Meek. What sort of word is that, anyway? Sounds like a mouse: “meek, meek, meek.” Kind of looks like one, too, as Andrea Skowronski pointed out to me the other day. Rhymes with “weak.” I go looking for definitions, I find things like “overly submissive or compliant,” “spineless or spiritless,” “deficient in spirit and courage,” “easily imposed on,” “tame,” “lacking in self-assertion,” and “docile under provocation from others.” So . . . blessed are the wimps? Blessed are the doormats?
In a word, no. Meekness is not weakness, and it has nothing to do with being “deficient in spirit [or] courage”; though it does have to do with being poor in spirit. We might say that if we are poor in spirit toward God—if we find all our riches in Christ, if we let go our self-protectiveness and self-defensiveness and just follow him, trusting that he will take care of us—then we will be meek toward those around us. Meekness is expressed in how we exercise our strength, to what purpose we use our courage, and which Spirit is guiding us as we do so. The meek are not those who are never angry, because anger has its proper place as a response to injustice; rather, the meek are those who don’t let anger drive them to sin.
There are two aspects to this. First, meekness is strength harnessed to the will of God, serving his purposes rather than our own desires. It doesn’t mean we don’t get angry when we see injustice done—even when that injustice is done to us; this is not about making ourselves victims—but it means that we submit ourselves in humble obedience to the authority of God. We give up our claim to pronounce our own judgment, and we renounce any right to demand—or inflict—punishment on others, but we do not simply accept injustice. Rather, we let God’s justice judge our sense of justice; we let him be the one to decide if we’ve been done wrong, and we leave the doing of justice in his hands.
Thinking about our strength harnessed to God’s will, Andrea gave me a good image this week for this. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about horses; we see a lot more sheep imagery in the Bible than horse imagery because sheep were a lot more common, so you don’t get this in seminary. In dressage, which is a form of equestrian competition, there’s a movement called piaffe—basically trotting in place. As Andrea explained it to me, “It’s very physically demanding because horses are built to move forward. In this movement, the horse pushes off almost straight up with two diagonal legs (for example: left hind and right fore). Ideally, he actually hovers in the air for a moment before landing and pushing off with the other diagonal pair. Since the horses usually used for dressage can easily weigh 1200 pounds, it requires a great deal of strength. However, it also requires patience and complete trust in the rider.”
Second, meekness is strength restrained by the human will submitted to God, so that—while we do not try to enforce our own idea of justice—we become agents of God’s justice. Kenneth Bailey, in his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, notes that this was an important concept for Aristotle, who defined meekness as “the virtue of acting halfway between recklessness on one side and cowardice on the other. . . . The one who is truly [meek] is the one who becomes angry on the right grounds against the right person in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.”
Part of this is that the meek are those who have learned the self-control not to just react when they are challenged or attacked. We talked about this a little during Advent, that when we perceive a threat, instinctively the fight-or-flight reaction kicks in; either we counterattack, or else we back down, deny, pass the blame, or just plain run. By the grace of God and the work of his Spirit, however, we can learn to stop and catch ourselves—and once the impulse to react rolls past, to think and pray, and do something constructive. Of course, it then remains to follow through in obedience to the will of God; but once the first reaction is over, that becomes much easier.
Now, note the blessing Christ pronounces on the meek: “they shall inherit the earth.” Or, as his original hearers would have understood it, “they shall inherit the land”—which is to say, the Promised Land, the land of Israel. The Jews believed the land was theirs simply because they were the descendants of Abraham; the Romans believed it was theirs because they’d conquered it. The family of Herod considered it theirs because Rome had given it to them to rule. There were those in Israel—the Zealots—who were planning to make it theirs by taking it back from the Romans. They actually thought they would be able to do it, and so not too long after Jesus’ day, within the lifetime of his disciples, war would break out between them and the forces of Rome.
In contrast, Jesus says, no, it isn’t those who have the right ethnic heritage who will inherit the land of God’s promise; it isn’t those who would claim it by brute force and the willingness to kill, either. Joining the Zealots who sought fiery revolution wasn’t the way to go, and neither was supporting the corrupt powers that be. Instead, Jesus says, God’s promise will be fulfilled to those who aren’t seeking it for themselves and their own gain. You don’t inherit the land, you don’t receive the promise of God, by seeking the promise; you only receive it by seeking God, his kingdom and his righteousness.