Humility
Humble people are naturally curious. They have little need to tell you about themselves and their accomplishments, but they are full of wonder about you and your story. They have very little if any concern with being right. Quite the opposite, they are comfortable with the fact that they may well be wrong and can tell you that with ease. Humble people (I am not humble, but I am fortunate to have some humble friends) are curious about their own blind spots and what treasure of self-knowledge and wisdom lies hidden just out of their sight. Perhaps the chief gift a humble person has is that God has made them nearly unoffendable because they know who they are and they know who they are not. Therefore whatever you say to them, whether it’s to blame them or acclaim them, doesn’t really touch them. They are relatively open conduits for the flow of grace, and they are thus endlessly useful to God for the cause of love.
The disciples of Jesus are not yet humble, but that’s okay because they, like many of us, are still in school learning how to use the spiritual tools on offer. Consider this.
The clear call of Jesus is to be non-violent in word and deed. I think that’s an inarguable point. We can argue about a lot of things and you’d probably be right and I’d likely concede that on any given issue, but not this one. The way of Jesus is distinctly and clearly the way of non-violent love. (In my not-so-humble view!) Consider this:
One time Jesus and his disciples went into a Samaritan town and were not welcomed. This offended the disciples and they wanted to kill the people in the village. Thank goodness they asked Jesus’ permission first. He said, “No. Walk away. Let it go.”
Like any good teacher, parent, or leader Jesus learns how to teach his students from his students’ behavior, so in the next scene he gets ahead of their violent, prideful urge.
He is sending them out on a mission trip to do good and spread love, and he knows that they are going to run into some people out in the world who don’t like them. Welcome to life. You can’t win ‘em all. He knows that when they get rejected or otherwise mistreated they are going to want to do something about it because they do not yet have much self-control.
So, he says to them, “When people don’t welcome you or when they outright reject you and talk roughly to you, just move along, and since I know you guys want to make some sort of show of it here’s what I want you to do. Before you leave town, stand still in the middle of their widest street. Stop traffic and draw as much attention to yourselves as possible. Then shake the dust off of your feet. Shake it all off, shake off every negative thing they throw your way. Don’t take even the smallest bit of their cynicism or anger with you when you go. Make a big deal of it. That will be your vengeance and your protest against them.”
I imagine there were three types of people within the large group of disciples.
The first type are disciples who are relatively new to the Way of Jesus. They haven’t been around him all that long and thus are early in their formation. Some are young but this is not about age. They are easily offended and still have a knee jerk need for vengeance. When someone hurts or angers them they want to strike back. They don’t yet understand that violence solves nothing. So they are really excited when Jesus gives them something they can do to express their anger. They secretly wish it was a little bit more “hands on” like throttling the necks of the people who reject them, but the shake it off move will suffice. These disciples start practicing their “shake it off” moves which look like a little dance with jerky movements and their arms flapping like birds learning to fly.
The second type of disciples have been on the road with Jesus a little longer. They have seen people be rude to Jesus and try to trick him with circuitous, technical questions. They’ve watched closely as he’s kept his cool, love core intact and answered nearly every question with a question. They are not sure what he’s after with the “shake it off” instruction, but they think to themselves and whisper to each other, “I think he’s poking fun at us? I don’t think he really wants us to do this. I think he’d rather us just walk away. Water off a ducks’ back, right?” This group thinks the first group look silly and they are a little embarrassed by them.
The third type of disciples are coming to possess the gift of humility. By the way, humility is a gift. You can’t make yourself humble, but you can assume a stance of receptivity to the gift by working on self-knowledge. Only God can give you the gift of humility. This third type listens carefully as Jesus gives the “shake it off” instruction. They watch lovingly as the new folks practice their moves, they see the second group through the lens of compassion because they remember when they realized that their anger and longing for vengeance was not only not fruitful but also antithetical to the path Jesus was calling them to walk. They remember how humbling it was to learn that they were far more angry than they realized. This group just smiles knowingly and humbly when Jesus gives his “shake it off” talk.
When you realize you are with a spiritually immature person gently let go of your judgment that they are immature and love them as if they were God's favorite child which is exactly what they are. Sometimes you are confronted with someone who is really immature like a bird with a broken wing and loving them takes extra energy. Sometimes that person is looking at you in the mirror. Love him or her in a special way; love them with the same love that Jesus loved the whole world from the cross. That is the stance of ultimate vulnerability which makes you particularly receptive to God’s gift of humility.