The readings this week will focus our attention on pride and humility. Jesus will rebuff us in the very areas which we often take our greatest pride: Our families and our ability to control and predict nature.

Jeremiah’s message will revolve around the pride which seems to afflict every age: The idea that of us choosing which message to hear and obey, as if God’s Word was some great multiple choice test. Such an approach to the Word renders us the decision maker and effectively puts us into the divine driver’s seat.

The writer to the Hebrews catalogues the saints of old reminding us that they were harassed and beaten, martyred and stomped on. Yet the world was not worthy of them. This is our example, not one of winning in the eyes of the world but of being a pitiable loser – our hero is, on this side of the grave, a carpenter nailed to a cross and buried in a borrowed tomb.

The gospel will be found in the fact that we have good company when it comes to humiliation and losing. Jesus mastered that on a cross when he underwent its torture and scorn, for the joy, and we are the beneficiaries of that cross. The rub here is that as beneficiaries we cannot say that we are above it. In fact, our lives will be conformed to it. The Christian way is not one of easy chairs and comfort, but one in which we participate in the suffering of the world, sometimes to a frightening degree. The good thing is that when lying flat on one’s back, the view is always up.