The sermon I am going to read this morning is by Meg Riley, senior minister at the Church of the Larger Fellowship. I wanted to share her message because she has something important to say about humility. I admire and appreciate what she has uncovered, and I have not yet found a way to say it in my own words.
First though, how many of you have seen the Netflix comedy special “Nanette”? I highly recommend it, it’s very funny, but more importantly, it deals with questions of identity in a brave and honest way. Hannah Gadsby is the comedian in the special, and she is a lesbian. I admire her work, and I have been tempted to emulate her… beyond just copying her hair style. One of the patterns of her performance is that she’ll tell a joke or a story that makes everyone laugh, and then double back to explain why the humor should make people feel not only amused, but also uncomfortable. For example, she asks “What sort of comedian can’t even make the lesbians laugh? Every comedian ever.” But then she goes on to point out that “(lesbians) have to laugh, because if we don’t, it proves the point.” This “classic joke” serves to reinforce oppressive ideas about gender and sexuality, to reinforce the idea that women who dare to transgress the male-centric, male-serving gender roles assigned in a patriarchal society are humorless fun-slayers. And if you think liberals are somehow immune to this, come talk to me about the Prairie Home Companion joke show sometime. Sexism is ingrained in every facet of our culture.
Like I said, I have been tempted to emulate her style and to try to make some of my own points through this sort of tell-and-explain maneuver. But a big reason why it works for Hannah Gadsby is that she uses intense personal experiences to illustrate the damaging effects of that sexism and that homophobia. She weaves together stories and jokes with accounts of the harassment and assault that she has suffered in public as a lesbian.
One of my favorite things about being a UU minister is that I am not in this alone. I’ve struggled since this summer with how to incorporate Gadsby’s message into a UU framework; Rev. Riley, who is a lesbian herself, has done it with clarity and efficacy. She connects it to the practice of humility in a way that was instructive for me. I hope it will be helpful for you, also. Without further ado, the words of Rev. Meg Riley:
Humility by Meg Riley, senior minister of Church of the Larger Fellowship:
Perhaps you watched the comedy special on Netflix by Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, entitled “Nanette.” If you didn’t, perhaps you’ve seen some of the media coverage about it, using words like “game-changing” and “comedic revolution.” Gadsby delivers a show which is part comedy and part deconstruction of comedy, particularly related to gender and sexuality. (She is a lesbian who identifies as female but is often mistaken as male.)
One of the most quoted lines of Gadsby’s show is: “I have built a career out of self-deprecating humor and I don’t want to do that anymore. Because do you understand what self-deprecation means from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility. It’s humiliation.”
As we explore the theme of humility this month, Gadsby’s words keep coming back to me. When does what appears to be humility become participation in your own humiliation, and when does it not? If a famous, rich, man acts normal and kind we notice with something like amazement, and marvel to one another about how much humility he has. If a poor, unknown, woman acts normal and kind, we might think she should be grateful if we notice her at all. So, what does it really mean to be humble?
The old joke has a rabbi going into the synagogue and crying out to God, “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!” Then the cantor comes in and cries, “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!” Then the janitor comes in and cries, “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!” The cantor nudges the rabbi and says, “Look who thinks he’s nobody!”
“It’s not my place to be angry on a comedy stage,” Gadsby says. “People feel safer when men do the angry comedy; they’re the kings of the genre. When I do it, I’m just a miserable lesbian ruining all the fun and the banter. When men do it, ‘heroes of free speech!’”
Humility and humiliation come from the same root word, related to humus, earth. And yet our experience of the words is vastly different. Humility radiates from our own center; humiliation is done to us. Humility means we are grounded, of the earth; humiliation is being ground into the dirt. The opposite of humility is arrogance. The opposite of humiliation is respect or honor.
Though we tend to think of humble as our own orientation toward ourselves, when I reflect on it, the people I know who are genuinely humble stand out not because they think little of themselves, but rather because they think with genuine regard of other people. And the people who humiliate other people often seem to do so because they actually have low regard for themselves and want to feel better by putting others down—they don’t think they can afford to lift up others without looking worse themselves. Both humility and humiliation are team sports.
Gadsby is right that self-deprecation might be humility, or it might be humiliation. What can’t be so twisted is sincere and abiding respect for others—not seeing ourselves as either superior or inferior, but rather as simply one among many whose needs and gifts are also important.
When I reflect on it, the most gifted, intelligent, respected, people I know are also humble. This doesn’t mean that most of them don’t have pretty healthy egos. It does mean, however, that they also know and value other people in the worlds they inhabit, for whom they also exhibit great respect.
My favorite singer ever, Ferron, sings in her song “Proud Crowd/ Pride Cried”:
A friend tried to find me and saw through to my wheel
She said you’re now on the bottom, it’s either that or
the top
You can keep yourself tiny and bang on the big door
Or take the space saved for the queen of the hop…
I’ve always envisioned that wheel she describes, the interplay of “I’m the greatest/ I’m the worst,” as a Ferris wheel, and whether someone is riding high on the top at the moment or down at the very bottom, they’re still on that wheel. We’re all kind of stuck on it, we who wrestle with our egos, and ever shall it be. But perhaps in some ideal world we’d just announce we were dizzy and climb out of the little car.
[Slowly]
We’d climb out of the car where our feet had been dangling and we’d sit on the bank next to all kinds of other people, knowing we were one among many, knowing that each of us had gifts and each had liabilities, each held an important piece of the puzzle but not the whole thing, each needed the others to be whole and human. On that bank, I think we’d know real humility.
May it be so, and may we be the ones to make it so.
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
December 23, 2018
© Rev. Jonathan Rogers