Matthew 5:5, Isaiah 40:9-11,
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
You have to be careful with words. They’re living things. They grow and evolve and change. They mean one thing yesterday, another today, and still another tomorrow. You just can’t put a word down and expect it to stay where you put it.
Such a word is the word ‘meek’. Meek has changed its meaning drastically over time. Now it comes to us so tainted, so burdened with baggage, that we’re almost guaranteed to misunderstand what Jesus is trying to tell us. No wonder that more recent translations of the Bible use other words. The trouble with them is that no one English word will give the meaning required.
Back in the day, according The Oxford English Dictionary, the word meek carried the sense of “gentle, courteous, kind. Free from haughtiness and self-will; piously humble and submissive; patient and unresentful under injury and reproach.” Sounds like a characteristic that Jesus would pronounce a blessing on.
But ask most people today what this word means and they will tell you bluntly, “Meekness is a hat-in-hand, foot-shuffling, what-ever-you-say demeanour that people with no confidence and no self-respect adopt. Meek people are mild, harmless and ineffectual.” Yet it is probably easier to describe meekness as Jesus intended it than to find a word to take its place.
Meet two meek men
All of us are encouraged to be meek, but only two Bible characters actually were.
The first is a man who was raised rich and powerful. He was accustomed to giving commands and having them instantly obeyed. He was prone to fits of anger. He once killed a man with his bare fists. He ordered hundreds of people to be put to death. He did not shrink from conflict or fear facing people who didn’t like him. This was no fearful, hand-wringing, indecisive doormat. This was no soft-spoken, diffident, timid soul who would never think of imposing or demanding or insisting. Moses was a powerful figure – strong-willed and bold, a leader. And God called him the meekest man on the face of the earth.
Perhaps the clearest instance of Moses’ meekness was the burning bush incident when God told Moses to go back to Egypt and lead his people out of slavery. Moses didn’t want to do it but in the end he said, “I don’t want to go. But I will go because you command me. It’s not what I want. But that’s not really important. What you want is what matters most to me.”
This resolution shows why God called Moses meek. It wasn’t because he was particularly gentle with everyone around him or the kindest man alive. Certainly it wasn’t because he was a wimp and let people walk all over him. Moses was meek because, when what he wanted and what God wanted went in different directions, Moses chose to walk God’s way. He learned to say, “not my will, but yours be done.”
The other man the Bible calls meek was audacious enough to call himself meek. He was forceful and opinionated. He demanded obedience from his followers. He railed against those who disagreed with him. He took on the religious and political powers of his day. He was so confrontive that, in the end, his enemies decided the only thing to do was to get rid of him. There was nothing indecisive or timid about the carpenter from Nazareth. Jesus was a powerful figure – bold and abrasive and supremely confident. So how come he described himself as meek?
One incident shows us what meekness is all about. On the last night of his life, surrounded by olive trees and some sleepy disciples, he prayed an anguished prayer. Jesus didn’t want to die but he was resolved to obey his Father. “I don’t want to go. But I will because you command me. It’s not what I want. But that’s not really important. What you want is what matters most to me.”
The way the prayer in Gethsemane concludes shows why Jesus could claim to be a meek man. It wasn’t because he refrained from harsh words or refused to make hard judgements of the people around him. Certainly it wasn’t because he rolled over every time someone differed with him. Jesus was meek because, knowing what he wanted, clear about what he preferred, aware of what he would like to do, he yielded to the will of God. He, above all others, learned to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
What about us?
Primarily, meekness is a posture we adopt in the presence of God. Meekness is surrender, abdication, and yielded obedience – but not the kind given by the weak to people who are stronger and more powerful. It’s the surrender of self-will to God’s will. It’s the abdication of self-rule to God’s rule. It’s the commitment of spiritual paupers and the broken-hearted to yield control to God.
The word translated as meek was used by the Greeks to describe a domesticated animal, one that would obey commands. In their wild state horses are beautiful and independent, but useless to humans. They can’t be ridden and they won’t pull a cart or a plough. They have the strength to do it but they lack the will. They would rather munch grass and roam free.
But take a horse and tame it, and that horse becomes meek. It goes where you tell it to go; it does what you tell it to do. It doesn’t become weak and timid and mild. A good horse has spirit even though it wears a saddle. All that has changed is that the horse and its strength is brought under control. It no longer demands to do what it wants.
Human beings in our wild state may be beautiful and powerful and proud. But we are useless to God. We do what we want to do when we want to do it. We have the capacity to serve but we lack the will. We pursue our own agendas.
But let God take those same humans and tame us, and we too can become meek. We can learn to go where God tells us to go and do what God tells us to do. Tamed by God we don’t lose our strength and vigour and vitality. We don’t suddenly become anaemic and timid. We simply become disciples. Our will is brought under his control. We are tamed to the purposes of God and we learn to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
The biggest hassle is that meekness takes more strength than many of us can muster. Truth be told the best of us are only half-meek. We are incompletely tamed to the purposes of God. Every so often we go off on our own and refuse to answer to God’s call. We have a sin-break. Until we wake up to ourselves and come contritely back to God confessing another bundle of disobedience. Thank God for forgiveness and fresh starts!
Application
Get from God an accurate assessment of yourself and be happy with that. The Message Bible puts it well: You’re blessed when you‘re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
Prayer
Teach us to control our impulses, passions and desires. Teach us our ignorance, weakness and need. Give us a true perception of ourselves. Give us the humility to accept ourselves, to be what you will make us and to do what you would have us do. Amen.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
I’ve done a fair bit of tramping (in some countries this is termed hiking), and I’ve eaten quite a few meals concocted out of dehydrated food and cooked over a tiny stove. Every one of those meals tasted good, and we always lapped them up, but I’d never eat that stuff at home. What made those meals delicious was not the quality of the food – though it is amazing what can be produced by a capable cook. What made the difference was the hunger of the trampers! And it is hunger that Jesus is talking about in this beatitude.
When it is dinner time we will tell the cook, “Please give me some food.” When we are really hungry we will say, “Hey, I’m starving to death here. Give me food!” We feel like we will die any minute if we don’t eat. This is the kind of attitude that Jesus is talking about. He doesn’t say, “God blesses those who are interested in a bit of righteousness.” He says, “God blesses those who are desperate for righteousness!” It is total hunger for total righteousness. [Ellicott]
OK, so what is righteousness? ‘Righteousness here refers to all spiritual blessings. They are ours because Jesus Christ has purchased them for us – we share the righteousness of Christ. To become a new person, to bear the image of God, to be part of Christ and receive God’s promises, to become holy – this is righteousness.
‘And just as hunger and thirst recur daily, so our need for God is continuous.‘ [Matthew Henry] “Only those who have a real passion to be right with God, who feel their very souls will perish without it, have any real chance of attaining it.” [Moffatt]
When we really are hungry or thirsty, satisfying that hunger or thirst becomes a consuming passion that overwhelms everything else. Jesus says we are to have this attitude towards righteousness. We should long to live in a right relationship with God, to be seen as righteous by him and to see his righteousness in the society around us. It is not enough to live a Christian life when we feel like it and do what we like at other times. You know there are people who use religion like a bus – they are only on board when it is going their way. Not for us, says Jesus. A righteous life is one that is righteous twenty four hours a day. It is an integrated Christian life which is lived out in an ongoing relationship, with God affecting everything we do, say and think. [NG]
I’ve decided that these Beatitudes go in pairs with the first of each pair focusing on the mind and the second on the heart.
1. get real about sin; 2. and heartbroken about my sinfulness.
3. submit to God; 4. passionately.
This fourth beatitude is about passion for the things of God; it’s about hungering for God. Isn’t that what Jesus meant when he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength”?
The problem with many of us is that we are not that desperate. We don’t want to pay the price. We say, “Lord, make me holy, but take your time and don’t let it hurt, if you don’t mind.”
But, hang on, we do know what it is to be passionate. There’s plenty of passion focused on a little event going on in Shoji at present. Think of it. Athletes will give up years of their lives, subsist at poverty level, rise early to train in rain or snow, restrict their diets, push their bodies to painful limits, consult sports psychologists, endure injuries and fatigue, and sacrifice relationships, careers, and any other vestige of a normal life – all to satisfy their craving for Olympic gold or world records. The rest of us will buy into sky, install a big-screen tv with surround sound, and spend countless hours in front of the tube – so great an appetite for such a trivial thing.
Sport is not the only thing we get passionate about. There are plenty of others. And our problem is that our passions revolve around what are, in the light of eternity, tiny and unworthy things. We are quite capable of giving the best of ourselves to matters that, ultimately, don’t matter. God desires us to soar like eagles, but many are content to scratch like sparrows.
So where are the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness? Where are the contemporary saints who go to the same lengths for holy things as so many others go to for sports? Some of them are right here. Humility forbids their standing up, but I know that many of us are in the list. Maybe we come and go a bit, but we are in the hunt. Our culture doesn’t make heroes out of men and women who are passionate about doing right and becoming godly people, but they are among us. How do I know? because I am praying that God will make me one of them and I know others who are doing the same.
Getting hungry
A hunger for righteousness is an acquired taste. Unlike craving for food, an appetite for holy things must be developed. It doesn’t come naturally.
So how do we develop a taste for righteousness? Psychologists tell us that to develop healthy addictions or to train our passions, we think our way into acting, and then act our way into feeling. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been doing this for 8 weeks or 80 years the principle remains the same. You can’t command yourself to be passionate about right living and the things of God. But you can make decisions and take action. If this is you, try these three steps.
First, use your head. On a daily basis, consider how much God loves you, how much he has forgiven you, how much he has blessed you. (Gratitude is a pretty powerful motive for righteous behaviour.) Choose some specific goals to work on (regular church attendance, a particular sin you need to overcome, a holy habit you’d like to develop), and then make intentional commitments to act on those goals, whether you feel like it or not. Write your goals down and refer to them daily.
Second, act better than you feel. Let your head do the driving for a while rather than your heart. Do what you decided to do in order to incorporate that holy habit into your life.
Finally, leave the passion to God. Trust that he will honour your attempts to please him with the gift of passion for holiness. Look for ways God is shaping your appetites. Notice when vice loses some of its appeal. Be aware when ‘ought to‘ becomes ‘want to’. Recognise God’s work in your life and give him the glory for it.
It is God who inspires the desires and it is God who satisfies them.
You may find it helpful to pray this prayer with me:
Father, I don’t hunger for you as I should. So many other appetites, so many other passions, compete with you in my heart. Forgive me, Father, when I let petty passions overwhelm my longing for you. I’m ashamed when that happens.
Lord, I want to want you. I hunger to be hungry for you. Teach me your ways. Show me your will. Instruct me in the path I should walk. Grant me the strength and the discipline to live better than I feel, to follow you even when I would rather do something else. Let me learn meekness – to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
But then, Father, grant me the gift of passion. Take my week intentions and feeble efforts and transform them into a consuming passion for you. Fill me with a zeal for you that captures my heart and directs my life. Let my gratitude for what you have done for me fuel a burning desire to live for you. I love you, Father. Help me to live like it. Amen.