The Strength of the Meek

"Life is this simple", said the twentieth century Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything -- in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it."ⁱ

Thomas Merton's understanding of God suggests that there are at least two layers or dimensions of reality: one dimension of reality is the visible world of our ordinary experience. Another dimension of reality is that of the Spirit, or the Sacred, or God. How else can we make sense out of our lessons today, especially The Beatitudes? The Beatitudes turn the rules of this world not just upside down but inside out as well. They suggest to us that everything we know is wrong. But we know what we know. And we've experienced what we've experienced. And in our experience, the world doesn't work the way Jesus says it does today. If we were to write beatitudes according to this world, they might sound like the version J.B. Phillips rendered:

Happy are the "pushers": for they get on in the world.
Happy are the hard-boiled: for they never let life hurt them.
Happy are they who complain: for they get their own way in the end.
Happy are the blasé: for they never worry over their sins.
Happy are the slave-drivers: for they get results.
Happy are the knowledgeable people of the world: for they know their way around.
Happy are the trouble-makers: for they make people take notice of themⁱⁱ

How could the Beatitudes Jesus preached possibly bear any truth unless they referred to another reality -- a reality which, most of the time, we just don't see? How is it, for example, that the poor in spiritwould possess the kingdom of heaven? How is it that those who mourn could be blessed? How is it that the meek could possibly inherit the earth? How does any of this make sense -- unless there is another dimension to reality that Jesus is referring to, and we just don't see it -- at least most of the time?

Last Tuesday, two completely separate groups of folks studying all the words on the back of today's bulletin, independent of each other, both got stuck on this verse: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." What does that mean and how do we make sense of it? In hockey, a "meek," one of you said, is someone who wimps out. When we hear the word meek some fairly unattractive images come to mind. Like the organization "Dependent Order of Really Meek and Timid Souls." The acrostic made from its first letters reads "DOORMATS." The doormats have an official insignia -- a yellow caution light. Their official motto is: "The meek shall inherit the earth, if that's OK with everybody!" The name of the book that spells out the details of this organization is titled, "Cower Power." At one point on Tuesday, we wondered if when Jesus said the meek will inherit the earth, whether he meant that the "panty waists" would be left holding the ball of all the pollution and the effects of global warming.

We laugh, and yet we also pause. Like last week, when we met the disciples dropping everything to follow Jesus, this week our Gospel once again gives us reason to just write all this off and not take it very seriously. Leave these lessons in our Sunday morning compartment and move on with life as we know it -- as it really is. Wink wink. Or so we think. Don't tell us that green is red and red is green, when we know better.

We might write off these beatitudes for another reason too. We may tend to think of them as one more thing we're supposed to do and be. If the ideal is in some sense achieved, then a reward is granted. God's people should be meek, and if they are meek, then they will be blessed by inheriting the earth. Well if you start to add all these together, the demand gets pretty overwhelming. We're pitched high standards and then left with a sense of failure because we cannot achieve what these beatitudes demand. The blessing becomes totally elusive. ⁱⁱⁱ We throw up our hands and say, "Why even bother?"

But -- if we dig for a moment into the text and realize the setting in which Jesus is teaching, we might get a different picture entirely. Eugene Peterson, in his translation in The Message helps us understand what's going on more clearly. Peterson translates: When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. The image that came to mind for Andy Amstutz was that of a locker room pep talk -- where Jesus, the coach, gathered his team around and offered encouraging words of promise. Now we see that a beatitude is first and foremost a blessing promised by God to those people who already are what the beatitude describes. It's a description, not a demand.

Jesus' disciples have been hanging around Jesus enough by now that they've seen this other reality from which he comes and to which he points. The other dimension that he embodies. They've already bumped into that other reality. The meek, the mourning, the merciful, hear Jesus' words as words of encouragement and reassurance, not as one more thing they have to do to win God's favor.

On Tuesday, when we dug a little bit deeper into the word meek, we discovered even more. Without repeating the sermon about humility that we heard last fall, we discovered that to be meek does not by any stretch mean to be a milquetoast, a wimp or a doormat. On the contrary, meek means strength under control. And, as I did some further digging, I discovered similar understandings: meekness is controlled power. It is strength restrained by love.

Viktor Frankl is a famous psychiatrist who survived the Jewish concentration camp at Auschwitz. He said, "They took my clothes, my wife, my children, my wedding ring. I stood naked before the SS. I realized that they can take everything in my life, but they cannot take away my freedom to choose how I will respond to them." Stephen Covey draws on Frankl's experience in his best selling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Effective people, he teaches, cultivate a space in between the stimulus and their response to it, so that they are not simply reacting from their reptilian brains but responding out of a cognitive choice. It sounds very much like our new understanding of meekness to me.

But not quite. Because meekness is clearly not just about self control, as valuable as that is. To be meek is to open that space between stimulus and response, but to open it to the spirit of God, and let God's presence and power fill it. And then let our response be informed by that presence and power that comes from that other dimension of reality -- the dimension of God -- not the dimension of this world. Many of you are much better at this than I am. Paul Williams comes to mind as someone who is really good at this. And I'm grateful to be learning from you as we serve together.

Another way to think of this is to remember how the word meek was used in the time of Jesus. "Meek" described animals that were naturally wild, but had become domesticated -- animals who had learned to accept control by their masters and were properly behaved and therefore useful. The word harness comes to mind. To be meek is to allow our power and strength to be harnessed by the Spirit of God. A meek horse is not weak or shy, or like an old plow horse that allows people to beat it. A meek horse is an animal with great spirit, but a spirit that is submissive to its rider.^iv

Celtic Christians espouse a metaphor of "thin places." Celtic Christianity flourished in the British Isles beginning in the fifth century. A "thin place" is where this other dimension of reality, the realm of the spirit, or of God, meets the realm we live in most of the time. "This world," as we sometimes say. Thin places are places where the boundary between the two dimensions of reality becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold God. We experience the one in whom we live, all around us and within us.^v

Interestingly, the word used to describe the process of training a horse into submission is to "break" it. And so for us, it often takes a "breaking" of our spirits for us to see that other dimension, and then to allow, in that space between stimulus and response, for the spirit of God to fill us and direct the choices we make. Times of serious illness, suffering, persecution, and grief can become thin places. They do not always, of course; but sometimes our hearts are broken open by such experiences. ^vi And when they are, Jesus says, "Blessed are you! For you know that this world and its ways are not all there is." Depending on how you look at it.

Bernadette Randle, a cancer survivor, talks about the blessings she experienced from having cancer. "Were I to reduce all my lessons to one concise moral," she says, "I would use these letters: G-O-D-I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E." As you can see, it can be read, "God is no where!" Or "God is now here." ^vii Blessed are you, Jesus says to us today, when you read these words and see that God is now here. Such is the strength of the meek.

Pastor Dana Runestad
30 January 2005
Fourth Sunday After Epiphany
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Livonia Michigan

ⁱQuoted in Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering A Life of Faith, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003, p. 155.
ⁱⁱ Quoted in a discussion guide for Philip Yancey's book The Jesus I Never Knew
ⁱⁱⁱWalter Brueggeman, et al, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV-Year A, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press, p 125.
^iv Explored in a sermon by John Yates at The Falls Church. http://www.thefallschurch.org/sermons/2000sermons/000924jy.htm
^v Marcus Borg, pp. 155-156
^vi Marcus Borg, p. 156
^vii Marcus Borg, p. 156

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