a person in the direction of humility.

You see, my brothers and sisters, we cannot directly strive for humility, but under divine grace we can strive for sobriety, for humor, and especially for unselfish love. The person who learns to love unselfishly has the best chance of becoming a humble person.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.