Jesus’ listeners would certainly have known about King Solomon. Solomon the wise. The prosperous. The builder of the first temple. Solomon the son of David. By Jesus’ day, the royal courts of David and Solomon were yearned for and idealized. All was glorious back in their days, the story went.
Scripture does in fact tell us that Solomon began his reign with a good spirit and in good standing with God. He started his days on the throne by earnestly and humbly seeking wisdom. He fulfilled his father David’s dream of building a temple, a home for God among the people of Israel. In today’s scripture, Solomon has just finished building and dedicating the temple. God responds afterwards, in a private conversation. The Holy One’s words remind Solomon of what happens when people stray from the ways of covenant, the ways of faith and love for God. But the benefits of humility among the people also become clear: they will know forgiveness of sin and “heal the land” (v 14) if they humble themselves.
A commitment to wise and humble leadership did not last long for Solomon, though. Nor did humility find rich ground among the people of Israel. Eventually Solomon fell out of favor with God. The nation suffered. Later kings tried to make things right, but the nation fell entirely apart and found itself defeated militarily and exiled in Babylon. The temple Solomon built was destroyed.
Jesus’ listeners would have known all that. So when Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (or as several translations put it, “Blessed are the humble)” they might have paused for a moment. The people longed for the remembered glory days of David and Solomon, days of wealth and military prowess and earthly power. Jesus advised them to set their hearts toward something different: the kingdom of heaven.
Two thousand years later, those words remain as disorienting and opaque for us as they did for Jesus’ first listeners. Our history, like the Israelites’ history, clearly demonstrates the price of hubris and the lack of genuine humility. And humility is probably considered less of a virtue now than it was in the days of Jesus’ ministry among us.
Our collective dismissal of humility may spring in part from a poor understanding of it. We may understand humility as a directive to denigrate our efforts, to continuously insist that our efforts and creations (or ourselves, even) have very little worth. To never accept a compliment or value an achievement.
Humility does not mean any of that. We are each special and talented and beloved and wonderful. Humility recognizes that. Each of us has gifts and shortcomings. Humility recognizes that. The trick is to be appreciative of our gifts and compassionately honest about our flaws. And to do the same with others. And to acknowledge our interdependence. We are inextricably dependent upon others and upon the world around us. There is no such thing as a “self-made” person. Humility recognizes that. There is no such thing as human separation from nature. Humility recognizes that.
Even in Solomon’s day, God pointed out that living in humility would heal the land.
And I’d like to suggest that healing the land is a vital part of living in the kingdom of God. Humbly living together in shalom, harmony and right relationship requires that we concern ourselves with the earth and all its inhabitants. Requires that we pay attention. Live in awe. Remember our interconnection and interdependence upon everything.
We are part of a circle of life, not at the top of a pyramid. My impression is that Christine Parks made the same point when she spoke here during sabbatical. There is a huge difference between human ego-centrism (with humans at the top of the heap) and eco-centrism (where we are included in an interrelated circle of beings). All beings are in a circle, all beings are sustained by the breath and blessings of God (Rienstra, Refugia, 196). “The Bible is full of passages…where God promises a redemption that includes, in the same divine breath, justice among humans and rejoicing among the hills and trees. Shalom weaves it all together,” says Debra Rienstra (199).
And that shalom, that reign of God, asks for humility among us. We are special and talented and beloved and gifted. But so is everything else. That is a hard pill to swallow for many of us. To think that we rely upon a few inches of dirt and the bugs that live there is not something we learned in Sunday school. To think that we depend upon phytoplankton skimming across water surfaces is not something we learned in Sunday school. To think that we must tend to the well-being of the plants and animals around us and honor them as carriers of divine breath is not something we learned in Sunday school.
But all of life as we know it depends upon us humbling ourselves, reframing our relationships with the more-than-human world and tending to it as best we can. We are then forgiven and the land will heal. Then we begin to create the kingdom of God, the reign of shalom.
Such humbling of ourselves may also mean that we begin small, that we bring a focus to dreams that are within our grasp. That we tend to the immediate in trust that its impact can spread and grow. That we nurture refugia: small places of thriving in a precarious landscape, like Ethiopian church forests in the midst of bare, dusty expanses. Like pockets of open hospitality in a world obsessed with property and borders. Like encouraging awe and regarding holy presence in the world.
We stand at a pivot point in our lives individually and collectively. Just as Solomon did. Just as Jesus’ first listeners did. The world is in crisis. The earth and all its creatures demand our care. The spiritual need for true humility persists powerfully among us. The need to act in harmony with God’s reign from a posture of humility persists powerfully among us. May we, humbly, be forgiven and heal the land. And grow the reign of God.
May it be so.
-Rev. Ruth Moerdyk
Scripture: 2 Chronicles 7:11-14; Matthew 5:3