Stumble Rightly

Stumble Rightly

Luke 18:9-14 and Stumble by David Whyte

October 26, 2025

By Rev. Nicole Lamarche

I invite you to take some deeper breaths….Remembering again that one of the oldest names for God is Ruah, Spirit, Breath, I invite you to breathe in peace, breathe fear, breathe in hope, breathe out hopelessness…

As you are moved, I invite you to join me in prayer. Creator and Creating God, energy within us and between us, be with us now and help all of us and each of us to receive what we need today. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I hadn’t heard from my friend in ages. But there it was. A direct message, a DM as they say through one of my social media platforms last week. Seeing her face made me so happy that is until I saw the content of the message.

For much of my childhood there was hardly a weekend or a weeknight in the summer when we didn’t do something together. Complicated scenes with our Barbies and our cabbage patch dolls and our attempts at selling anything and everything we could on the side of our road. Early on the road wasn’t paved, but when it was, we had more passers by to hock our lemonade made from a bin of powered Country time deliciousness or our hack sacks hand sewn crafted with leftover fabric scraps and beans. Later we made a club with another girl on the street. We were the Triple M’s because all of us had Marie as a middle name.

There is a text in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 10 that always seemed a bit harsh to me, but now it makes perfect sense. And especially right now with all that is coming out, with all that is being torn down, shown for what it is. In this part of Matthew, Jesus says, “Sibling will betray sibling.. and you will be hated…because of my name…” I now understand this text in a way I haven’t before. And this week I realize that is part of my grief, seeing the truth of what people I care about actually believe, what they really think, what they hope for.

As I have carried on given and more time and depth to this spiritual path following Jesus teachings, I hadn’t anticipated the level of loss in relationships that would come with this path.

It turns out that a path of radical generosity and emptying, a path of inner transformation and healing for everyone, I have realized that some relationships couldn’t cross this threshold with me. Has anyone else had that experience? In part because as we heal ourselves and know our worth and claim our power and become secure, those living small or in fear, will try to tear it down or make the light go out. In part because they don’t know what to do for themselves, so they try to put out lights “out there.”

Not everyone can or wants to come along on the evolution, a wildly bold and inclusive God sized invitation, where everyone belongs and the last are first and all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

That is what we heard from Jesus in the Gospel of Luke today and that parable comes

in a string of messages from Jesus offering moral tales surrounded by exhortations to his followers. And here he compares a Pharisee and a tax collector. A religious man sure he is right with a man serving as an agent of a corrupt system.

And because the Pharisee is so sure he is on the right side. Because the Pharisee isthe one who says, I thank you God that I am not like those people, Jesus says, beware of him and beware of people who talk like that. Beware of anyone who says, thank God I am not like those thieves, those rogues, those adulterers…those icky people.

But what does it really mean to be humble?

I have found that for many of us, at some point, we are told to be more humble. Usually the call for humility comes when an unhealthy dynamic is being challenged or when some are pushed into a corner so there is a reaction that can be turned into the problem thus shifting the focus to the reaction and not the one causing the trouble. Or sometimes calls for humility come when people are simply daring to lead or speak our truths or even ask questions. You need to be more humble. We are told. But in my experience often what this really means is, please submit to those who are accustomed to having power in this situation Please bow down to this prevailing pattern. How many of you have been told you are not humble enough?

Today I am ending this sermon series we have done this fall on Healing from Toxic Christianity and we are closing out with the toxicity of righteousness, of seeing ourselves as right, of thinking we need to know and we do know for sure, of seeing doubt as a bad thing or changing one’s mind as a bad thing. I am with you in the need for certainty. But I wonder if certainty on its own can become idolatry and the need to see ourselves as right and righteous, so we are often seduced by those who say they know for sure, that they know the way or are certain of what will happen, but based on how Jesus taught and lived he said beware, he showed us that a question is usually the answer. The way forward is often knowing how much we do not know. Up is down. The last are first. Heaven is here on earth. The humble are exalted. But what does Jesus really mean when he says the humble will be exalted?

What does it mean to be humble in a spiritual sense and why does it matter? In Hebrew as one commentator noted, the “word anavah is what we translate as “humility,” but the literal definition of anavah is to occupy your God-given space in the world…”

Jesus’ invitation is more about seeing our place in the order of things, both how important we are and how insignificant we are, both how big we are and how small we are. Jesus’ teaching to be about know our limitations, knowing how much do not know, that we are but a beautiful spec of cosmic dust, in the scheme of things.

Being humble is more about knowing where we are in relation to God, that we are in fact NOT God, that we are to shift and change, be wrong, and doubt and question and learn and change with more information. What if being humble is closer to what we hear from the poet, what if being humble is being willing to stumble our way toward something deeper and better? Being willing to have our egos bruised on the path to healing, being willing to be wrong, to be open, to be softened…changed. Because we had the courage to try to keep going.

Because as we heard, this part of Luke is addressed to “those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…” That’s what Jesus is warning against. Being so sure that everybody else is wrong. Beware of those who are so sure they are right that they show contempt to others. Beware of those who turn doubt and different ideas into a sin. Beware of those living loud with religious pride!

Beware of anyone who says, thank God I am not like those people… I hadn’t heard from my dear old childhood friend for a long time, so at first I thought she was wanting to connect to talk about our kids or life changes and updates, but I realized she was reaching out to try and convert me through an app.

She was only connected for her purposes, a transaction about about convincing me I was wrong, convert me to her way of thinking. But unsurprisingly I know all about her way of thinking. I was surrounded by it. I grew up with it. I know it very well. So with my heart in my throat, I let her know I wasn’t interested. But the next day she sent me a message telling me she would be praying that God would reveal Himself to me. I knew that was the end of something. It was coming for a long time. I cried at the confirmation of another lost relationship to the weapon of righteousness, of religious pride and of obedience to an oppressive, sexist, religious system performing as Christianity. But Jesus warned me, “You will be hated…because of my name…” I just wasn’t sure what that would feel like.

I believe with my whole heart that we are a part of something bigger and at this moment in human history with so much revelation, we are needed, and that even our tiny actions matter. We are part of something that is so far beyond us and even our lifetimes. It might seem funny to say but I think that what is needed right now is more of us willing to admit that we are wrong, willing to say out loud how much we do not know, that we can doubt, change course, question our answers. I wonder what would happen if we had more leaders who said, “I am sorry, I was wrong.” What would it look like to give ourselves grace and space to stumbly rightly as part of our faith?

What would it look like to, as we heard from the poet David Whyte, “set a limit to our sense of being forever well balanced, and in control” and successful? What if part of how we will stop this destruction is to stop following people who claim to know for sure? And instead be open to the doubters, the one willing to be wrong, the ones willing to change course with more information? Being humble is about knowing how much we do not know and knowing our full gifts in the cosmic order of things. Part of how we can stumble our way to find that underlying and needed new ground and to be able to step off from that in and to a better and firmer way… This week I was able to celebrate one of Beth’s family members Wayne Gilbert who was this beautiful poet. Some of this poetry was read at the gathering. There was this line about being broken open and how at every turn in life he sought to be broken open. When you think your work is done, break open. Be like clay, be like humus.

COMMUNAL REFLECTION

What does it mean to you to stumble rightly?

Beloved of God, let us humble ourselves, let us stumble ourselves forward and through to something new… May it be so. Amen.