Humbling
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:5-7[1]
I have a confession to make. Actually, I think it’s a
confession I’ve made to you before: it’s not easy for me to trust God. It’s
never been easy for me to trust God. Some of that has to do with my life
experiences. But then I would say that it’s not easy for anyone to really trust
God. I mean trusting God when your life is going in the completely opposite
direction from the path you thought you were headed down. I think to some
extent that has to do with a fear that we all share: the fear of being
vulnerable. These days, we’re all vulnerable in ways we may never have
expected, nor could we even imagine. Being vulnerable is a scary thing, and
when we are scared, we don’t have much head space or heart space to trust God.
In my experience, the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear! Fear is the
greatest obstacle to trusting God.
One of the challenges with being in a vulnerable place in
life is that it can be humbling. I don’t think we’re any more comfortable with
being humbled than we are with being vulnerable. We often associate being
humbled with humiliation. And for that reason, the humbling experiences of our
lives can be painful. I think most of us would rather do just about anything to
avoid going through an experience that humbles us. But I would have to say that
it has been the most humbling experiences of my life that have led to the most
growth in my ability to trust God, and to entrust my life into his care, as our
lesson from 1 Peter for today calls us to do.
As you may remember, 1 Peter was addressed to people who
were undergoing painful hardships because of their faith. Our lesson for today
tells us that they were going through “fiery trials” that made them “partners
with Christ in his suffering,” and for no other reason than they “bore the name
of Christ” (1 Pet 4:12-14). As I’ve mentioned before, while there was at this
time no official ban against practicing the Christian faith in the Roman
Empire, the trials believers experienced in the churches Peter was writing to
were wide-ranging. They faced the loss of their livelihood, the loss of their
families and homes, and at times the loss of their very lives due to the
actions of violent mobs.
It was in that setting that Peter called them to practice humble
faith. The humility Peter called for not only applied to the way they saw
themselves and to the way they approached God, but also to the way they related
to one another. Peter quotes the wisdom of Proverbs: “God opposes the proud but
gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5, NLT). That humility also applied
to their hardships. In the face of their sufferings, he called them to “humble
yourselves under the mighty power of God,” and promised that “at the right time
he will lift you up in honor” (1 Pet 5:6, NLT). Just exactly what that
might mean is hard to say, but I think the point of it was to remind them that
God was very much aware of all they were going through. More than that, God was
actively involved in helping them get through every hardship.
And so Peter called the believers turn to God in every
situation with humble faith: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he
cares about you” (1 Pet 5:7, NLT). In this, Peter was probably also
quoting the wisdom of the Psalms. John Calvin suggests that Peter was referring
to Ps 38:15: “it is for you, O Lord, that I wait; it is you, O Lord my
God, who will answer.”[2] This was
the Psalmist’s response to a situation very similar to the one Peter’s audience
was going through. He described the many foes who hated him, saying that they
“repay me evil for good and oppose me for pursuing good” (Ps 38:20, NLT).
I think that’s probably one of the hardest times when we may be called to “give
all your worries and cares to God”!
But I think that the language of the psalmist might help us
here. When he says that “it is for you, O Lord, that I wait,” he’s
using a “loaded” word. Some English Bibles translate this as “it is in you, O
Lord that I hope” (NKJV). Some English Bibles translate it
as “it is in you, O Lord, that I trust” (CEV). I would say
it takes all three to get at the full meaning of what the Psalmist was saying:
waiting, hoping, and trusting. Trusting in God, especially in the face of hardships,
places us in a situation where we do a lot of waiting and hoping. And it takes
all three—waiting, hoping, and trusting—for us to truly “cast our cares” on the
God whose love for us never fails.
What enables us to do all that trusting and hoping and
waiting is the assurance that God cares for us. I think an image from the
Gospel of John can help us here as well. When Jesus spoke of himself as “the
Good Shepherd,” he contrasted his willingness to lay down his life for us with
one who is like a “hired hand.” He said that the “hired hand” doesn’t care for
the sheep because they don’t belong to him, and so he abandons them when danger
comes (Jn 10:13). But Jesus Christ is our true shepherd, and he will never
abandon us, no matter what we may have to endure in this life! That’s one of
the most important demonstrations of God’s care for us!
In my experience, learning to trust God to care for me,
come what may, has been the direct result of the humbling experiences in life. With
the Psalmist, I have to confess that it was “good for me that I was humbled”
(Ps 119:71). I’ve been “humbled” by painful events several times. There was one
time in particular that I was humbled by something joyful. It was the first
time I took the risk of admitting to a friend the one thing that was most
difficult for me to say out loud to anyone. I was afraid to tell him, because
he was my best friend at the time, and I worried that he might think less of
me. What happened is that he had a new respect for me. That was an important
lesson in the connection between humility and trust. When we take the risk of
humbling ourselves, we may learn that there are people whom we can trust to
share our burdens. More importantly, when we go through experiences that are
humbling, we have the chance to really learn that we can trust God. When we realize
that we cannot rely on our own strength or wisdom or goodness, we learn to “cast
your cares” on God, trusting that “he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:7).
[1] ©
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, PhD on 5/21/2023 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] John Calvin, Commentaries
on the Catholic Epistles, 148: “But
he calls those humble, who being emptied
of every confidence in their own power, wisdom, and righteousness, seek every
good from God alone.”
No comments:
Post a Comment