by the Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given October 7, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together this morning

To give thanks,

To make confession,

To be strengthened

In right living.

Come now, and let us worship together!

In talking about the spiritual gifts of humility this morning, I want to begin by speaking of an artist who was anything but humble, an artist who took the world by storm—the Russian ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev.  A new biography about him has just come out, by Julia Kavanaugh.[1]  According to Kavanaugh, Nureyev was not a nice man—and that would be an understatement—a brilliant dancer, yes, but a total narcissist.

On the plus side, Nureyev broke some rules that needed to be broken.  He defected from the Soviet Union and freed himself from the artistic constraints of Communism; he introduced a new, more androgynous style of dancing for males—modeled on female dancers—as opposed to the strong, solid look that was customary; and he had such a passion for the dance itself and brought such aliveness and sexual magnetism to the stage that he was frequently described as an animal—a kind of primeval force.  The height of his artistry came in his partnership with the great ballerina Margot Fontayne.  She was 42 and ready to retire when they met; he was 23.  He brought new life to her, however, and for the next decade nothing could touch the work they did together.  It was at this time that the general public discovered ballet, and people began lining up to buy tickets.  The pair would receive 20 or 25 curtain calls.  Were they lovers?  Some say yes, others no.  When you see the tapes of their work, at least on stage, yes, they were making love.

Nureyev was a beautiful, gifted creature, yes, but he believed that he himself was the source of all his giftedness and therefore it followed that others should bend to his every whim.  Sexually, he did what he wanted, with whom, at any time and place.  He repaid his earliest and most important teacher by having an affair with the man’s wife. 

Nureyev dropped ballerinas on the floor, he threw dinner plates, he screamed at Fontayne; he once tore his costume to shreds in front of 50 press photographers because he thought it made his legs look short.  He insisted that choreographers re-do classical ballets so that he could have more time on stage.  He hated to rehearse, so he would often show up just a few days before a performance to learn his part.  He regularly took as many as a hundred members of a ballet company to a restaurant and never paid a penny, nor even left a tip; as one of his older female followers, explained, “What Rudolf gave you was himself.”  The constant touring took its toll, and his body began to show it.  His life was harder, and he was lonely.  His sexual life became what he could pick up in bars or baths.

In 1984 he was diagnosed HIV positive—at this time he was the artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet.  By the time he left the company he was quite ill, and yet he would go wherever he was invited to dance—China, Japan, wherever—at one point he was dancing with a catheter inside his costume.  At times he would lurch through performances—he could not understand that he was dying.  At the time of his death, he had begun discussions with the mayor of St. Petersburg to open a ballet school in Russia.  He was 54.  A great artist—but a tragic figure—as a human being.

So this man who gave the world so much somehow could not move from that early narcissism, a way of being which characterizes many of us—perhaps all of us—when we are young and finding ourselves, to something more mature, spiritually speaking.  The word “humility” would not have much meaning to Nureyev, I expect; that would be for lesser beings, not a god like himself.

But the problem is that we are not gods, not any of us.  And when we think we are, we get in real trouble.  We humans have limits, and we need to recognize those limits.  Aging helps, and the inevitable losses that time brings.  Some orders of monks greet each other with the phrase “Memento mori,” or “Remember, you’re dying.”  That’s a little different from the ubiquitous “Have a nice day!” but the greeting is not designed to be morbid—it’s given to be enlivening.  It’s only when we are pushed up against our very human limits that we can understand that this day—this moment—is all we have.  We had better make it good. 

Humility is not a characteristic that is supported by our popular culture.  I mean, think about it.  We are supposed to compete, to win, to be the best.  All our children, as Garrison Keillor says, are “above average.”  And what is that scripture in Matthew 5 that is so difficult to understand?  “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”  The meek?  Who wants to be meek?  Today that word means “submissive, lacking in courage.”  And the meek certainly are not inheriting the world—nosirresir! 

But let’s go back to the original meaning of that word—the Greek might better be translated as gentle, respectful, patient.  It’s the opposite of boastful, arrogant, aggressive.  And listen to the next four verses: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.  Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”  What is that quality that is expressed here?  It’s an openness of heart, a longing for peace and goodness and reconciliation—not winning, not being the best, not having the most.  No wonder in our culture, which is an aggressive culture, with the prize going to the strongest, this scripture seems to be confusing, at best.

Humility makes us thankful.  You know, I was talking to one of our congregants—a man who has recently retired—and he just kept saying how lucky he has been.  He has had good health, no major traumas in the family, a fine education, financial resources, etc., etc.  He said, “You know, if all these good things come to us, it’s not because of our own virtue, it’s not as though we earned it, or deserved it—it’s just that we’re lucky,”  I guess the theological term for that might be blessed—we have been greatly blessed.

This is the opposite of one who considers himself a “self-made man”—who believes that he has what he has through his own superiority and hard work.  When I hear someone talk like this, I can’t help but think of the many people who work so much harder, who work at two or three low-paying, hard-scrabble jobs, and who can still barely keep body and soul together.  No—there is no such thing as a “self-made man or woman”—we are all needy beyond what we can ever imagine, radically dependent on a whole host of others, both past and present, who give us life.

Acknowledging this dependency connects us to other persons, and not just to those we know, but to those whom we will never know, who nevertheless sustain us through their labor.  We are also connected inevitably to the other creatures of the earth, to the wondrous multitude of beasts and growing things that this living earth belches forth so extravagantly.  You want to develop thankfulness?  Just go out into your backyard—pick up a seed, look at a fallen leaf, smell the rain on the grass, and wonder, “How can this beauty be?”

We have always been warned, have we not, about hubris, or overweening pride.  Our great literature—David in the Bible, Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s Macbeth—these classics show the mighty falling when they reach out beyond themselves, when they disregard their limits—or when they have what psychologists would call an “inflated ego.”

Now here’s where things get tricky—because you see, you have to construct a self, before you can let that self go.  As you grow into adulthood,  you have to try yourself out, you have to measure yourself against others, you have to judge and weigh and choose—in other words, you have to construct an ego--you have to become somebody before you can become nobody, or before you lose your ego-identification. 

This reminds me of a story—it seems that several Rabbis who were repenting in the synagogue during Yom Kippur.  They beating their breasts, and calling out, “I am nobody, I am nobody.”  Then a poor man dressed in ragged clothes came in off the street, and he too began beating his breast in repentence, saying, “I am nobody, I am nobody.”  At this point one Rabbi nudged another with his elbow and said, “Look who thinks he’s nobody.”

Ego awareness is a given--our social, even physical, survival depends upon this understanding of the self—that is, I am a person, I am this sort of person, and I have a self that I can depend on.  The spiritual journey, though, is a giving up of that ego-identification.  It is not, as some may believe, a journey toward perfection of self.  So one might say, you spend the first half of your life becoming somebody and the last half becoming nobody.[2] 

You see, your idea of yourself is constructed—a made-up story which came from your parents, from the culture.   If you are willing to acknowledge that story but not let it rule your life, your natural state is free to shine through, and that natural state is love.  Spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle has said, “The meek are the egoless.  They are those <who> have awakened to their true nature as consciousness . . . .  They live in <a> surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source.”[3]

I have to say now that if you have to become somebody before you can be nobody, this spiritual path is more difficult for those of us who’ve been told that we’re nobody.  What does being humble mean to a woman, who is constantly pictured in the media as a commodity, a woman who still gets less money for doing the same job as a man.  And what does being humble mean to an African American, who may have actually known relatives who were slaves?  It hasn’t been that long ago that we bought and sold human beings.  What does being humble mean to a gay man, who wants to move in a gentle way on this earth, but risks being attacked by men who can’t acknowledge their softer side?  What does being humble mean to a man without legs, to a mentally ill person, to a girl who has been sexually abused by her father?  Oh, here’s where the sermon gets a little more complicated, doesn’t it.

Some of us have false stories that we dance to—stories that tell us we are not good enough, stories that tell us that others are somebody, but we are not.  Those stories are lies.  Let me say that again.  These stories are lies, constructed by the culture and by less than healthy people who gave us these messages.  We have to give up these stories, which seem so—normal and so comfortable—and allow ourselves to hear a new song.  A loving community, like this church, can help.  Being with healthy people can help.  Being really heard is a good way to understand your own worth.  Going to that center where love resides, in prayer or meditation or however you do it, can help. 

When we go to that center, over and over again, we begin to find it easier to consider forgiveness.  We don’t exalt ourselves and deny our failings; we don’t find ourselves unworthy, either; we just find ourselves as we are, and we are OK.  We know that we want to become more loving, more compassionate, more generous—and to do that, we have to go to that hard place called forgiveness.  This is one of the gifts of humility.  We fall short, others fall short.  And we acknowledge that truth, and stand with it, and accept it, and forgive.

I recently saw a film that inspired me greatly, and I want to tell you about it—it’s called In the Shadow of the Moon, and it’s about the Apollo space program.  Do you know where you were, on July 21, 1969?  All of you who are old enough surely remember that night—crowded around our TV sets, we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon—amazing!  The Apollo space program came not out of humility, but out of intense competition—after all, the Russians had sent up Sputnik in 1957—fifty years ago this month--and we were way behind.  All of a sudden, our government wanted every child to be proficient in math and science, and we created NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

In this film we see these young astronauts as they were then, all wide-eyed and eager, and then we hear them being interviewed today as they look back on their experience.  Virtually all the test pilots in the Air Force applied for the moon mission.  They did this in spite of the fact that the early efforts to put a rocket into space were expensive disasters.  Time after time, NASA would spend millions of dollars to build a rocket, and then at lift off, it would tremble for a few seconds and blow up.  Only young men would think this was a great job to have.  Were the astronauts afraid?  Only one admits to it in the film.  Sometimes repression is a good thing. 

The humility was to come later, when they got to the moon.  The first of course was Neil Armstrong who said, as we all remember, “This is a small step for a man, this is a giant leap for mankind.”  He was known as the coolest and most reserved of the astronauts, a man of few words.  Most all of the astronauts had what you might call a spiritual experience from going to the moon.  They came back changed.  One of them talked about putting his thumb out and covering the whole earth with that thumb.  This gesture made him understand, he said, just how insignificant we are, in the scheme of things.  They entered the program with bravera, they returned with humility, with a keen desire to protect what they now saw was this little fragile ball called the earth. 

We can no longer go into the future with a sense of certainty—we never could, of course—but let us go forward with a sense of awe.  A sense of awe and a sense of reverence, a sense of our limitations—not to constrain us, not at all, but limitations which, when embraced, suggest possibility, opportunity.  Limitations which suggest that we need others of all faiths and persuasions to keep this good earth viable for generations to come.

As individuals we look back months, years, sometimes decades later, and we see the truth we couldn’t see at the time: one woman said recently to me, of her dying mother, “I never knew of the strength, of the resiliency, of my mother, until now.  I now see how I underestimated her all these years.”   We are constantly being given gifts, and we don’t know and can never know the source of those gifts.  “Who was that masked man?” anyway.

To live in humility, then, is to take the way of gentleness, of mercy, of kindness—but it is much more than that.  It is pries open the reluctant heart to allow forgiveness.  It keeps us from wasting time trying to prove we’re somebody.  It gives us a thankful heart and makes us available for a full-time mission of love.  You can’t ask for much more than that.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Creator God, who gives us life and breath, may we live every day, every hour, every moment in thankfulness.  In a world of rough and tumble, where getting and spending rule, help us to walk gently on the earth, help us to slow down, to be patient and kind.  Keep us from the pride that would separate us from others and from our own right action.  May we surrender ourselves to Love each and every day.  Amen.