Being A Tool For God

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

There is one common trait among all the saints,

and it is humility.  

They will say it themselves over and over again,

if you look at their writings,

that humility plays a preeminent place

in the pathway to discipleship.

For example, Saint Benedict was once asked,

“What are the top three virtues?”

And he said, “Humility, humility, humility.”

The great Saint Augustine says,

“The foundational virtue of all other virtues is humility.”

So it is worth for us to break this open.

We talked about this a couple weeks ago,

and we will hear more about it

in the next few weeks of readings as well.

To dive deeper into this understanding of humility

because it is not a popular word.

It is not a welcome word in modern society.

When we look at a leader,

we do not tend to say we want a humble leader.

That is not what people aspire to.

That is because it is most associated with meekness,

sort of a self effacing meekness.

That is not what the true biblical sense of the word means.

Humility, the root word of it, from the etymology of it

comes from humus, which means earthy or of clay.

The same root word for humor and the same root word for human.

A sense of humility is to have

a sense that we are we are made from the earth.

We are made from clay.

That we are from humble beginnings.

This is who we are.

The different saints have different ways

of referring to humility and how to do it.

One of my favorites is actually Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, is most unusual and I need to explain it.

He says that we need to be “instruments of God”

and to discern God's will in our life.

That is, for him, the definition of humility,

to be an instrument of God and to do God's will.

Now in there is a hidden message

and it is best explained by a metaphor or story.

When we were younger, did anyone ever call you a tool?

I was told this lots of times when I was younger.

Especially when we were trying to go out to a party,

my friends were trying to get me to go to party,

and I said, “No, no, I am not, I am going to go home.”

They would tease me, “Oh, do not be such a tool,

 paying your attention to your parents.”

It speaks of you as a tool,

you are somebody else's minion.

You are not making your own free decisions.

That is the idea.

If you are a tool, you can not do things on your own.

You are somebody else's.

It is that sense of tool, of instrument

that actually Saint Ignatius is referring to,

but we are in the hand of God.

That we are a tool or an instrument of God.

Let's take the example of a hammer for a moment.

What is a hammer?

Just a piece of metal with a handle.

It can be a sledgehammer, a big huge hammer,

or it can have a special shape, but it is a hammer.

On its own, is that any good? Not really!

But in the hand of an artisan,

they can build a home, and they can use that hammer to nail.

In the heart of an artist or a sculptor

they can chip away at a block of marble

and produce beautiful sculptures

because it is whose hand it is in.

You see, what makes a tool useful is whose hand is it in?

This is the point, of course, that Ignatius was trying to make.

We want to be in the hand of God.

We want to allow God to use us instrumentally.

To be God's instrument is to do

whatever is God's purpose.

Now, for this illustration,

it might be helpful to talk about a tool like a pencil for a minute.

Let's consider ourselves being a pencil in the hand of God.

And the hand of God will write with us,

a story, a poem, something beautiful

if we allow him to use us as a pencil.

Not to fight the Lord and say,

“No, I am going to write this myself.

And then all of a sudden, we all we have is scribbles

because we can not write.

See, to allow ourselves to be in the hand of God

is the ultimate definition of humility.

It is the ultimate definition of discipleship,

that I am God's instrument.

Saint Francis had that in mind

when he when he wrote that prayer:

Lord, let me be an instrument of your peace,

where there is hatred, you sow love,

where there is injury, pardon,

where there is discord, unity,

where there is doubt, faith,

where there is error, truth,

where there is despair, hope

where there is sadness, let there be joy,

where there is darkness, light.

You see, in the hand of God,

when we are an instrument of God,

God is the one who does the writing.

Now, it may sound very easy,

but actually it is hard

because we have to let go of so much.

We still have our free will,

but we are enabling God to use it for God's purpose.

But it requires of us a couple of things.

It requires us to listen to God

and to allow him to use us to do good as opposed to evil.

Now there is a part of this that helps to think about a pencil.

A pencil can get dull.

If they the lead is not sharpened, it is useless.

So our role in this instrumentality is active.

We have to sharpen our pencil, sharpen who we are.

We have to do the work of discipleship.

We have to be men and women, boys and girls of prayer,

where we learn to listen to God

and allow God to take over and direct our lives.

That becomes the work.

Then the writing of what God does becomes our joy

because now we are seeing what God does with our lives.

Almost like an observer,

but because we allow God to determine what has happened.

Now you might think to yourself,

and the temptation in American society

because we want our own way, use our free will.

I am the one in control. Right?

That is what America is.

So meekness, humility is not wanted

because it is associated with weakness of being used.

But here, it requires of us to to accept God's will,

to know God's will, accept it,

and allow it to happen in our lives.

Now you might say to yourself,

“Well, I am not that bad. I do not do that.”

But we allow things to motive, to move us,

and it can move us to evil even if we do not intend it.

It may not be extraordinary big evil,

but if we allow anger and frustration to move us,

then we will say things that are hurtful

and will do harm to others.

That is allowing the Evil One to use us

as opposed to allowing the Lord to use us.

We had an extreme example of this week

with that person in the Minneapolis school.

The anger, the confusion, the pain,

whatever was going on in that person's life,

they came in and they took it out by shooting children.

Children, for heaven’s sake! Who does that!

Now that is the hand of evil.

There is no good that can come from that.

The families of those murdered children

now have a choice because they are angry,

now they have lost, now they have to make a decision.

Will they be moved by anger

and continue this cycle of violence,

or will they allow God to move them to forgiveness?

And that my friend is hard work.

That is what their choice for them is this week.

It is the same for all of us.

Now that is an extreme version. I get that.

But we have to be men and women of peace.

Men and women of love.

That requires of us to allow God,

to have the humility to allow God

to use us like an instrument, like a tool.

This allows us to be the best version of ourselves.

Today, on one level the gospel is about social etiquette at a banquet,

but that is not what Jesus’ point here.

He was trying to use as a metaphor

to get the attention to be to be humble before God,

to know our place and allow God to place us

where he wants us to be.

Whether at the top of the table,

the lower of the table, it doesn't matter.

I am in God's hands.

My friends, that is the work we come to every week.

We come humbly, every one of us equal at this table.

Myself, you, all the same.

Men and women, boys and girls, children of God,

coming to the savior to see the same thing.

To receive what we promised to become.

The body of Christ.

Humble servants.

Humble tools in the hand of God.

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.