The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, October 28th: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)

JESUS WARNS AGAINST PRIDE

Ever since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, a popular song has been played repeatedly on the radio. It is Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” Now, it’s a nice song, very poignant, although I’m not much of a country music fan. (Just too many heart-breaking stories about unfaithful relationships and deceased dogs—or possibly deceased relationships and unfaithful dogs.)

Long before September 11th, the word “pride” was being bandied about by a multitude of groups: gay pride, black pride, plumber’s union pride, Notre Dame pride, bag lady pride, nursery school pride, under-achievers’ pride, etc. When I was in high school (about a billion years ago), a popular bumper sticker supported our school football team: “Morgan Huskies Have Pride.”

In contemporary culture, the word “pride” has lost all its negative aspects. It is entirely a good thing. In generations past, however, people were wary of pride. They were much more Bible literate and they knew the Bible clearly taught that pride is a grievous sin—in fact, the worst of all sins.

The best analysis of pride I’ve ever read is in C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece Mere Christianity. In the chapter titled “The Great Sin,” Lewis explains, “It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind….Pride is essentially competitive…[it] gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”

Lewis also points out that pride can sneak its way into the very heart of religious life. “How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people.”

Lewis, no doubt, learned this important lesson from this week’s gospel reading, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Both men went into the temple, Jesus explained, to offer up prayers. The Pharisee prayed, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector.”

The tax collector, on the other hand, stood off at a distance and prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

Jesus concluded, “I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

It is critical that we are humble rather than prideful in the presence of God. The reason is simple, as Lewis points out: “In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all.”

Not every aspect of pride is sinful. Again, quoting Lewis: “Pleasure in being praised is not [sinful] Pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well…the saved soul to whom Christ says, ‘Well done,’ are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, ‘I have pleased him; all is well,’ to thinking, ‘What a fine person I must be to have done it.’”

When I hear people proclaim, as Greenwood’s song says, that they’re proud to be an American, it sort of sounds like they’re saying, “We’re the best! You stink!” or “We’re gonna nuke your towel-headed butts back to the Stone Age!”

As Lewis warned, when we compare ourselves to others and think we are wonderful just because of who or what we are, we are filled with the type of pride that “comes direct from Hell.”

How many of us achieved our American citizenship? How many of us earned our way into this country? I ask myself a simple question: What caused me to be born in New Haven, Connecticut, rather than Kabul or Somalia or Beijing or Bogotá? The obvious answer: Certainly nothing I did.

American citizenship should be humbling rather than prideful. We’ve been given an incredible gift; we should treat it as such. Billions of people around the globe would give anything to have the freedoms and opportunities that we have.

For those of us who are convinced that God has blessed this nation (although I’m worried that He’s getting rather fed up with us right about now), the one emotion we should never display is pride. It is the height of arrogance and ingratitude. It’s the exact same attitude the pompous Pharisee displayed in this week’s gospel reading. Instead we should have the attitude of the tax collector: humility and a realization that we desperately need to be forgiven.

As I said, I’m not a big country music fan. But I think I would like Lee Greenwood’s song a little better if he altered the words of the chorus to be: “I’m blessed to be an American.” (Well, at least he didn’t sing about his favorite hunting dog getting run over by a pickup truck—driven by his third ex-wife. I guess that counts for something.)

©2007