August31, 2025

 

Luke 14:1, 7-14

+ As we gather to meet our bishop’s candidates this week, I have found thatpeople in this diocese are talking about bishops a lot lately.

 

Namely, former bishops of ourdiocese, others bishops they have known.

 

We all have “bishops on the brain”right now.

 

Well, for me, there’s one bishopI talk about quite often.

 

If you know me for any period oftime, I will invariably bring him up at some point.

 

In fact, on Tuesday, it will bethe 56th anniversary of his death.

 

He was one of the mostcontroversial bishops in the Episcopal Church.

 

I am speaking of course aboutBishop James Pike, the Bishop of California.

 

And he is one that will likelynot ever see again in the Church.

 

He was controversial certainly.

 

He was an alcoholic, he was aphilanderer. He consulted famously and very publicly mediums.

 

He was brought up on heresycharges in the Episcopal Church because he wrote books about his disbelief inthe Trinity and the Virgin birth of Jesus, among other controversial issues ofthe time, like abortion and the ordination of women in the Church.

 

He was definitely ahead of histime.

 

I quote him often because wasjust so…quotable.

 

56 years ago around this time, heand his third wife headed out in the Judean desert looking for the Qumrancaves, where the Dead Scrolls were found.

 

They were unprepared for thedesert. They brought a bottle of water and that was about it.

 

At some point their car brokedown and they decided to go out and search for help.

 

They split up.

 

His wife was found by an Israeliarmy patrol.

 

But Bishop Pike could not befound.

 

Several days later, he was foundbeside a pool of water.

 

He had fallen from a cliff andfractured bones and died of exposure the day following the car breaking down.

 

It was a sad end to a troubledman.

 

He was an arrogant man, a proudman, a fractured man.

 

And someone we are still talkingabout 56 years later.

 

As we should.

 

The great Episcopal theologianWilliam Stringfellow, and his partner Anthony Towne wrote a biography of Pike.

 

And in it, they wrote thishaunting piece:

 

The death to self in Christ was neither doctrinal abstraction ortheological jargon for James Pike. He died in such a way before his death inJudea. He died to authority, celebrity, the opinions of others, publicity,status, dependence upon Mama, indulgences in alcohol and tobacco, family andchildren, marriage and marriages, promiscuity, scholarly ambition, the lawyer'sprofession, political opportunity, Olympian discourses, forensic agility,controversy, denigration, injustice, religion, the need to justify himself.

By the time Bishop Pike reached the wildernessin Judea, he had died in Christ. What, then, happened there was not so much adeath as a birth."

 

That quote has haunted me andobsessed me for years.

 

And so has Pike to some extent.

 

This man who was not humble byany sense of the word, gained a strange sense of humility by the time he died.

 

And that shows that Bishop Pike,rather than being someone we scoff at and condemn in our way, is actuallysomeone who shows us a way forward on our Christian journey.

 

Humility.

 

The last person we would thinkwould give us a lesson on humility would be James Pike. 

 

But he is doing so today.

 

Because Humility is what we findin our Gospel reading for today.

 

For those of us who werelistening closely to this morning’s Gospel—and I hope you were—we might findourselves struggling a bit with Jesus’ words.

 

I know I certainly do.

 

And if we aren’t struggling—ifthose words don’t make us uncomfortable—then maybe we should be.

 

They are uncomfortable words,after all.

 

Jesus is making clear to us that,if we neglect the least among us, if we consistently put ourselves first—if welet our egos win out—we are truly putting ourselves in jeopardy.

What we do here on earth—in this life—does make a difference.

 

It makes a difference here, andit makes a difference in the next world.

 

It makes a difference with thosewe neglect.

 

And it makes a difference withGod.

 

And we should take heed.

 

We shouldn’t neglect those whoare least among us.

But probably the most difficult aspect of our Gospel today is when Jesussummarized everything in that all-too-familiar maxim:

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselveswill be exalted.”

Jesus is not pulling any punches here. He is as clear as day.

Humble yourselves. If you do so, you will be exalted. If you are arrogant andfull of yourself, you will be humbled.

I know this might come as a completely surprise to those of you who know me,there have been times when I have been a bit arrogant.

There have been times when I havebeen a bit full of myself.

 

And I can tell you that each timeI have, I have been very quickly put in my place.

 

I have been humbled in thoseinstances.

 

As I rightly should have been.

Humility and pride are too often huge issues for all of us Christians, whetherwe are laypeople or clergy.

 

For those of us who have spent agood part of lives in church, we have known too many arrogant, self-centered,conceited Christians in our lives.

 

They sometimes are on the Vestry,in the pews, in the kitchen, or in the pulpit, or at the altar.

Pride is an ugly thing.

 

It doesn’t do anyone any good,especially the prideful one.

 

But to be fair, it’s easy enoughto do.

 

It’s easy enough to fall in thatugly trap of pride.

 

I’ve done it.

 

We all have.

 

When we encounter those pridefulChristians, we need to be careful how we deal with them.

 

Because we need to remindourselves: “there but for the grace of God, go we.”

Pride is an easy trap to fall into as Christians.

 

We know we are loved by God.

 

We know we, as followers ofJesus, through our Baptisms, have a special place in relation to God.

 

It’s easy sometimes to feel smugand self-assured.

 

And when we are fully immersed inChurch work, it’s easy for us to think that the success or failure of theministry of the Church depends on us as individuals.

Earlier this summer I preachedabout lone wolf ministry.

 

Lone wolf ministry doesn’t work.

 

And Jesus certainly neverintended his followers to be lone wolves.

 

Discipleship means community.

 

Still, we do it. We fail at this.

 

I do it more often than I care toadmit.

We’ve all heard it, “If I didn’t do it, who would?”

“If I didn’t do it, it’s just not going to get done.”

And sometimes, this might be true.

 

But, it is a dangerous road totake when we start thinking everything revolves around us. That our opinion isthe only right opinion. (It’s NOT)

And for clergy, they are in an even more vulnerable place.

 

As clergy, we occasionally findourselves being praised and treated with a sometimes undeserved respect.

 

And although I have found myvocation to the priesthood to be a very humbling experience, there are timeswhen we might find ourselves feeling very smug over a job well done.

That’s true with all of us, as Christians.

 

It’s easy to fall into that uglytrap of believing everything is about us as individual.

 

It’s easy to convince ourselvesthat the world revolves around us and only us.

 

Life, after all, is a matter ofperspective.

 

And from our perspective,everything else does in fact revolve around us.

But our job as followers and disciples of Jesus is to change that perspective.

 

Our job as Christians is to,always and everywhere, put God first.

 

It is not all about us.

 

We are just a breath.

 

We are just a blink of the eye inthe larger scheme of everything.

 

We are born, we live, we die.

 

And then we are gone.

 

And, without God, that is all wewould be.

 

There would be no hope, therewould be no future, there would be no us, without God.

God gives us our definition.

 

God gives us our identity.

 

God gives us our purpose.

 

And this is what Jesus is gettingat today, when he talks about the humbled being exalted.

 

Who knows better than Jesus abouthumility?

 

He, the divine Son of God, whowas humbled himself to the point of actually being betrayed, humiliated andmurdered, knew a few things about humility.

So, when we find ourselves falling into the pride trap, we need to stop andremind ourselves to put God first.

 

When we find ourselves seeing theworld as revolving around the all-mighty ME, we do need to stop and remindourselves that God is at the center of our lives and, as such, our worldrevolves around God.

 

After all, as we hear in that beautiful readingfrom Hebrews, God says to us, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

As long as God is with us—as God’s light is shiningthrough us—we can simply be who we are without trying to be something we arenot.

When we find ourselves shining with the glow ofself-pride and self-contentment, let us remember that the light shining throughus is not my light or your light, but the light of God and that any reflectionothers have of our works is accomplished only through that light.

When we find ourselves becoming prideful, let usstop and listen to the voice of Jesus as he says to us, “those who humblethemselves will be exalted.”

God wants us to be exalted.

God wants to exalt us.

But this can only happen when we come before God inall humility, as humble disciples of Jesus, serving our loving God in thosepoor and needy people around us.

This can only happen when we place God at theforefront of our lives

So, let us put God first.

Let us humble ourselves before God.

And let the light of God’s love shine through us inall that we do.

Amen.