Where Are You Looking?

This Lenten sermon tackles pride -- not the healthy pride that rejoices in blessings, but the toxic pride that looks down on other folks. If you're not sure which kind you have, I hope that this sermon will help you figure it out.

What are you looking at right now? If you respond that you’re looking at me, or at the PowerPoint image on the wall, or at the cross on the wall of the sanctuary, I’ll be happy; because that means you’re paying attention to what’s going on in worship. What you look at is where your attention is directed! Magicians take advantage of that all the time. While they invite you to look over here, they are doing something else over there. When they reveal what they have done, we are astonished, and say, “It’s magic!” But they haven’t really done magic at all; they have only distracted our attention away from their actions. As Christians, we want to pay attention to God, so we look in God’s direction. That’s what Lent is all about: we spend 40 days paying attention to God so that we can stay as close to God t possible. So far during Lent, I’ve preached about several things that separate us from God: apathy, violence, anxiety, and judgment. But there’s one more that’s just as powerful as these; and that’s pride.

Now, at first glance, pride doesn’t seem to be so bad. We’re all proud of something: ourselves, our friends, our children, and our grandchildren. Is pride really a bad thing? Well, no… and yes. Pride that rejoices in blessings, whether those blessings are our own or ones that someone else enjoys, is a wonderful kind of pride, because it invites others into the celebration. “Rejoice with me,” says the woman in Luke’s parable who found her lost coin (15:8-10), “for I have found what was lost!” But pride can be twisted so that it rejoices only in one’s own status and accomplishments. Suddenly we’re not looking up at God, but down at the people who haven’t done as well as we have. We start to believe that we are better than all those other people. Then it’s only one small step to the mistaken belief that we deserve more than they do. And that, friends, divides us from both one another and from God. Christian writer C.S. Lewis was of the opinion that, “A proud man is always looking down on… people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” That’s the reason that pride can be such a problem: the something above us is God.

All we have to do is to see the toxic effects of pride is to look at this morning’s scripture reading (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee was proud of himself – and he had good reason to be! He had been blessed with an education that enabled him to hold a high status in society as a religious professional. He had worked hard to get where he was! Of course, he was proud; anybody would be! But just listen to his prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” He might as well just come right out and say it: “Look how great I am, God! I’m so religious that I do even more than I need to! I’m not like these other people!” I can just see him standing by himself so that he wasn’t dirtied by the other people who were there – all those lesser people. That, my friends, is toxic pride!

The tax collector, on the other hand, had nothing at all to be proud of. Everybody hated tax collectors! They not only collected taxes for the Romans, they also kept a cut for themselves; and the more they collected, the bigger that their cut was. But we need to remember why this man was a tax collector. Tax collectors usually worked for the Romans because they had no other way to provide for their families. They didn’t want to be tax collectors! They hated what they were doing; and many of them hated themselves, too. That’s the reason why, while the Pharisee prayed proudly, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” the tax collector mumbled, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” So… who was looking where? It’s a great irony that the tax collector, who was looking down in shame, was actually looking up to God; while the Pharisee, whose head was lifted in prayer, was actually looking down on everyone around him!

But how can we keep our eyes lifted to God and stop looking down at other people? How can we get rid of our toxic pride and begin to practice humility? The sainted Mother Teresa offered a few suggestions for doing just that. Here are a few of her suggestions.

·         Speak as little as possible about yourself.

·         Keep busy with your own affairs, not the affairs of others.

·         Do not dwell on the faults of others.

·         Accept criticism, even if it is unmerited.

·         Do not seek to be admired or loved.

Those are hard things to do, aren’t they? Very few people can follow suggestions like those. But they are good suggestions, all of them ways that we can move our attention away from looking down on other people, and lift our eyes back to God.

Maybe the best advice to follow if we want to get our attention off ourselves and back to God is simply this: If we start thinking of ourselves more highly than we should, we should take a look at the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus never took his eyes off God for even a minute! If anyone had a right to be proud, it was Jesus; but he never looked down on other people, he only looked up to God! In his letter to the Philippians, Paul quoted an early church hymn that says exactly that (2:6-8): Even though Jesus was the very nature of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the nature of a slave, being born in human likeness. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! He is the example that we should be following.

Where are you looking right now? Are you looking down on other people, or are you looking up at God? Are you worrying about whether you are better than other people, or are you following the example of Jesus? As we move ever closer to the pageantry of Palm Sunday, the horror of Good Friday, and the celebration of Easter, I invite you to keep your eyes focused on the cross of Jesus Christ. In the end, it’s the only way to experience the power and the glory of Easter morning!