The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 16, Year A, August 21, 2011, Grace Chapel Rossview & St. Luke’s Church Springfield

“I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment” (Rom. 12:3).

I was glad to hear the other day some “good news” from the IBM Corporation: an unlikely source for Gospel, I’ll warrant, but these days I take encouragement where I can. The news was about a management program that IBM has for the young “movers and shakers” in its organization, talented people it wants to encourage and form at the beginning of their promising careers. The program encourages what IBM calls “humbition”, a conflation of ambition and humility, which is what makes it interesting. This company wants teamwork, the talented individual who can work and play well with others. The message is, “Be ambitious, be a leader, but don’t belittle others” (Here and Now, NPR, on Aug. 16, 2011).

I’ll let you in on a secret: this old-style industrial age company didn’t come up with this old-style wisdom on its own. These practical lessons on how to be a decent human being go back to the very beginning, and it’s from this source that Paul the Apostle draws in our second reading today. “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment”. Paul is helping to guide the life of the Christian church in Rome, offering his own “management course” in order to encourage and form the early Christians. He’s offering his own form of “humbition”, which mixes the realistic assessment of our own limitations with the open acknowledgement that God has called us to his service and will supply through us what is needed to carry on. That’s what the Apostle calls “sober judgment”. Another way of saying this is that we Christians are “earthen vessels” within which are contained a treasure (Paul’s own metaphor, 2 Cor. 4:7). Bishop Richard Holloway says somewhere that human beings are dust, dust that dreams of glory because it has a high vocation in Christ (Signs of Glory). "Humbition," you see, is just the latest version of an idea whose roots are deep in the Gospel soil.

For Paul too (like IBM), it’s all about teamwork. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means being in community, being a member of the Church, for to be “in Christ” is to be “in the Church”, in relationship with him and with others. Think how our reading today goes on. “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness” (Rom. 10:1-8). That’s the charter right there, the charter of community life within the Church, in which each and every member participates together so that the work of the Body of Christ can go forward, so that the mission and ministry of the Church can advance. Everyone’s required, and no one can consider others as unnecessary to the great project that’s before us.

This old-style wisdom is rooted in Christ Jesus himself, “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24) who was open enough to respond to God’s call to him and humble enough to die upon the cross for others. In him we see “sober judgment”, the sobering judgment of God, the realistic assessment of what was needed and Jesus’ embrace of it for the life of the world. An act of humility (indeed, of humiliation) on his part, but one that is shot through with glory in the light of his resurrection.

It’s old-style wisdom but as timely as ever as we think about what Jesus is calling us to and about our life together in the Church. In this church we need folks who can help us chart a course (that’s prophecy: a little bit of the role that Peter plays in our Gospel today when he confesses that Jesus is the Messiah). We need people who can offer care and service to others (that’s ministry); members of the church who can form others in the faith (that’s teaching, and don’t think that this is the only the priest’s job because it isn’t); and the list goes on. We need folks who can encourage us (that’s exhortation) and folks who can give generously (and of course, we know what that’s about). We need diligent, hardworking leaders and people who are compassionate and cheerful. Yes, a tall order, but that’s God’s call, and all of us are required.

I believe that God has given us all these gifts, and our job as a Christian community is to be ambitious enough and humble enough to discern and see what can be done. We ought not to think too highly of ourselves, but we ought to think with sober judgment of what God can do through us. We’re the “movers and shakers” of the Christian community in this place: if not us, who else? He will use all of us to do his will, every member of the Body of Christ.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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