Ps 131 & Mt 15:21-28

18 August 2002

“Content as a Child”

            Today is the third installment in our mini-series on discipleship.  We started with repentance by looking at Psalm 120, which protests the environment of deceit and violence and sets us on the way to God.  Last week it was Psalm 122, which joyfully celebrates the coming together of God’s people in worship.  This week, we’ll look at Psalm 131, as well as the gospel reading, and see what they have to say about humility.

            Humility, the condition or quality of being humble, is a tricky thing.  It’s like trying to grasp the wind.  If you think you have it, it’s a safe bet that you don’t.  You might call humility an unconscious virtue.  If you have it, you’re not even aware of it.  One of my favorite Bible verses along this line is found in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible—once called the Five Books of Moses.  A classic argument against authorship by Moses comes from Numbers 12:  “Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth” (v. 3).  [Look at me!  I’m the king of humble!]  I think it’s better if Moses didn’t write that!

            There’s something else, though, about humility—something that would make many wonder if it even is a virtue.  To be called humble—to be called meek—for lots of people, that’s not a compliment!  Humility conjures up images of being a doormat, of being weak, of being a girlie man!  If anything, it’s seen as cowardice; it isn’t seen as strength.  Actually, in a world in which there’s no lack of folks trying to…get your goat, being humble requires an enormous amount of strength.

            Our society doesn’t exactly encourage humility.  (News flash!)  We’re constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we have to be bigger and better than everyone else.  One of the primary lies of advertising is that our lives aren’t worth living as they are—we need improvements of all kinds, and those improvements can be ours if we provide a certain sum of money.  As a way of life, humility is replaced with pride.

            Eugene Peterson comments, “It is difficult to recognize pride as a sin when it is held up on every side as a virtue, urged as profitable and rewarded as an achievement.  What is described in Scripture as the basic sin, the sin of taking things into your own hands, being your own god, grabbing what is there while you can get it, is now described as basic wisdom:  improve yourself by whatever means you are able; get ahead regardless of the price, take care of me first.”[1]

            Psalm 131 paints a very different picture.  Instead of a know-it-all attitude, we have here someone who realizes that he doesn’t always have the answer.  Rather than trying to rule the roost or meddle where she has no business, we see a person who doesn’t demand to be the center of attention (see Peterson, v. 1).

            One lesson of the first verse is that some problems don’t have an immediate solution.  For some situations, there’s no way to just snap our fingers or to consult Dr. So-and-So’s five step method for resolving all dilemmas.  These things take time; we have to listen; we have to build trust.  That’s especially true for healing rifts, be they between family members or between nations.  Sledgehammers and flyswatters aren’t the same thing!

            Peterson’s translation of verse 2 doesn’t quite bring this out, but we have the image of “a weaned child with its mother” (NRSV).  This is a picture of contentment and dependence that also stresses the idea of growth.  A weaned child is deprived of what, at one time, was essential to life.  Still, for growth—for maturity—to continue, that seemingly fatal break with the past has to happen.

            Of course, there are all kinds of parallels with the spiritual life.  If we are to become mature Christians (and the mere passage of time doesn’t guarantee this), we have to let go of what, at one time, seemed to be essential to life.  We have to act on verse 3’s call to “hope in the Lord.”

            There’s one expression of humility that’s especially relevant for us in America today.  We get a glimpse of it in our gospel reading from Matthew 15, in which Jesus encounters a woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon, a region known as Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon).  What I’m talking about is the quality of not being easily offended, of getting over ourselves.

            Now having said that, I immediately have to issue a warning.  The Phoenician woman in our scripture lesson gets treated in a despicable fashion.  She falls at the feet of Jesus, begging him to heal her daughter.  And in her moment of painful desperation, what response does this frantic mother receive?  A racial slur.  She gets called a dog, the term that was commonly applied to Gentiles by Jews of that era.  Verse 26:  “It is not fair to take the children’s food [children being the Jewish nation] and throw it to the dogs” [Gentiles, the rest of the world!].

            The worst part, of course, is that it’s Jesus who’s presented as saying this.  I wonder, is it possible that Jesus, who rejected so many of his society’s assumptions, would hold on to this one—that Gentiles are somehow inferior?  Some have tried to soften the blow by saying that Jesus was comparing the woman to a pet dog, as opposed to a stray dog.  (How comforting!)  Or that maybe he was just thinking out loud before deciding to reject the idea.

            One commentator has suggested “that the saying was first coined, and attributed to Jesus, by a prophet who shared these chauvinistic views.”[2]  The understanding is that this reprehensible comment was later credited to Jesus when Matthew’s text was being put in its final form.  During the controversy over whether and how the gospel should be taken to the Gentiles, somebody wanted a quote from Jesus to make a point.  To me, that explanation of verse 26 seems very possible.

            But regardless of our opinions on how it got there, we’re still left with it.  And by the way, we’re still left with the Phoenician woman, who’s just been horribly insulted.  What will she do?  I do understand that a wild display of indignant anger might be unlikely, given the fact that their society’s subordination of women is so deeply ingrained.  She may not feel that she has the right to such a reaction.  (I also realize how risky it is to assume we can read other people’s minds…)

            Still, having said all that, will she allow the offensive remark to prevent her from seeking her daughter’s healing?  Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but will the Phoenician woman display humility or pride?  Her response to the response:  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables” (v. 27).  Again, this is possibly symbolic of the debate about the mission to the Gentiles.

            We see Jesus remark about her great faith, and he indeed heals her daughter.  Certainly the woman has faith in Jesus’ power to heal, but it seems that humility is also a big part of that faith.  Does Jesus, in any way, learn a lesson here?  Does the woman deliver a tacit rebuke to him?  The answer to that one might depend on whether we think that among the many reasons Christ came to earth, one was to model a teachable spirit.  That itself is a quality of humility, as Psalm 131 shows.

            I said earlier that humility can be called an unconscious virtue.  I also said it’s like the wind, very difficult to grab.  Humility is like the wind in another way; it finds its way into all kinds of places.  It blows around corners, into nooks and crannies.  The virtue of being humble is related to a lot of other strengths.  We remember what Paul says about love:  “It does not insist on its own way” (1 Co 13:5).  One can’t love without being humble.

            Just so I’m clear about this:  I’m not saying that humility means winking at injustice.  There’s another word for that.  It’s called collaboration.  Humility is what helps us get out of our own way.  It sets us free from the terrible demands the world puts on us, such as the demand that we take offense every time someone looks cross-eyed at us, to borrow a phrase from my mother!  The art of being humble empowers us to look foolish; if we’re afraid of looking foolish, we won’t get much done.

            I’ll finish with something that Thomas Merton once said on this point.  Those who are humble are “not afraid of failure.  In fact, [they] are not afraid of anything, even of [themselves], since perfect humility implies perfect confidence in the power of God, before Whom no other power has any meaning and for Whom there is no such thing as an obstacle.

            “Humility is the surest sign of strength.”[3]

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