Here’s the sermon I’d mentioned earlier.

Right?

Hard to be anything but humble in that scenario, if I have a right view of God.

That’s actually the verse we’re all exactly talking about. And working at humility is an oxymoron. Humility is the realization that your work and your efforts don’t work in God’s eyes. It’s realizing you’re not-God. To work at being humble would be like to boil water into ice.

The Pharisee prays in the street so everyone can hear him. The publican prays in the closet so no one hears him but God. The first guy isn’t praying at all. He’s performing. The second guy is humble. And he’s not working at it either. . . . He just realizes it. The actions are just a natural result of the realization.

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Not opposing you, just working it out.

What do you make of it?

In reference to the bolded quote at the end of the “How to Get God’s Grace” sermon, when James said God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, what does he (James not Berg) mean?

Well, we know it’s not a conditional statement: “If you’re humble enough, you get God’s grace.” Because such a condition defies the very nature of grace (and the condition is not in the Text). That’s like saying, “If you clean the whole house, I’ll give you a gift.” Then that’s not a gift. That’s a reward or a salary or a carrot-on-a-stick.

“Humble” is another way of saying that you recognize that you’re totally unable to save yourself. You can’t strive to prove you’re humble. You can’t work on your humility.

James is quoting Proverbs 3:34. To say that this one proverb says the opposite of all of the Pauline epistles (especially Romans and Galatians) is to really miss the point.

Presbyterians used to come forward 12 at a time to sit at a table and partake of the elements together. Most of my in-an-actual-congregation experiences of Presby Communion involve the elements brought to us. In other-than-church contexts, sometimes people experiment with coming forward. It’s the former that always feels more communal to me. But I grew up as an “evil”, individualistic Catholic, coming forward for my own, personal token.

I do like when there’s one big loaf to rip from, though. On Easter my husband broke the one loaf into 4 hunks that were then passed down the pews in a self-serve/rip kind of way. *That* was communal!

In reference to the bolded quote at the end of the “How to Get God’s Grace” sermon, when James said God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, what does he (James not Berg) mean?