Dirt

That’s enough about me.
What do you think about me?

Among nations, the United States has a reputation as among the most religious in the world. Many around the world look upon us with the dismay with which they behold the Iranian theocracy or the Taliban. I am not one who subscribes to the notion that it is necessarily a good thing to be religious. In fact, I am deeply suspicious of a lot of what we can faith. Somehow, our highest hopes can be mired in a twisted self interest. That is clearly the upshot of the so called family values movement in the U.S.

The preacher, this morning, took on the subject of humility. I suspect that most congregations were thinking about humility this morning, as they contemplated the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. There Jesus’ followers clamor for the best seats in the house, the places of honor. How does humility find itself in hot pursuit of honor?

The weakness of American religion is on clear display when the subject of humility arises. For humility always confronts us with ourselves. Like Mac Davis’ perverse song lyric, “Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way,” our prevalent faith expression traps us in a “ME ME ME” religion. And for those whose faith revolves around MY personal encounter with MY divine friend, ME is way too central to facilitate what might be called humility. Our ME ME ME religion inhabits us like dog poopie on the shoe. Our self center is both sticky and smelly.

I am helped with humility when I recall that humble is a word rooted in dirt, earth, soil. Human life is first conceived a clump of soil that is breathed into life. Dirt seems more than a fetish. It is of the essence of the human body. Dirt holds out the possibility of self understanding. We might not have faced such dire environmental damage, had we been able somehow to come to terms with our dirt side.

A teaspoon of earth is abuzz with life. There, microbes do most of the unseen maintenance on the planet. And dirt itself is anything but static. It is the dynamic source of life itself. Needed chemicals are recycled by fungi and bacteria in the soils. There is more than a little irony that the quest to sit in the high place is to sit at the place farthest away from the dirt. How much clearer do we need to have our self center spelled out? How easy it is to see our quest is self destructive. It has been my experience that the natural processes that take place in a clump of dirt are eminently more trustworthy than even the steadiest of human companions, precisely because dirt does what it is supposed to do. We can choose to be thrown off course.

We are told that children raised in a microbe free environment are more susceptible to asthma than those who ingest regular doses of dirt in their early diet. I am wondering if our faith, sterilized as it is, might benefit from a mouthful of loam from time to time. There we might find a connection to the simple elements of life, there to find a divine hand at work. Maybe, even, we might breathe a little easier. I don’t know.

After all, Luke 14 remembers that the REAL banquet is one that opens the doors to the riff raff, the unclean and the like.