Pride
August 9, 2026
11th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Philippians 2: 1-11; Luke 18: 9-14
“PrIde”
by Rev. David J. Wood
11th Sunday After Pentecost, August 9, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
To name pride as a ‘sin’ is tricky. It is so often cast not as a vice but as a virtue these days. So, let me begin by making a few distinctions.
Arrogance, conceit, self righteousness, vanity, hubris—just a few of the ways we name a form of pride that is odious, we might even go so far as to name it the kind of pride that is sinful…because it speaks of a false understanding of oneself that inevitably leeks out into all manner of attitudes and actions that are injurious to ourselves and others. It is the kind of pride that alienates us from ourselves, from one another, and most importantly, from God.
Self esteem, self worth, self love, self acceptance, dignity, self respect—just a few of the ways we name a “healthy” form of pride that we regard as essential to one’s well being and flourishing as a human being…at best, they speak of a truthful understanding of oneself and enable us to be at peace with ourselves, with one another, and most importantly, with God.
We are all works in progress when it comes to pride. Both Jewish and Christian traditions agree that pride is something to be reckoned with. Pride can be insidious. This is an old, multifaceted and all too familiar story.
Earlier this week I was reading about Emperor Nero. Became the head of the Roman Empire in the year 54.
Surrounded himself with court official who were flatterers, constantly competing for his favor.
The world of athletic contests and musical competitions appealed to him.
He set up a private theater in Rome where he forced his Senators and citizens to witness and applaud his singing, acting and reciting poetry—
Nero had a particular affection for the Greek tradition of the Olympic Games and longed to become an Olympic Champion himself. He rescheduled the Games to fit his schedule and entered himself as a competitor. Remarkably he won every event he competed in.
The Chariot race is a case in point. Instead of the standard 4 horse chariot race, Nero instituted at 10 horse chariot race. During the race he lost control of his horses and fell out of the chariot and didn’t reach the finish line. The Judges declared him the victor. In all he was awarded seven crowns in that Olympic Games.
Pride is never so thoroughly repulsive than when it is fully fleshed out in the character of those who possess great power and prestige. They have a way of structure the world to serve their own fragile, over inflated egos.
The story I just told is more comical than tragic…but we know how that same pride when wedded to great power can result in the generation of great violence, destruction, corruption, and evil throughout history….even our own. Make no mistake: Pride can be deadly.
That being said, humility—the disposition that best names the good form of pride—is never so profoundly moving and appealing than when we see it in the character of those who possess great power and prestige.
Having just returned from the Yalta Conference, on March 1, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to a joint session of Congress to present his report. The chamber was packed. The doorkeeper announced the arrival of the President. The door opened. There was the President of the United States seated in a wheelchair.
A momentary shocked silence swept through the chamber.
Although FDR’s polio was somewhat of an open secret, up to his moment, it had been carefully hidden from view. It was the first time anyone had seen the reality of his physical condition. As he took his place behind a small table, he said, ”I hope you will pardon me for the unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs."
At that point, the entire body erupted into sustained applause.
Frances Perkins, his trusted confidant and Secretary of Labor, was seated in the front row. She broke into tears.
Years later, looking back on that moment, she wrote, “"It was the first reference he had ever made to his incapacity, to his impediment. . . . He was actually saying, 'You see, I'm a crippled man.' He had never said it before and it was one of the things that nobody ever said to him. . . . He had to bring himself to full humility to say it.”
Humility is life-giving, liberating, and generative. If pride, in its sinful forms, is a refusal to grasp the truth about ourselves, at the heart of humility is a truthful understanding of oneself. Humility is the ability to get over ourselves.
Let’s bring this a little closer to home than talk of Emperors and Presidents.
In our reading from the Gospel of Luke, “Jesus told “a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” In that one little phrase, before we even get to the parable, we have about as accurate a description as one can find of the dark, sinful, side of pride: “trusting oneself to be righteous and regard others with contempt.”
This parable reveals Jesus’ contempt for PRIDE.
Pride as self righteousness…a form of pride that afflicts those who are most determined to live a good and moral, God-pleasing life.
Here we see what makes pride so insidious— it can attach to our desire to be righteous, good:
As the old latin proverb put it, the corruption of the best is the worst.
Jesus had no patience with prideful self-promoting righteousness.
One of the ways this parable can reveal us is that when we hear it, we inevitably feel a certain contempt for the Pharisee and his odious self-righteousness. Inevitably, we find ourselves at least sympathetic towards the tax collector who recognizes himself to be a sinner in need of mercy.
And before we know it, we can find ourselves mumbling our own prayer under our breath:
“Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee!”
Jesus has a way of getting upending our own tendencies toward an odious self righteousness.
Our worship—our practices of confession and prayer and praise—is to be an antidote to pride not a cover for it…in that it provides the context for confession and the expression of the truth about our lives. And that makes all the difference.
For Bill W., one of the founders of AA, there is no recovery until pride is dealt with. He writes: “Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built. . . . Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of AA’s Twelve Steps.”
One of the most tragic episodes of the life of the church in this country is how the church provided justification for the enslavement of an entire people.
One of the most redeeming episodes in the life of the church was how, in spite of the church, slaves heard in the Gospel the truth about their lives and it set them free. In the Gospel they read about how, in Jesus, God became identified as a slave…in him they came to know God who knew the troubles they had seen. They experienced themselves being exalted amidst a world where they were humiliated, degraded, and dehumanized.
The Gospel subverts our pride, upends our pretentiousness, overcomes the humiliation of the stories that get told to us…that we tell ourselves…
The church is never more faithful than when it is a place where pride in all it odious forms is exposed and where a one’s true worth, dignity, and self respect is received as a gift…as grace.
In our reading from Philippians, The Apostle Paul makes it clear that our capacity to come to terms with the truth about ourselves is thoroughly dependent upon coming to know the truth about God.
To quote Bishop William Willimon,
"Jesus tells us the truth about God. God is more than omnipotent, omniscient, and all those other non-biblical attributes that we would like to ascribe to God. God is to be known among the lowest and the least, the little one, the wretched, the one who hangs in agony on a cross, the one who stoops down and washes our feet, the one who emptied himself in order to get down on our level, the one who rose and thereby shall raise us up as well.”
Let me test something with you. I think there is something in us that yearns to be humbled. Call it an “intuition”….maybe it is the trace of the image of God…. I hear it when someone says…in one way or another…”I long to be connected to something greater than myself.”
Such encounters, experiences, do not diminish us…nor do they lead to grandiose self importance…but give us a sense of fullness and wholeness and gratitude.
I mentioned briefly a few weeks ago, the experience of the astronauts recently returned from their orbit around the moon on Artemis II
After splashdown, the four crew members were taken to a U.S. Navy ship for medical evaluation, commander Reid Wiseman told of how, to his own surprise, he requested to see the ship’s chaplain.
“I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything, so I just asked for the Navy chaplain to come visit us for a minute,” Wiseman shared.
“When that Chaplain walked in — I’d never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears,” Wiseman said during the NASA press conference in Houston. “It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.”
"There is no other explanation for what I saw and experienced. When we landed back on earth, I saw the cross and just wept."
Other astronauts on the team had similar reflections…of being overwhelmed by what they had experienced. Another crew member talked of what captivated him: “the sense of the galaxy’s depth when looking out the window,” he said. “It really overwhelmed me. I felt an overwhelming sense of fragility and insignificance.” All of them spoke of overwhelming gratitude, joy, and love.
For those astronauts, it was a moment of high achievement and accomplishment, to put it mildly. And yet, the experience was not one of self congratulation or of self absorption…but of self transcendence…evocative of humility.
This I think is exactly what the experience of humility is meant to be…it is always accompanied by an overwhelming sense of gratitude…of being exalted but not exalting oneself.
This past week, Jennifer and I were in Virginia for the birth of our 4th grandchild! Nellie Fox Fredrick. She was born on Wednesday to our daughter Julia and her partner, Nic. On Friday, we were sitting on the steps of their home waiting to welcome Julia and Nic and little Nellie home from the hospital. They finally arrived. As Julia emerged from the car, she was in tears. It was another moment of overwhelming joy and gratitude. Being entrusted with this precious life…the chance to love and serve and care for Nellie. Never had she felt more alive, more herself…more humbled…more exalted!
My friend Wes Avram, preached a sermon some years ago on pride. He suggested the following shift in our vocabulary around side: Try this, even when your Pride feels perfectly healthy. Every time you're about the use the word 'proud', substitute the word grateful. And every time your about to use the word 'Pride', substitute gratitude. See how that one change affects you and affects the people you're proud of. Say it to children. "We're so grateful for you."
That makes sense to me. To say to Julia, “I am so grateful for you” instead of “I am so proud of you” says less about me, and more about her…and more about what (who?) relates us to one another. Gratitude puts us into relationship.
Wes concludes, “And so out of gratitude and humility comes worship, with confession and prayer. That is the antidote to Pride's sinfulness. For worship is the only thing, finally, that we can do to accept the worth God gives us, and heal our sin. Here we give ourselves and each other back to God, and from here we are sent out again—grateful, humble, and loved.”
To which I can only say “Amen.” Thanks be to God.