If you’re out on a clear night away from the city lights, and you’re drawn to just gaze out into the stars, the best things to do is to find a spot to lay out on the ground. You get a crick in your neck otherwise – our heads aren’t exactly made to be craning up to look into the universe as we’re loping around upright on our two legs. It’s best to be supine, so you can rest back against the earth and look out into the sky. 

 Just imagine that for moment, if you like. Maybe remember a time when you laid on the ground to look out into the stars – maybe that was long ago, or just the other week. Or just imagine it if you’ve never experienced it. 

How does it feel to surrender our earth-bound weight to the ground itself, in its immensity, as it bears us before the dazzling and dark expanses of the cosmos? 

This is the felt sense of humility, the embodiment of being humble. 

We are earth stuff and star stuff, breathed into life by some sacred miracle. And when we allow ourselves to rest in this and open our awareness, we can sense perspectives far beyond the bounds of our understanding.

To look up into the stars, we must first lay down onto the ground. To look up into the stars, we must first lay down onto the ground.

Humility invites in eternity. 

Holy scripture reminds us of this, time and again. It’s tried and true wisdom.

The psalm we heard (Psalm 65, version by Jan Merrill, below), like probably every psalm in the bible, is a sung prayer that conveys profound humility and shares with us the fruits of that humility: awe, reverence, gratitude, joy before the tremendously generous power of God, our Creator. 

Scripture is also clear that this kind of uplifting humility is what helps us to be honest about our blind-spots and our failings, so that we may receive the gift of grace. 

Blessed are the humble, for the humble have a broader view of things, a more accurate sense of proportion, with respect to God, the world, and others. Time and again, Jesus showed his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted (ex. Luke 18:11-14, Mark 9:33-37).

And the Apostle Paul taught, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.Let the same consciousness be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:3-7)

Now, Humility doesn’t mean making less of ourselves than we actually are. It means having our sense of self be in proper proportion with the truth of our true size in the wider scope of things, our radical dependence on each other, on the more-than-human world, and – above all – on God, the source and sustenance and salvation of all being. Sometimes this means uplifting the lowly. Sometimes it means tearing the proud from their thrones, as Mary sang in her humble praise of God’s activity through human history. 

In our time in human history, it sure seems we’re being given plenty of opportunities, painful opportunities, to learn humility. Floods and fires, storms and earthquakes, viruses evolving into ever fiercer forms, social upheaval, wars that have defied our control … we are confronted daily with our fragility before forces much greater than ourselves. 

As humans we are so savvy and scrappy and inventive about finding ways to survive. We can take the things of the earth and manage to spin them into something new: from sweaters to computers to indoor plumbing, hydro-electric dams and calorie rich foods, helicopters, oil tankers, cell phones, cardiopulmonary bypass machines, vaccines. It’s astonishing what human inventiveness has come up with to help us survive. 

But all of this can only go so far. We must run up against our limits, always. And these days it seems that we’re having to admit our limits – that over-all we aren’t as smart or as well-organized or cooperative or as effective or moral or as in charge of the earth as we may have thought or hoped we were. 

So many tragedies are tragedies of hubris.

When I go to our scriptures for wisdom, I find the assurance that learning humility is always a good thing, however painful it can be. Because it’s a truer way to be. And it is the way of God’s grace. God’s grace is the best gift there is, in a world full of gifts for those who would unclench their hands and receive. 

To look up into the stars, we must first lay down onto the ground.

When we are humble enough to surrender to the fact of our limitations, our need for support by the ground of all being, this can open us to the awesome expanses of this more-than-human universe, and beyond. It can open our hearts to be better able to care for and serve each other and our God. “Love mercy, do justice, walk humbly with your God” – as the Prophet Micah teaches. 

So, let’s remember that feeling, that embodied feeling of humility, in laying on the earth to look out into the stars, when we surrender our earth-bound weight to the ground itself, in its immensity, as it bears us before the dazzling and dark expanses of the cosmos. 

I offer thanks and praise to God, the Creator, the Sustainer, the Redeemer of all being. 

Amen. 

(You may view video of the service that contains this service here)

Psalm 65

Version by Nan C. Merrill

Praise to You, O Indwelling Beloved, 

and to You we commit our lives, 

to You who hear our prayers.  

To You we come when we go astray; 

When our transgressions fill us with guilt, 

You do forgive us. 

Blessed are those who draw near to You,

those who dwell in Your Heart. 

Awaken us to your kindness, 

enter into Your Holy Temple, 

our heart. 

Through pain and suffering, your 

Presence sustains us, 

O Merciful One, our Comforter, 

You the hope of all the earth, and 

of the farthest seas; 

Who by your Light created the mountains, 

being guided by Love, 

You still the roaring of the seas, 

the pounding of waves, 

the tumult of the peoples; 

So that those who dwell even at the 

earth’s outer bounds 

recognize and reverence You; 

At the rise of each morning, and 

as the sun sets at night, 

the people bow their heads 

in reverent gratitude. 

You visited the earth and slaked our thirst, 

offering Living Streams of water; 

You fed the hungry, 

and taught Love’s way. 

You watered hardened souls, 

filled with stone and weeds, 

softening them with kindness, 

and blessings their growth. 

You crowned your years with abandonment, 

inviting all to Eternal Life. 

In the desert flowers comes forth, 

the pastures flourish 

giving food to the poor, 

the valleys rise up. 

May all the peoples dance and sing 

together with joy.