Sunday, January 10, 2016

It’s the Humility

          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]

Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Psalm 104; Titus 2: 11-14, 3: 4-7; Luke 3: 15-16, 21-22




[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.