When I was a little boy,
I remember my father taking me to Henry’s Fine Foods, a family-owned deli in my
hometown of Verona. Every once in a
while we’d run into a man at Henry’s who seemed to know everyone, my father
included. He was a short, stocky,
self-deprecating man of obvious Italian-American descent - not an uncommon look in a town called Verona. He always smiled, said hello and asked how we
were as he bought his morning cup of coffee.
As I grew in age and wisdom, I came to realize that that little man was
none other than Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. As a young boy, I didn’t know who Yogi Berra
was, but he made a lasting impression on me anyway. What stood out to me about Yogi Berra so many
years ago is the same thing that stands out about Jesus in today’s Gospel. It’s the humility.
At first glance, today’s
readings seem to emphasize the stark contrast between divinity and
humanity. Our first reading and our
psalm set the stage with magnificent images of the awesome power of God, while Saint
Paul, in our second reading, reminds us of the simple, devout life that God
calls us to. In our Gospel, John the
Baptist contrasts his own lowliness with one who’s coming who’s mightier than
he. And then something strange
happens. In Jesus, God’s power and might
doesn’t stand in contrast with human lowliness. When the mighty one comes, he humbly presents
himself to John for baptism. In Jesus, God’s
power and might is expressed perfectly through humility.
Much ink has been
spilled over the centuries trying to figure out why Jesus would need to be
baptized. He’s the Messiah, the sinless
Son of God. But rather than talk about why Jesus is seeking baptism, I’d like
to focus on what Jesus is doing. “For
Jesus, the emergence of John was God’s call to action; and his first step was
to identify himself with the people
in their search for God.”[1] In other words, in launching his earthly
ministry, Jesus’ first step wasn’t to announce his divinity, but to declare his
humanity. As Saint Paul said, Jesus “emptied
himself . . . coming in human likeness; and found in human appearance, he
humbled himself.” (Philippians 2: 7-8) Jesus
is a model of humility, and as the Yogi-ism goes, “You can observe a lot by watching.”[2] By presenting himself for baptism, Jesus humbly
acknowledges that he “could not have done what he did apart from God’s
empowerment and blessing.”[3] By presenting himself for baptism, Jesus teaches
us that our mission in life, the mission we assume in baptism, begins with
humility.
Baptism, then, can be understood as God’s gift to the
humble. As Saint Gregory of Nazianzus explained,
“Baptism is God’s beautiful and magnificent gift. . . . It’s called a gift because it’s conferred on
those who bring nothing of their own.”[4]
And what does baptism do for us? It makes us nothing less than sons and
daughters of God. We bring nothing to
the baptismal font that God needs, and yet we leave it as God’s beloved sons
and daughters empowered with all the grace we need to carry out our baptismal
mission as priest, prophet and king. If
that’s not humbling, I don’t know what is.
The call to live our baptismal mission with humility may
not seem so easy in a world that exalts the high, the mighty, the wealthy and the
beautiful. I’ll admit that humility’s
not my strongest virtue. I seem to live more by the words of Ted
Turner: “If I only had a little humility,
I’d be perfect.”[5] It seems that we “possess[] two very
different kinds of life: [our] real life
and the imaginary one in which [we] live[] in [our] own mind or in the opinion
of others. We labor unceasingly to
embellish and preserve our imaginary existence, and we neglect the real one.”[6]
But real success isn’t measured in
terms of status, wealth, or even beauty.
As a certain successful baseball player once said, “I’m ugly. So what?
I never saw anyone hit with his face.”[7] Real success in life is all about being
authentically human, living simply and humbly as the real person that God
created us to be. Jesus calls us to be
humble because “It is human to be humble.”[8]
It’s no coincidence that the words “human” and
“humility” are derived from the same Latin root. Humus,
meaning dirt, reminds us that God formed man “out of the dust of the
ground.” (Genesis 2:7) To be humble, then, we must heed the ominous
words that we hear every year on Ash Wednesday:
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Humility reminds us that we’re not God; we’re
lowly creatures. Humility reminds us
that God doesn’t need us, but he
loves us anyway. Jesus calls us to be
humble because humility “creates in us a capacity for the closest possible
intimacy with God.”[9] The more we humbly empty ourselves of ego and
pride, the closer we become with the one who humbled himself to share in our
humanity, and the more we’re filled with his love and divinity. Just think of the humblest people you
know. I’ll bet God’s love shines right
through them, doesn’t it? That’s what we
see in Jesus, and that’s what I saw so many years ago in Yogi Berra.
Much later in my life, I asked my father how he knew
Yogi Berra. He smiled and said, “I didn’t.” It seems that Yogi Berra was a humble man who
treated everyone like a friend he’d known all his life. The testimonials that followed his death last
September attest to the fact that what friends and family remember most about Yogi
Berra isn’t his illustrious baseball career, but his desire to remain one of
us. Yogi Berra never forgot the secret
to real success in life. To borrow his words,
“It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”[10]
[1]
William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke
(Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) at 45.
[2]
Yogi Berra.
[3]R.
Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” The
New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1995) at 92.
[4]
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, 40,
3-4: PG 36, 361C.
[5]
Fizra Pirani, “Happy 77th Birthday, Ted Turner: 13 Things You May Not Know about the Media
Mogul,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
November 19, 2015, http://www.myajc.com/news/entertainment/celebrity-news/happy-76th-birthday-ted-turner/npQtn/.
[6]
Raniero Cantalamessa, Life in
Christ: The Spiritual Message of the Letter
to the Romans (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1990) at 165.
[7]
Yogi Berra.
[8]
Cantalamessa.
[9]
Monica Baldwin, I Leap Over the
Wall: A Return to the World after Twenty-eight
Years in a Convent.
[10]
Yogi Berra.
