Scripture: Matthew 23:1-12
Journal: What does it look like to take a wrecking ball to your pride and
self-sufficiency? How will you do
that? What concrete daily choices will
help?
Reflection:
The Pharisees were consumed with appearances,
they were constantly trying to build and climb and jockey for position. They were constantly trying to convince
themselves and their world that they were somebody. Power and prestige were their primary
motivators. Thus, they were hollow
men; men without any depth or substance.
They were hypokritēs, actors on stage, merely playing a role; putting
on their costumes each morning before they went out to take their places in the
world. And Jesus wanted so much more for
them than that, as well as for us.
So he took a wrecking ball
to their finely crafted reputations, and proceeded to smash them to
smithereens. And in the process he asks each
of us to do the same. He calls us not to
pride and arrogance and pretention and self-sufficiency, but to humility. For, in the beautiful words of Albert E. Day:
“Humility is the demolition of human pride and self-sufficiency.”
But the interesting thing is
that Jesus doesn’t take the wrecking ball to our lives himself, he asks us to
do that. “Whoever humbles himself
will be exalted,” he says. Thus, he asks
each of us to demo our own house. He
asks us to tear down all of the pride and pretense, to eliminate all of the
jockeying and posturing, to rid ourselves of the climbing and building and
achieving. It is not any easy thing to
ask, or to do, especially in a culture that values the very things he is asking
us to demolish. But it must be
done. Because on the other side of the
demolition is life and love. Only when
we don’t need the responses and affirmations of others to define us, can we ever
really begin to love and serve them.
So let’s get to work. Let’s roll up our sleeves and start pounding
away at all pride and position and pretense and self-promotion. Let’s abandon our manipulative and
self-serving ways and begin to choose what is small and hidden and quiet and
lowly. Let us seek to be invisible, rather
than visible. Let us seek to serve,
rather than be served. Let us be more
concerned about the success of others, than we are about our own. In other words, let us empty ourselves of
self, that we might be filled with the life and love of God. For in lifting him up, we will be lifted up
as well.
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Lord Jesus, give me the grace and the strength
and the courage to embrace humility, and all that comes with it, in order that
you might be lifted up, instead of me.
Amen.
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