Humility – Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild (pt4)

Lesson Number 4: Humility can lead and teach with authority.

This seems counterintuitive. We know that a leader ought to be humble, that Jesus even said the one who would be leader must be servant of all. It’s tricky to put that together with strong leadership or authority. In fact, the only way to manage it at all is to keep watching Jesus. There

was a tenderness about His authority. The implication, when Matthew says He spoke with authority, is that the people loved that—yearned toward it, warmed themselves in it. It would not have had such an effect on them if it had had even a hint of lordliness or tyranny in it. It must have been like the tender authority of a mom or dad, gentle and calm, who is patiently keeping a toddler out of mischief. The baby may sometimes feel thwarted, and may show its frustration, too, but clearly it feels safe.

There were times when Jesus’ authority was of a sterner variety. When He made a whip of cords, there probably wasn’t much humility in His voice or face. When, near the end of His life, in utter despair at ever reaching the priests and rabbis He loved so much, He uttered the “Woes,” there were tears in His voice, but they weren’t humble ones. So the most humble person on earth was not necessarily always humble. The question to ask ourselves is, When we sometimes lay aside humility, is it for our own sake, or for love of someone else?

During the last week of His life, Jesus grew more and more forceful. He cursed the unfruitful fig tree, rebuked the leaders, refused to answer lawyers’ questions, and dealt out some stern warnings. Then came the climax the universe had been waiting for, the series of events we have come to call The Passion. Why that particular word?

Would you believe that our meaning for it today, of strong emotion or obsession, is only a few centuries old? It actually comes from the Latin passus, past participle of pat, to suffer, and originally meant “an undergoing,” or “the state of being acted upon or affected by something external.” (Webster’s) Passive, in other words. A passion was the opposite of an action. Eventually, it was used in the sense of giving up one’s control to an emotion, “flying into a passion,” and from there it became what it is today.

Once upon a time, on a certain night, in a certain geographical spot that we can mark fairly precisely today, a man fought a superhuman struggle against his own will, his own longing for survival. Unbelievably, this Man was God. He fought between the two horns of His own particular dilemma, His survival or ours. Incomprehensibly, He chose us.

“Thy will, not Mine, be done,” He gasped, and gave Himself up to go passively to slaughter, meek and silent as a sheep. From that moment on, humble was all Jesus was. He let Judas kiss Him, let the soldiers take Him, let Herod mock Him. He didn’t answer the priests or Pilate or the false charges. He didn’t fight the cross or the thorns or the nails. He accepted the humiliation (a different thing entirely), and drank shame to the bottom of the cup. He submitted His soul to God. He died. “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)

M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, offered a very interesting definition of love. Love, he said, is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” (p. 81)