What comes to mind when you think of humility? It’s the opposite of pride, right? Except its also the opposite of self doubt. Humility is acknowledgement of our weaknesses and our strengths. It is holding the balance between leading and serving. It is being only human and wonderfully human at the same time. It is holding in tension confidence and modesty.
Which is another way of saying I can’t really define humility…
I once spoke in church about humility and how Jesus shows us that. Using a passage in Philippians where Jesus is described as both human and divine, where it is described how he left divinity to become human and walk among us, I talked about how Jesus modelled what it would look like to be humble.
Jesus, The Word, The Creator, Omnipresent. He was born to Mary and had to learn to talk. He had to be spoon fed. He had to be shown how to nail two pieces of wood together. He had to walk around Galilee.
He gave up divine power to be obedient and to save us. (To clarify, he never stopped being divine, just like we can never stop being children of God – its who he was). And coming to earth, he isn’t born into wealth, power or priviledge, but to a young girl and a carpenter, in a back room at an inn where there wasn’t enough room. He was a refugee by the time he was 2. When he goes to be baptised, he waits in line just like everyone else.
God tears apart the heavens to claim Jesus as his son, and Jesus ‘celebrates’ by spending 40 days in the desert being tempted to use his identity as Son of God to make life easier. But he chooses not to. He chooses to trust God. He waits and doesn’t try to claim the power offered to him, or take the food to ease his pain, or test God to prove that he’s real. He chooses patience, faith and trust. He chooses to be human. He chooses to use his human voice to declare God’s words from the Old Testament, divine words. Because God is never silent, sometimes we have to choose to trust him like Jesus did.
And yet this man also answered the Pharisees questions with authority. He taught and people listened. He commanded respect. And he still knelt and washed his disciples feet. Leading and serving. Secure in who he was, comfortable to be himself without apology. Reaching out and healing with a touch or a word. Kneeling in the garden and crying out to God for respite and help. Strength and weakness. He served but never bowed down. He wasn’t better than the least of us, neither was he worse than the best of us.
I thought this level of humility was unattainable. Looking at the people around me, I see people modelling an extraordinary amount of love, or living with almost unbelievable amounts of faith and trust, but I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone who showed me that level of humility. Not someone perfect, but someone so secure of who they are in Christ that they take responsibility of mistakes. Someone who will take the credit where it is due and still point to God. Someone confident and yet modest.
And maybe to reach that level of reliance on God, that level of self-assurance and God-assurance, you need to be broken and put back together. Maybe you need to experience God’s grace in such a way that you only ever want to be grateful for what you have and point others to the person who gave it to you.
I’m doing a bad job of describing it. But I do know a person who has a level of humility I didn’t think was possible, and that I want to emulate. It’s not out of reach. Its not something only for Jesus.
True humility can acknowledge when it has done well without arrogance and when it hasn’t without beating itself up. True humility can build others up without fear of knocking self down. True humility gives credit and doesn’t seek attention.
Jesus is truly, wonderfully, humbly human, and if we choose it, we can be too.
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