Tag Archives: humility

Concrete.

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Phil Cooke talked the other day about the need for leaders to be concrete.

In short, start in the world of abstraction, but to reach your team, move quickly into the real world. Give them examples, illustrations, and real-life explanations that will help them understand your concept.

After I read that, I spent the day thinking a discussion I’ll have about Paul and humility and a letter he wrote to friends in Philippi with my Wednesday night group of friends. I wrestled with what concrete could look like for our discussion.

I read a familiar text:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

It’s a phrase that gets preached a lot. It’s a platitude that gets inflicted a lot. But what does it really mean to be humble? What does it look like? What counts?

And I read on:

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:4)

“All good,” I think. “That’s pretty clear. Good business looks at each situation as a win-win. If I help others, they will help me. I’m comfortable with that. That seems pretty concrete.”

But Paul was afraid that what he was saying might be comfortable, convenient, open to self-helping interpretation. So he decided to make “humble” very concrete:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7)

Bam.

If I want to understand humble, I can’t look at how serving I am. It starts with how serving Jesus was.

Paul shows the power of a concrete example.

confident humility

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I’ve been trying to decide how to write about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Yesterday, I hinted at a feeling of entitlement among the disciples, just a moment of it. I think it was too much of a hint. So I’ll be less subtle.

Confidence let Jesus be humble. Deservingness causes humbleness to be needed.

The whole story of the foot-washing starts with John talking about the love Jesus has for his disciples, the power he has from his Father, the fact that he is about to return to the seat of his power. John clearly reaffirms Jesus’ status and then says, “so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.” The act of service is rooted, for Jesus, in not having anything to prove.

He gets nothing from this act, usually reserved for a gentile servant. Rinsing the feet of guests from the dirt that accumulated from manure-laden paths as they walked to a party had no redeeming value. This was not like opening the door for someone, an act that people can take turns doing. This was not about helping the helpless, an act that can earn inverse status points.

This act would have carried no points, would have seemed repulsive to the disciples rather than noble. The idea of a servant leader was still new; was, in fact, in the process of being created at this table, on this night.

As I have been thinking about this action, I cannot find an equivalent in our society. We look to Mother Teresa touching lepers or countless homeless advocates passing out socks, but while inspired by Jesus, they aren’t what Jesus was doing in this moment.

But, says John, Jesus wasn’t jeopardizing his position, he was establishing it.

Servant.

—

Tomorrow we’ll look at deservingness.

Other writing on this story:  You have to do whatever

Making change

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(I’m following up on yesterday’s post about planning how to grow.)

If you want to have less self-centered pride in five years than you do now, here’s one thing to say:

If I am sitting in a meeting, and I feel a need to speak up, then I will count to five and say, “Am I trying to impress people or am I trying to move the conversation along?”

Self-centered pride is one of the attitudes that can devastate us. We read …

An angry man stirs up dissension,
and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.
A man’s pride brings him low,
but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.

… and we say, “I should be more humble. It’s a characteristic of Jesus.” And then a few days later we say it again. And then a few days later we say it again. And then we say, “God, help me be more humble.” And sometimes He does. But we still don’t learn. We simply humiliate ourselves.

But what if we looked at the places where we often demonstrated our self-centered pride and we evaluated our behavior and we planned to make changes? Is it possible that we could learn behaviors that kept us from always putting ourselves in front?

Yes.

In the example above, notice the bold if…then. When we clearly identify a time and situation, and we clearly identify the action we will take in that situation, we are far more likely to take that action than if we say, “I should talk less.” (See, for example, Implementation Intentions for research supporting this.)

This 300 words seems a lot more like psychology research than a devotional. I understand. I also understand that following Jesus involves specific, intentional steps of obedience which are sometimes rooted both in the Bible and our brains.

Who are you teaching for?

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In Matthew 23, Jesus is laying into the Pharisees, the religious leadership of his time. This week we’ll look at that critique as a mirror. If you don’t want to be known for what Jesus criticizes, don’t do it.

One question is simple: “Who are you teaching for?”

The right answer, of course, would be “the students” or “society” or “God”. Painful but honest answers could be “my parents” or “the money”.

Jesus gives another answer for the Pharisees: “Everything they do is done for men to see.”

How can we tell  how who we are doing what we are doing for? Here are some questions (learned the hard way).

  • How much does it matter to me what people call me?
  • How much does it matter to me how often people call me?
  • How much do we work on our Sunday school lessons when no one is watching?
  • How concerned are we that when we choose to sit in the back of the room (because Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for sitting in the front of the room) no one mentions our humility and asks us to move up?
  • How careful am I to wear the right kind of establishment-challenging kind of clothing (because one doesn’t want to fall into the trap of wearing the establishment tassels and phylacteries)?
  • How often do we get caught in flattering someone so that they notice us and reach down from their high position and bring us up?
  • How often do we think about what anyone thinks about our religiosity or spirituality?
  • How often do we let anyone else be right?
  • How often do we think that letting everyone else be right makes us better that everyone else?

You may be fine with this test. Not everyone has issues with public pride. Just some of us.

seeing inflection

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I wish we could see inflection. Or hear it, actually.

The inflection of the Biblical text. The tone of voice when a handful of religious leaders say to Jesus, “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” (Matthew 12:38). The amount of wistfulness or sarcasm or wondering or eagerness to learn. There had to be something in how they said it. There always is.

There are a couple hints in the story as a whole.

As we saw yesterday, Jesus had just healed a man. The response of the religious leaders, when they heard about it, was not positive. In fact, the Pharisees were downright rude. They accused Jesus of collaboration with the enemy. So in the very next scene in the story, it is likely that they were not asking for a miraculous sign with a tone of wonder and learning. At best, I would guess, it’s a trap.

The second hint comes in Jesus’ response.

He calls them “a wicked and adulterous generation.”

(I’m guessing that he turned to the adulterers and apologized.)

These are the religious leaders. They are the last people that would be wicked, according to them. They were scrupulous at avoiding adultery (and any of the other 10 commandments and several hundred others). They would be the generation of hope, according to them. The generation of sober-minded obedience, according to them.

And Jesus calls them names. And Jesus calls them out.

From his response, it’s pretty clear that they are not coming to him as earnest seekers after truth. They are ready to mock him, trap him, tease him. And he’s ready to scold them back.

And so he does.

The lesson for us, the question for us, is simple: as followers of Jesus, what inflection is in our voices when we say, “teacher…”