Gratitude
for the Privilege of Humility
Reflections
on Philippians 2.1-13
RCL Proper 26A
1 October 2017
Saint
Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
In 1831 a child was born to Jewish
parents in Lithuania. His name was
Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky. As a
young man he travelled to Germany to study to become a rabbi, but the future
that he and his family imagined for him did not come to pass. In Germany Schereschewsky was given a copy of
the New Testament in Hebrew which he read and became convinced that Jesus was
indeed the Messiah promised to the Jewish people. From Germany Schereschewsky emigrated to the
United States where he eventually studied for ordination to the priesthood in
the Episcopal Church.
He volunteered for mission work in
China and arrived in Shanghai with the American missionary bishop for China in
December of 1859. Schereschewski was a
gifted linguist and within two years began his life-long project of translating
the Bible into various dialects of the Chinese language. His commitment to this ministry led to his
becoming Bishop of Shanghai in 1877. In
1879 he founded Saint John’s College. Alumni
of that College were among the donors who created Saint John’s College on the
campus of the University of British Columbia some one hundred and twenty-five
years later.
But Schereschewsky was plagued with ill
health. He resigned as bishop in 1883
and eventually was so paralyzed in body that he spent the last twenty-five
years of his life able only to use two fingers.
With those two fingers he completed an amazing amount of work before his
death in Tokyo in 1906.
Four years before his death a visitor
remarked that it must have very hard to spend so many years with such limited
capacities. Schereschewski responded, “I
have sat in this chair for over twenty years.
It seemed very hard at first. But
God knew best. He kept for the work for
which I am best fitted.” From time to time over the last thirty-six years I
have found myself coming back again and again to this witness to faithful humility.
As I have mentioned before, we live in
a society where so many public figures seem engaged in a constant search for
privilege and are plagued by a debilitating sense of entitlement. But this search for privilege and sense of
entitlement is not to be ours, the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. Ours is a path of gratitude for the privilege
of humility in the face of God’s self-giving.
In one of the earliest reflections on
what it means for Christians to say that ‘when you meet Jesus of Nazareth, you
meet God,’ Paul writes to the fledgling Christian community in Philippi to tell
them that the key to unity is humility.
‘If our Lord Jesus could shed all the prerogatives and privileges of
being God’s Beloved in order to unite us with God in love,’ Paul says, ‘then
shall we not also imitate Jesus’ humility in our loving service of one
another?’
Humility does not mean denying one’s
gifts or pretending that one has no skills or abilities. That is false humility. True humility is found when each one of us
gives thanks for and uses the gifts God has given and when each one of us gives
thank for and accepts the gifts God has given to other members of the
community. True humility has more in
common with a symphony orchestra where the beauty and power of music is only
realized by the attentive cooperation of each member of the orchestra to her or
his companions sitting next to them or sitting in another section. Even soloists depend upon the other members
of the orchestra for their unique contribution to be heard and cherished.
True humility recognizes that our goal
is unity that emerges from the harmonious coming together of the distinct
gifts, the distinct voices, the distinct experiences, the distinct insights
that are present within the community.
Unity is not afraid of the diversity of human experience. Humility can be a privilege because it frees
us from being someone we are not in order to be more fully the person we
are. Humility empowers our gratitude
because we can give thanks that we are members of a gifted community that seeks
to ensure that all God’s people shall be free and enjoy the dignity of the
children of God.
The history of the Christian movement
is a series of choices made by various communities over the centuries to follow
the exhortation of Paul to do nothing ‘from selfish ambition or conceit, but
humility to regard others as better than yourselves’, looking ‘not to [our] own
interests, but to the interests of others’. (Philippians 2.3-4, NRSV). Each of these choices was the choice to make
room and to create a space in which the ‘other’, whoever the ‘other’ might be,
could work out their salvation, their discovery of wholeness, with awe for the
love of God and with uncertainty as to where such love might lead them.
But sharing in God’s work of creating
space for others is rooted in the day to day choices of communities such as
ours at Saint Faith’s. Since the end of
the summer we have been engaged in various conversations to discern what our
gifts as a community are and how best to use those gifts in taking care of the
neighbourhood God has given us to tend.
Just last Saturday members of the Parish, Church Committee and Trustees
spent time identifying what our ministry priorities might be for the next three
years. Although we are no so compromised
as Bishop Schereschewski was in our freedom of movement, we have been
challenged to discern what we do well and how we can build on these strengths.
May we find joy in knowing what our
gifts are and how we might use them in the work we are best fitted to
undertake. May God give us the grace to
make room and create spaces in which we and all God’s children may discover our
true identities and reclaim our rightful minds.
If with two fingers Bishop Schereschewski could open the Scriptures to
the Chinese people, then imagine what we can accomplish with our many hands and
many gifts. Thanks be to God!
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