Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let's pray.
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.
Today. Passage from Old Testament Proverbs, chapter 16, verse 18 through 20.
Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before fall.
It is better to be of a lowly spirit among the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.
Those who are attentive to a matter will prosper, and happy are those who trust in the Lord.
From the New Testament, First Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 2631.
Consider your own called brothers and sisters.
Not many of you were wise by human standards.
Not many were powerful.
Not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is law and despised in the world. Things that are not to abolish, things that are so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption in order that, as it is written, let the one who boasts boasts in the Lord.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: The American author Daniel Mendelsohn once made this famous observation.
The three most written about subjects of all time, he wrote, are Jesus, the Civil War and the Titanic.
Jesus, the Civil War, and the Titanic. Now, the first of those I totally get. You know, I found the subject of Jesus fascinating since I was a child. It's still in my book, the most fascinating subject out there. The second. The Civil War had long confused me. Why? Why the fascination? But after spending a lot of time with that guy, Kent Chesney, and Tom McGinnis and others in this congregation, and reading some of the books on the Civil War with them. Okay, I get it. It's pretty dang interesting. But the Titanic?
Why has so much been written about that boat?
Well, maybe, just maybe, the colossal interest in the subject of that historic ocean liner is that it provides an unforgettable object lesson, a kind of historical parable illustrating the proverb we read today. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
What better metaphor could there be for hubris for building something of purportedly indestructible and unsinkable power, yet failing to recognize that invention's limitations, failing to recognize human limitations in the face of higher powers?
Did you know, 14 years before the Titanic struck an iceberg on April of 1912. A tale of precise, precisely the kind of calamity that would befall the Titanic was told in fiction 14 years before Titanic set off.
The novella Futility, also called the Wreck of the Titan, was published in 1898 and it told the fictional story of a great ocean liner, the Titan. It was, according to this novella, the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men of unsinkable, indestructible.
As Robertson tells the story, the ship speeds along in dangerous conditions, heedless of the risks. And then comes the terrifying cry of ice ahead.
As Robertson wrote In his novel, 75,000 tons rushing through the fog at the rate of 50ft per second had hurled itself at an iceberg. The holding down bolts of 12 boilers and three triple expansion engines unintended to hold such weights from a perpendicular flooring snapped. And down through a maze of ladders, gratings and fore and aft bulkheads came these giant masses of steel and iron puncturing the sides of the ship. The roar of escaping steam and the bee like buzzing of nearly 3,000 human voices raised in agonized screams and callings. A solid pyramid like hummock of ice left to starboard 14 years earlier.
The story was told before it even happened.
It was all about the vanity of human striving and the futility of human effort in a world ruled by powers far greater than human beings. That was the story Robertson told and it was written 14 years before that Titanic went down. It was as if Robertson wanted to warn people of his time. Hey, be careful of this new technology you have. Be careful of being too confident in it. Have some humility for if you don't, if you go hurtling forward at speeds beyond what are safe to go, guess what? You might just hit an iceberg. So what do you think applicable to AI today? Perhaps the Titanic's also become a parable of the destructive power of pride.
When it comes to class divisions, the Titanic notoriously had three levels, each assigned to a different social and economic class. Of those in the opulent first class section, this is a photo of that section, the top tier, free to roam about the deck. Outside, more than 60% of passengers survived that disaster.
Of those in third class, here's a photo of the third class dining hall. The they received no warning and had to navigate the labyrinthian complex of stairs and passageways to make it up to the lifeboats. Less than 25% of third class passengers survived.
And so the sinking of the Titanic proved a tale not just of human overconfidence in their achievements, but also one of shame when it came to class division, with some enjoying privileges to the detriment, even to the death of those placed beneath them.
As Proverbs 16 continues. Better to be of a lowly spirit among the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud. And in the Titanic's case, better to be of a lowly spirit than to know that your proud position was at the detriment and great harm and high risk of others.
Pride goes before destruction, we read in Proverbs in a haughty spirit before a fall.
Ah, the many hazards of putting yourself and your achievements above others, of glorifying yourself or one particular group above others and failing to recognize the value of others, those around you, those in the boat with you.
Oh, the terrifying risks of failing to recognize powers above and beyond you, like nature or God.
No wonder the story of the Titanic has been written about more than any other subject, other than maybe the civil war and Jesus.
In today's passage from Proverbs, the word translated as pride in today's text in the original Hebrew is Gaon. Gaon, it means majesty, glory or exaltation. Majesty, glory or exultation. And when it's applied to God in the Hebrew scriptures, it's a good thing. It's appropriate we read God's people in the Hebrew Scriptures ascribing glory, Gaon to God, and that's a good thing. But when gaon refers instead to a person placing themselves in an exalted position or glorifying themselves, and so failing to see the equal dignity and value of others, especially the poor and vulnerable, then it is destructive and deadly. Gaon, we read in Scripture, or to glorify ourselves such that we're blind to the far surpassing glory and greatness of God, that too is deeply problematic, inappropriate and destructive. Gaon, you may have heard the old riddle, right? What's the difference between you and God?
You know what it is?
God doesn't think God is you.
Ga'. On.
When humans are ascribing it to themselves and their achievements and not to God. It's often translated in your Pew Bible as pride, but I prefer an older translation. Not because it's archaic sounding, though that's pretty cool. It's, isn't it? Melissa, as a medievalist, if it sounds sort of old and ancient, that's kind of nice. But I also like it for another reason. I think it gets at the truth of this word Gaon. The word is vainglory, vain glory.
And it what I Like about it is pride can actually be, well, positive, right? It can have negative connotations, but positive too. Today, especially when it comes to human worth.
We're in Pride Month, right? A tradition that dates back to the 1970s and to a gay liberation protest that took place in Washington, D.C. pride Month aims to lift up the dignity, self worth and full humanity of LGBTQIA persons, not above others, but to affirm their full, full humanity alongside others, when too often in both secular and religious circles they've suffered discrimination or denigration.
Black pride is a term that's been used historically to lift up the dignity, self worth and full humanity of African Americans in the face of racism. This Friday is Juneteenth, a celebration of black liberation dating back to that day in 1865 that Union soldiers enforced the Emancipation Proclamation.
The word pride can connote a healthy sense of dignity and self worth.
And since Gaon, when it's applied to humans, so often implies a kind of harmful self exaltation, self glorification, or the stratification of some being placed above others in dignity and worth, I find vainglory. Vainglory a more helpful translation of Gaon than pride.
Vainglory connotes a particular kind of pride, one characterized by an inflated sense of self worth and superiority. It's the excessive desire for recognition and admiration, often resulting in the devaluation of others.
Augustine of Hippo, a 5th century church leader and theologian, reflected in quite candid language of his own journey when it comes to vain glory. He reflects on this in his work the Confessions. And he tells of a time in particular, back in childhood, when he and some friends would steal pears from a neighbor who was a farmer. And reflecting back, he noted that they didn't eat these pears. They would throw them to the pigs.
They didn't want them. There was no purpose in getting them. Why would he break the commandment thou shalt not steal with childhood friends to steal pears and so harm a neighbor? And what he realized was that it was a desire for approval, for approval from his peers, for a kind of glory that was vain. For it meant placing that desire for approval above what God intended for him, above God's glorious purposes for him and for his neighbor, that farmer. Augustine noted how that same desire for approval then drove him to excel in school and to become an accomplished rhetorician. But even then, the concern for applause and winning was what consumed him, not for truth and goodness. And that approval he came to realize that he craved. That was vainglory.
Fool's gold chasing the wind.
He would then famously write that it was like there were two cities out there, two cities formed by two loves. There was the earthly love of self to the very point of contempt of God, so consumed was it with elevating the self. And then there was the heavenly love of God. The former, in a word, glorifies in itself. The latter glorifies in the Lord. The one seeks glory from human beings, but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its own head in its own glory. The other says to its God, thou art my glory and the lifter of mine head.
There's a healthy kind of pride we want to foster in our children and in ourselves and in those who've gotten a message especially that they are of less worth, dignity or value than others. Many graduation speeches that just took place or will took place will encourage graduates to be proud of what they've done. And they should be right.
But when that pride becomes a lust for superiority over others, it is vain glory. When pride blinds us to our shortcomings in sin, or to the dignity and value of others, or to God's glory, then it is vain glory.
Well, in Today's passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul tries to convince the believers in Corinth to attribute glory and majesty and excellence where it belongs, to remember, he tells them now, before coming together as a church in Christ, not many of you were powerful or of noble birth or deemed wise by human standards, but God has done amazing things through you, he notes, lifting up the lowly to the shame of the proud.
Your source of life is Christ Jesus, paul writes, who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. It's through God. Work in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit that you're forgiven of sin, that you're given new life in the Spirit, that you've been reconciled with God in Christ. We saw God's goodness and righteousness and justice and love shining.
We saw God's very glory shining in Christ, and we've known the real thing. You don't want to settle for fool's gold for false or vain glory. If you want to boast, Paul writes, boast in the real thing. Boast in what God has done for you in Christ.
Boast in Jesus. Boast in the glory of God at work in you and your community and out there in the world.
Christ, who's the head of the church, the cornerstone in him, and not your own glory. You stand and stand secure.
Well, this is the first sermon in a series on the seven deadly vices or sins and the opposite of those vices or sins. I got the idea for this sermon series from a book Pam King recommended to me. It's a book by Elizabeth Oldfield entitled Fully Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Time.
And it's a book I recommend to you all.
In this book, Oldfield looks at each of the seven deadly sins or seven deadly vices and the virtues or good things that represent the God given alternatives to these vices.
And when it comes to vainglory or excessive and inappropriate pride, Oldfield names the opposite as beloved community.
And I think she's right on vainglory. It's finally isolating, alienating. It distances ourselves from God and from one another as our neighbors by placing ourselves above or beyond others.
And it blinds us to the relationships that form us, the relationships with our neighbors and the God who created all things. Vainglory blinds us to the gift we've received in reconciliation in Christ. All persons equally valued and beloved in God's eyes and knit together as one through Christ our head, one church spread around the world.
Excessive self regard keeps us from seeing that glorious truth.
Well, let me close with two ways that Oldfield describes as kind of disciplines for her in avoiding the temptations of vainglory and clinging inst to beloved community. She calls them spiritual practices that help her recognize the gifts God has given her, but that her own need for judging others, being superior to others can blind her to.
The first way that she lives out this discipline of community is in an intentional community she's formed in London.
She and her husband and another couple from their church some years ago made the bold decision to actually share an apartment, which they now own, or a flat, you would say, if you're speaking UK English.
They share a mortgage together. Two couples, both with kids, they share life together. They have weekly family meetings that aren't just for their individual nuclear families, but for the community. And they make decisions together. They pool their finances and resources and decide together how they will use thee. She describes it as at times agonizing because it reminds her how much all of us can kind of be petty, how much we can want our own way.
But she says it's a helpful discipline in alerting her to how vainglory is at work in her and also receiving the blessing of life with others in that kind of intentional community.
I find those kind of experiments thought provoking and encouraging.
Life in Christ together.
But the second way that Oldfield talks about living out this discipline of God given community and thus trying to daily name and repent of vainglory is in church, she writes unabashedly, quote, I love church.
People don't say this much. The stories of institutional failure, hypocrisy and disappointment are real and well known at a national institutional level. Most church bodies are almost laughably disappointed, despite some good people's best efforts.
It's true in the Presbyterian Church usa. I don't know about other denominations.
Throughout history, they too often have been far worse than that, she writes, complicit in deep injustices, from slavery to colonialism to child abuse. If it weren't so tragic, it might be funny. Church can hurt us, she writes of leaving a much beloved congregation because of a catastrophic relational breakdown between leaders.
That congregation was what first made her and her husband want to commit to that city, and then she saw that church just fall apart, implode before her eyes.
But even that congregation, she writes, provided her with so much a decade of solidarity and growth and tender care. They met every week with people different from them, she and her husband did, but from whom they felt support and could support in turn.
A fixed point in the week, she writes. When you see the same people without having to schedule, it acts as the trellis for relationships.
Ideals need structure. They need a critical mass of committed people who can be broadly relied on, who are all willingly being formed by the same things, repeatedly turning their attention in the same direction.
Oldfield notes how hard such spaces are becoming to have and sustain today, and I think she's right on. But how much we need them, how much our children need such spaces, she says of the congregation she's part of now. It's messy and sometimes embarrassingly theologically confused and absolutely beautiful.
Sometimes, she writes, I sit there and critique it, wincing at the clangor in the prayers or the tone deaf comments in the sermon. But that just disconnects me. I can't be part of it when I'm feeling superior, when I let my vainglory be the lens through which I see it, I've concluded all these irritating things are part of the deal.
All this mess is the compost on which community grows, and it's not made in my image to my design, thank God.
Being a part of a local congregation is my weekly dose of pride. Prevention medicine. It reminds me I am interconnected, interdependent. The prize of overcoming my judgy nature is feeling part of this joyful, semi competent group of people.
It's rare, she writes, and strange and fragile and difficult, but it's a pearl of great price.
Friends, may we together know not the fool's gold of vainglory, but the real thing. God's glory in our midst. God's glory in one another.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
