How to Be Humble.

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble

When you're perfect in every way

I can't wait to look in the mirror

'Cause I get better looking each day

To know me is to love me

I must be a hell of a man

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble

But I'm doing the best that I can

~Willie Nelson

Everybody in my world, and rightly so, is talking about Bishop Mariann Budde and the sermon she preached at the National Cathedral on Tuesday, with Trump sitting in the front row looking bored.

The sermon, which you should go and read right now in its entirety, was far more generous than the politics and power people of the moment deserve. It was a masterwork of wisdom, spiritual humility and a kind of mature deference that was not bowing and scraping before a king, but an attempt to draw out that king’s own humility and humanity.

Kristin du Mez, an author and professor I read so I can keep the white Christian nationalists on my radar (never turn your back on them!), wrote this piece about Budde’s sermon and the MAGA evangelical reaction to it which you should also go and read right now. Du Mez grew up in the evangelical world, and follows the leaders in it, and posts quotes from them that send me into conniptions but also give me the fire I need to do my part in making sure our progressive Christian faith doesn’t fade away. As I preached to my own congregation recently,

“We may feel diminished in dignity and clout since our heyday, invisible to the University and City Hall. We may feel embarrassed even to admit to friends of no faith or other faiths that we go to a Christian church. But we can’t give up. We are not ALLOWED to give up as long as the far right forces in the Christian world have such a loud microphone. Only when the death cult of white Christian nationalism has been consigned to the history books–or at least gone dormant underground and become socially unacceptable again, can we give up on this enterprise, this pursuit of God’s Kin-dom on earth, this third way that neither backs down nor returns evil for evil.”

The most conniption-ing quote from Du Mez’s post about Budde was this one, from seminary professor Joe Rigney:

“Women’s ordination is a cancer that unleases untethered empathy in the church (and spills over into society).”

Can we just pause for a FURIOUS CACKLE, my people! Untethered empathy as a cancer?! What in the name of sweet baby Jesus is that man talking about?

A truly disgusting display of untethered empathy represented in this photo of me and my two clergy women colleagues, Rev. Hannah and Rev. Kelly at First Church Berkeley

I was first called to be an ordained minister when I was 13 years old, and again when I was 16 years old, and again when I was 22 years old. That last time, God spoke directly to me and at length. Nothing in the 32 years since that final call came in has ever made me feel like God was mistaken.

When I was ordained, I took a vow to “minister impartially to the needs of all.” It’s one I take seriously. In order to keep it, I’ve had to work hard to practice humility–a serial and serious letting-go of my own judgments and certainties. The practice of humility has also made me wiser and kinder than I would be otherwise, and for my willingness to practice it, God in Her turn surprises me with much I like and love people I once thought were annoying and/or terrible.

Reading Bishop Budde’s whole sermon recalls this kind of practiced humility. Predictably, MAGA acolytes accused her of all kinds of things which her actual words belied. Stoking disunity and division. Grasping for power. They even called the sermon “pathetic and boring.” If it was so pathetic and boring, why the massive multiday freakout?

In damning her, they were really damning themselves. Budde didn’t name names. She didn’t judge them, or even hint that God’s might disapprove of them. She chose her words extremely carefully and was assiduous in not taking sides.

But they heard sides in her sermon, because that is how they see the world. They felt accused by her words, but it was their own silenced and suppressed consciences accusing them. Their awareness of their own mendacity, cruelty, lust for power and privilege competed with their longing to be unanimously approved and adored. And the friction between those two opposing forces within themselves was intolerable. So they did what humans do. They scapegoated her to get the icky feelings as far from themselves as possible.

Years ago, I sat down with someone in my new church. This person was angry with me, and I wanted to understand why, since we didn’t know each other very well. Turns out they had read my church renewal book before I even arrived, decided that I would see them as an obstruction to growth and renewal, and (naturally) kick them out of their church (as if I have that kind of power). So they went on the offensive and decided I was the worst, without even knowing me.

I was flabbergasted. I genuinely liked this person. I knew them to be a loyal friend, gifted artist, skilled professional caregiver. But in deciding to become my adversary in advance, it left them no choice but to make me the bad guy. This meant they had to screen out any new information about me that might undermine their early conviction.

Budde quoted Solzhenitsyn in her sermon, a quote I have often leaned on myself as I continually try to extricate myself from a delicious belief in my own righteousness and the fury I feel toward Those People who do Terrible Things:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.”

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

~

Beloved, if all the horrible that is happening makes you want to hate, if you are devastated by the rollback of civil rights protections, the silencing of scientists, the gratuitous contempt for trans and nonbinary people, do not be tempted to contempt yourself.

The sociologist and extremely accurate divorce-predictor John Gottman described these marriage-killers as the “four horseman of the Apocalypse:” criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.

Contempt is the opposite of humility. Hate is hot and therefore malleable. But contempt is cold, calcified. Once contempt has crept into a marriage to a significant degree, that marriage is doomed.

I don’t believe we are doomed as a nation; that our marriage, if you will, is over. But if contempt continues to grow, including the contempt that lies within our own sweet progressive Christian hearts, it is going to take a lot longer to heal what’s broken.

Love you,

Molly