October 18, 2026: Rediscovering Humility

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

Humility is an important characteristic of spiritual and psychological maturity. Yet it is often misunderstood in ways that cause people to diminish themselves and their own light, joy, and confidence. How can we understand humility in ways that are life honoring?

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Sermon Text

Rediscovering Humility

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

October 18, 2026

SERMON Rediscovering Humility

This morning, we continue the exploration of our theme this month, Pride and Humility. Two weeks ago, we reflected on the importance of cultivating a balance between pride and humility - and the essential need for both. Being proud of your gifts and talents and who you are is important and needed. Pride, when it doesn't diminish others, is not a sin. But to ensure we don't fall into excessive pride - putting ourselves above others - we also need humility. So, today, let's dive into rediscovering and better understanding humility.

Some of us are taught early on some negative understandings of humility - like being taught to be quiet, to keep ourselves small. What other ways were you taught about being humble? (Be seen but not heard. Getting too big for your britches. You can't do that; you're a girl. Shame = Humility)

Receiving these lessons as children can be painful. Children are often so amazed and curious about the world and their gifts. That exuberance, that curiosity, wants room to shine. But children are also deeply impressionable and messages to shrink ourselves - or that we are wrong or bad for our enthusiasm or pride - that can really have a negative impact.

Now as kids, we also make mistakes and are always learning. We need coaching from our parents and elders. And one thing we do want to teach our kids is to respect others because it is also natural for kids not to necessarily be aware of others. So it is important to teach lessons of respecting others and finding language that helps our kids understand this. We don't want them to make themselves small, but we do want them to make space and be mindful of others.

Maybe we can take some cues from our UU youth and the language they often use in their youth covenants - the promises they make for how to be in community together. Some of my favorites are: “step up and step back”; “share air time”; “don't yuck my yum.” This means don't disparage what gives another person joy. It is all about creating room for everyone and not lessening ourselves or others.

A couple weeks ago, I shared how religion has been such a major culprit in mis-teaching humility in ways that get translated to subservience and obedience - obeying our pastors, our husbands, our fathers. This definition of humility sets up hierarchies, but I am here to tell you that humility, in its truest sense, is a rejection of practices and ideologies of superiority.

Take Jesus and what he said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Sometimes this is interpreted as a message for the poor to be satisfied with their condition, for later their day will come.

But what Jesus is actually saying is that the meek are the worthy ones. He is intentionally, radically circumventing the common convention that the rich are superior to the poor. He's saying, you've got it all wrong - all the ways you view society through hierarchies that say it is the rich and the powerful that are worthy, while the poor are nobodies - you are wrong. And this superiority and classism will be what keeps you from the gates of heaven. It is still revolutionary what he is saying.

And more than this - while there is a lot of focus in some Christian traditions about the importance of meekness and humility, here is some interesting data:

In the Christian scriptures (including both the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible - referred by Christians as the Old Testament), references to “meek” occur a whopping four times in the entire scriptures! However, references to justice occur more than 100 times, and descriptions of our responsibility to the poor, more than 150 times. As the Christian minister and founder of the magazine, Sojourners, Jim Wallis, once said, if we took out all the references in the Bible to what our responsibilities are to the poor and oppressed, we would have a Bible full of holes.

So what is the true nature of humility? The root for the word humility is the same root as the words human and humane. It all comes from the word humus, meaning rich fertile soil. In our name is a reminder that we are of the earth. This doesn't mean we are lowly in a sense of less than. It means that we are rooted and connected to this earth. We are a part of creation. And this is both an amazing thing and a common thing.

I go back to the quotation from Frederick Buechner, “True humility doesn't consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you'd be apt to think of anybody else.”

Humility, best understood, is a rejection of ideologies of superiority. And if we are to be seeds of change in this world - if we are to bring about a better future for our children, and our children's children - we have got to free ourselves of ideologies of superiority.

Superiority, the idea of supremacy, justifies domination and violence. It is at the heart of the greatest tragedies of human history. In the atrocity of the Holocaust built on the idea of the superiority of white German people, in the atrocity of chattel slavery in this country, and in the attempted genocide of native people across the Americas by settler colonialism - it all depended on the notion of one group as superior to the other. These same ideologies of superiority infect governments and religious nationalists across the globe and are in this moment leading to devastating tragedy, including to immigrants, native people and trans folks in our own country.

How do we make a new path? How do we reclaim humility as a value that can lift up people’s lives, rather than being used as a tool to quiet those who demand recognition of their dignity and right to self-determination?

A seed was sown last week in the service led by our church's Indigenous Studies Group. And if you missed it, it is worth watching. It is available on our website.

Zach Ammerman's descriptions of the heavy forests that covered 90% of our state before colonization was powerful and also heart-rending to realize what has been lost. The description of the rivers named for the fish that were teeming in them was a powerful reminder of rivers that we ourselves have never known here. And the description of millions (or was it billions?) of passenger pigeons flying in such numbers they would darken the sky and block out the sun - this was a common occurrence throughout many parts of the U.S. Feathers became so marketable in ladies’ hats and other places that people would aim cannon guns at the sky, literally killing thousands at a time.

And still today, this kind of “progress” continues.

Techno-imaginations are funded and fueled without real analysis of the impact to water, electricity, the loss of farm lands, animal life, human life, and long term jobs. It's the same playbook for hundreds of years - rooted in the belief that some people matter more than others, and that people matter more than the earth and wildlife and natural resources, and that profit matters more than anything.

Václav Havel articulates the problem so beautifully, “Man is not an omnipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.” Amen.

Humility - human - humane - all from the root word humus - of the rich and fertile soil.

When we consider how to rediscover and better understand and inhabit humility on the one hand, it invites us to better understand our relationship to the natural world, not as above the natural world, but intricately interwoven in a relationship of interdependence.

And on the other hand, it also invites us to better understand our relationship to our fellow human beings as deeply connected and interwoven - not hierarchical. Humility calls us to see this interdependence and equality across culture, race, religion, gender, class, and ability.

And we have a tool as Unitarian Universalists - a core principle that can help us. And that is our principle commitment that every person has inherent worth and dignity. This commitment is at the heart of so much of our justice work - our commitment to anti-racism, to immigrant rights, to women's rights, to trans rights and more.

And I would guess that most Unitarian Universalists abide by this principle 70-80% of the time. There are two places where we most often get stuck.

First, we must remember this principle applies to us too - to me, to you. How often do we honor the dignity of others, but struggle to remember and feel and claim our own? Remember, it is not a sin to be proud of yourself and your gifts, to love yourself, as long as it does not diminish others.

And second, we get stuck sometimes remembering the inherent worth and dignity of those we vehemently disagree with or who think very differently than we do. Now, recognizing dignity is not the same as passive acceptance. After all, sometimes “haughtiness becomes a duty.”

We must organize and fight back against the destruction of due process, human rights, democracy, and the land in this country. But, contempt for those with whom we disagree will not bring more justice or peace. It also doesn't help our spirits.

Last June, the Episcopal Bishop of D.C., Bishop Mariann Budde, addressed the national gathering of Unitarian Universalists. Yes, that Mariann Budde who, at the National Cathedral honoring his inauguration, asked the President directly, to have mercy on LGBTQ+ people and our immigrant neighbors.

In her remarks, she referenced the work of Tim Shriver and the work he and his team created as a tool for social change. It is called the “Dignity Index.” And she shares Shriver's argument that in this age fueled by an “outrage industrial complex,” that “the greater the polarization and the higher the stakes, the harder it becomes to treat others with dignity.” And “the only viable antidote to contempt is an unwavering commitment to treat every person, no matter who they are or what they stand for, with dignity.” She goes on to say, drawing on Dr. King, “Just as hate cannot drive out hate, contempt cannot drive out contempt. Only dignity can do that.”

This message hits home. I recognize how contempt drives division, undermines unity, and pushes us further into polarization. And I imagine many of us struggle with being dismissive, or denigrating those we disagree with, especially when we are angry. And sometimes we are rightfully angry - feeling a kind of holy anger when we see people and communities we love, values we cherish, being violated.

So how do we let this anger lead us to action and struggle for what is just, without the need to belittle or denigrate those we disagree with?

Well, remember that sometimes the preacher preaches what she needs to remember too. It is hard in this time of not just polarization, but a time when our loved ones are truly put in danger because of the dehumanizing rhetoric and dangerous, life-threatening policies of this administration and too many state leaders.

You are not hearing me argue we should be passive or silent in the face of injustice. Rather, how do we learn a deeper practice of both pride and humility - when we rise up proudly for our lives and the lives of our neighbors and siblings, and where we rise in defense of this earth, and continue to do so in a way that doesn't shift us into repeating patterns of superiority, but rather lifts up more possibilities for the future and for humanity as a whole?

It's why the messages of Blaise Pascal and Rev. Dr. King are so important. The extremes don't serve us if they lead us to dehumanizing the other. No, we need to understand how to hold both pride and humility together, or as King says:

“The strong [person] holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militants are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”

This is the humility we seek to understand and cultivate - one that understands that pride is not the opposite of humility. For it is good and right to honor our lives, our gifts, who we are. True humility is the ability to recognize our own gifts without them making us feel superior, and to celebrate, honor, and learn from the gifts of others.

In this rediscovering of humility, we find joy and confidence and mutuality and a way to honor our own and all life with much more care, attention, and reverence. And, it is this form of humility that is so desperately needed in our culture - to be seeds of change for a hopeful and thriving future for all children and for their children.