One of the worst presents we ever got my mom for Christmas was to hire a housekeeper named Trudy. She would come every couple of weeks to dust, vacuum, and clean every little nook and cranny of the house.  However, it wasn’t long before I dreaded the day Trudy would come, because it meant that prior to her coming my brother and I would have to spend the entire day cleaning the house for the housekeeper!! I always wondered if it was that my mother couldn't let go of her pride and risk having the housekeeper see us all as we really were, beds unmade, clothes lying around, dishes unwashed.  Why was it so important that the housekeeper see us, not as we were, but as something other than who we really were?  

You see I think we all want to be able to take pride in what we do and that we all can appreciate the pride that others take in doing well.  It's good for our self-esteem.  But, on the other hand you and I both know people whose pride ends up being boastful or arrogant.  We also have probably experienced times in which our own pride has been used to challenge us.  In high school somebody bet me that I couldn’t lift a music stand over my head 200 times.  Well just try and tell me that I can’t do something and well you know.  I pridefully admit to you today that I did lift that music stand over my head 200 times, but I couldn’t move my arm after that for the next three days.  I’m also reminded of a realtor that used to close many sales just by using the simple phrase, “Let me show you a few homes your neighbors said that you could not afford!” Using these kind of definitions it’s easy to see how pride is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins.  But, did you know that it’s listed as the most deadly of those seven because it is at the root of the other six…that it’s condemned in the Bible more frequently than all of the other six combined… that it’s condemned more than any of the Ten Commandments.  More than stealing, more than adultery, more than idolatry, and even more than killing.  So let’s try to get a handle on this thing called pride and what the early understanding of what it was.          

First of all, let me suggest to you that most human beings are really bad at two things: the first thing is that we are all pretty bad at loving other people, however, the second thing is that we are even worse at letting ourselves be loved.  Today I’m going to refer to pride in light of this second weakness.  In that pride can be seen in the things we do or the defense mechanisms we use that keep us from allowing ourselves to be loved.  For example, pride convinces us to show off our strengths and downplay our weaknesses.  It causes us to have a clouded vision of ourselves.  The actual word pride means to be swollen or puffed up.  Now humility, which is the virtue or remedy to pride, is also a complicated term.  Sometimes we give it a negative connotation due to its association with humiliation or being humble. Let’s be clear that humility has nothing to do with disliking ourselves or thinking poorly of ourselves.  It is the center point between vanity and self-deprecation.  Humility is the ability to see ourselves as God sees us. 

In the scripture reading today we start with Genesis in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve are living in paradise they are naked and they are not ashamed.  They see each other as God sees them.  They are totally vulnerable to each other and yet they are totally comfortable with it.  Then the serpent enters the scene, Adam and Eve eat the fruit and the scripture reads…and they knew that they were naked.  What happens next?  They sow fig leaves together and make loincloths for themselves and they hide themselves from God.  Now it’s important to understand that the Hebrew word for naked also means vulnerable. So by eating this fruit, the fall as theologians have referred to it throughout the centuries, is the process not only from moving from paradise to being cast out of the garden, but it also is the process of moving from being comfortable with our own vulnerability to trying to cover it up and hide it.   

So the point is that the sin of pride is an act that refuses to take the risk of vulnerability.  We will not allow ourselves to be seen as we are…we cover up and hide our vulnerabilities because we try to become like the perfect icons our culture lifts up.  We strive to be successful, powerful, and rich.  We are so afraid of failure and not fitting into the image of what our culture holds so near and dear that we rarely talk about our weaknesses.  What’s the old adage?  If at first you don’t succeed?  How does it go?  No, our culture says if at first you don’t succeed pretend like you weren’t really trying, act as if it never happened, go try something else, but certainly don’t admit it or let others see your failure.   So we go through life hiding our vulnerabilities, puffing ourselves up with pride and in doing so we don’t allow ourselves to be loved because we actually keep people from getting to close to us. Otherwise they might see us for who we really are and then they would see our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities. 

So what does the church have to offer for those of us who struggle with pride?  Unfortunately, at times within the history of the church it has been legalistic and rigid in its religiosity.  And during these eras the church actually compounded the issue of pride.  And some of us may have even experienced a religion or church that was merely a system of rules and regulations.  That’s when the church ends up spending all of its time enforcing rules, standing in judgment and instilling in its peoples the fear of making mistakes.  And then the people become like poorly taught piano students that never really learn how to play because their main concern is not about letting the music flow through them or living a life of harmony and melodies, but rather the main concern becomes avoiding some minor mistake that we will be judged for. 

However, when the church is at its best it lifts up a message of forgiveness, of love, and of grace.  The passage in Philippians reads…let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  What is God’s ultimate solution to our pride? It’s God humility. The incarnation is God’s way of illustrating this. The messiah didn’t come as a warrior king…he came as a babe in a manger, as a peasant from the sticks, as a man who dined with the outcasts and the disenfranchised, as one who broke the rules and crossed cultural boundaries, and as one who lived a life of vulnerability.  He was spat upon, cursed at, whipped, mocked, stabbed, and crucified.  Jesus was not some invincible, all-powerful warrior, or conquering messiah.  No Jesus was a vulnerable and humble illustration that totally redefined power.  God’s remedy for our pride is to model what it looks like to be totally vulnerable.  God was willing to be so vulnerable that God even allowed Godself to be killed. 

Well this might be difficult to grasp so let me try to come at it from a different angle.  Have any of you ever tried to really love someone that was full of pride or so self-absorbed that that it seemed as if the person was wearing a bullet-proof vest and that all of your attempts to love them were the bullets that kept careening off of their vest?  Now have any of you ever tried to keep loving that prideful person even when it meant that in order to keep loving them you were humiliated in the process. In youth ministry we call this phrase adolescence maximus.    I suggest to you that we do the same thing to God.  We talk are way out of the spiritual life by refusing to come to God as we are.  Instead we decide to wait until we are ready to come to God as we aren’t.  We decide that the way we lived yesterday, or last month or last year makes us damaged goods and that until we start living right then we’re not “God Material.”  Some of us believe that unless we clean house for the housekeeper then Jesus will not have anything to do with us.  But the exact opposite is true.  According to the New Testament, Jesus is attracted to the unattractive.  He prefers the lost ones over the found ones, the losers over the winners, the messy instead of the unmessy, and the broken instead of the whole.  

Let’s face it things are scary right now, the war has begun, the economy is struggling, and we are all somewhat afraid. It would be so easy if we all just turned inward and hid our vulnerabilities.  If we just stayed in our homes, stocked up on food and water, and kept our plastic and duct tape nearby.  But, the way of salvation, the way of vulnerability, and the way of the Christian is that of humility.

In the face of great events, small actions can seem useless.  But we who stand in the shadow of the cross must always see beyond the cross to Easter morning.  So in these days ahead, let us embrace our vulnerability by reaching out to our brothers and sisters, by reaching out to neighbors and strangers alike, and by doing the small things that will make a big difference. So what can we do in these days ahead?

*We can give support to the families who are struggling with the worry of having sent a husband or a son or a daughter or wife to serve as a soldier.

* We can provide prayers and messages from back home to the soldiers who have gone away.

* We can give stability and security to children who hear enough to be afraid or even just sense the fear around them.

* We can reach out to a stranger or to someone who is lonely.

* We can, just by our choice of words, refuse to dehumanize those we call "enemy".

* We can pray.  Some will pray for the soldiers, some for the innocents who will suffer, some for the leaders who must make the difficult decisions.  Some will pray for peace, some for victory, and some for miracles.

So let us go forth from this place and continue to live as people of the cross-which is to say, as people of the resurrection.  Called by God, loved by God, forgiven by God, and sent out by God to love one another and to be vulnerable.