“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (5:5).  I’ve said before, I’ll say again: I do not like this word meek.  I suppose no one wants meek to be the first adjective that comes to mind when someone thinks of him or her: “Oh, Richard?  He’s so . . . meek.”  “Who, meek little Carrie?”  Too shy to look you in the eye.  Might as well say pushover, milquetoast, no force of personality.  Always there but never noticed, kind of like God.

Yes, people noticed Jesus, what he said, what he did.  Jesus always made an impact.  Jesus speaks of himself as meek (Mt 11:29 KJV), though different translations give the same Greek word as humble or gentle.  We took a closer look at humility a couple Sundays back: the poor in spirit; those walking God’s road to life, walking on God’s terms.  The meek do not put themselves first, do not insist upon their way.  The meek are living examples of that love Paul so perfectly describes for us at the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.

William Barclay takes time to delve into this word, meek.  He describes how the Greek word at the back of it has to do with balance: that careful, skillful high-wire walk between too little and too much.  Not so easy to maintain.  Barclay suggests that the term Jesus uses, which we hear as this measly little word meek, has to do with accepting guidance, obedience to instruction and command, like a skillfully-trained horse.  When I was in college, I had just enough extra income from my job to afford riding lessons.  I was started out on the old, broken-down school horse, Tookie: poor beast.  When I got a little more skillful, I got a horse with a little more spirit—which means he required a little more control, a firmer hand, a firmer seat.  Using the spurs—when they would let me have them—was always strongly discouraged.

Then, one day, my instructor had a surprise for me: she told me I would get to ride her horse, a show horse.  I wasn’t so sure, but the student does what the instructor says, so I mounted.  The horse started going this way and that: to the side, back, the other side.  I had no idea what was wrong with that crazy horse.  My instructor thought it was hilarious, and I guess it was: I was doing everything I knew just to keep the horse still, but how I was sitting, how I was holding my legs against the horse, how I was (mis)using the reins, were telling the horse to do about six things all at once, and the horse was going to do its best to do all of it.  When I could, I dismounted and walked the horse back over to my instructor.  That was a lot of horse.  A well-disciplined, obedient horse.

Who is in control, what is in control, matters.  Even the meekest horse can look like an out of control wreck if the wrong hand is on the reins.  And if you think for a moment that show horse was a weak animal, well, you didn’t see that fine horse.  Meek, and powerful, and beautiful.

Jesus was meek—that’s how he speaks of himself.  Do you believe he was powerful?  Now, the power was of a particular kind: the power that comes from submitting—I guess we can say surrendering—to God, who is power.  God gives power to those who surrender their power to His power.  He blesses those who learn to accept control, those who learn to be obedient to His command.  I guess we all know the value of being self-controlled.  Someone who is out of control is a danger to himself and everyone and everything around him.  What even we Christians have a ways yet to go in learning is the value of being God-controlled, which means governed by God’s Word.  The controlling power in the life of a Christian is what?  God?  Love?  Grace?  That’s all included, of course, but how do you and I become aware of God and God’s love and God’s grace?  The Spirit?  There are many spirits, beloved.  God’s Spirit does what no other spirit will do: God’s Spirit makes God’s Word The Word for us.  The controlling power in a Christian’s life is the Spirit-animated Word of God, by which God opens all things to us, for us.

Now, we can’t expect that God’s Word would be the controlling force in the life of anyone not in Christ, those who are not Christian.  And this also points to one of the key problems in the church today: too often God’s Word is not the controlling force.  Political allegiances and planks in the platform take precedence.  Contemporary cultural values take precedence.  God’s Word will simply have to conform to such higher allegiances.  We’ll do anything but accept and submit to the Word of God when it doesn’t conform to our culturally-conditioned notions of goodness, kindness, compassion, equality, and justice.  Among those who claim Christ are those who undermine this Word, downplay it, ignore it, explain it away, even reject and deny it.

Blessed are the meek.  The meek person is not strident.  The meek person is not full of self-will, self-satisfaction, self-assertion, self-assurance.  The meek person is genuinely teachable, knowing he or she does not know.  What can you teach someone who knows all he wants to know, who doesn’t want to know anything more or anything other than what she believes already?  We have a habit of jumping to the therefore long before we’ve given ourselves time to sit with God’s Word, listen, and contemplate what has been said.

Barclay suggested that “all true religion begins with a realization of our own weakness and of our need for God.”[1]  Jesus was always clear that he could do nothing for those who needed nothing from him.  “I have not come to call the righteous,” he told the crowds, “but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:32).  We’re told that, in Nazareth, “He could not do any miracles [. . .] except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.”  And “[h]e was amazed at their lack of faith” (Mk 6:5-6).

Plenty of people are very aware of their own weakness, despite all the rhetoric out there about reminding ourselves of how strong and independent and capable we are.  That rhetoric is so strident because the need is so keen, yet the one place that provides the help people need most—church—is the one place from which we’re all strongly encouraged to stay away.  It’s all lies, wishful thinking, politically reactionary, wrongthink!  Besides, I’ve got better things to do on Sunday.  Have you ever heard someone say they get their church someplace other than church?  It’s usually outdoors somewhere.  What that means is the person does what he or she enjoys, and this person does not enjoy church.  Burt Bacharach wrote a song about the world needing love, sweet love (1965); I guess he never would have gotten airtime with a song about God, sweet God.  George Harrison sang so memorably and chart-toppingly about wanting to know his sweet lord (1970), though the lord he was singing about was Krishna of the Hindus.  The need for outside help is there, still, though thwarted and always being re-directed by the self-destructive powers at work here below.

It’s no shame to admit weakness, lack, need.  It’s not cowardice.  It’s not lack of resolve.  It’s not self-doubt.  It’s self-awareness.  It’s meekness.  If you dislike this word meekness like I do, it may be because, like me, meekness feels too close to weakness, and I’m proud enough and stubborn enough not to want to be thought of as weak.  But I am weak in all too many ways, and it’s meek Jesus who helps me admit it.  It’s taken my meek Lord to help me seek the help I need, without which I cannot live, the help and hope that come with the self-surrendering love of God.

Meekness, then, makes much of self-knowledge: always a work of time and the Spirit.  Meekness also takes a lot of patience, which is one of the most blessed of the Spirit’s generous, gracious blessings.  Patience is also self-restraint.  Maybe a more gracious way of saying self-restraint is self-control, better yet, God-directed.  Proverbs says, “Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city” (Prov 16:32, NLT).  The powerful, conquering warrior battles others, attacks external obstacles.  The patient person battles himself.  Viking warriors would work themselves up into a frenzied state they called berserk—out of control violence.  In his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, British science fiction author Anthony Burgess wrote about “ultraviolence”: violence without even the thought of restraint of self-control, self-discipline.  We seem to be seeing a lot of violence in our society.  Life without restraint.  The meek person is the one getting the wild self under control, by God, the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  At the heart of meekness isn’t timidity or absence of character.  The heart of meekness is the character of Jesus Christ: God’s gift to us by life-giving faith.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] William Barclay.  Gospel of Matthew.  Vol. 1.  1956.  Daily Study Bible.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975.  97.