Thoughts on the Beatitudes, Part 5: Blessed are the meek; they shall inherit the earth.

OK, let’s get this out of the way. When I am driving behind you on a two-lane, double yellow line road and you are poking along at five miles per hour over the speed limit OR LOWER, I am not a good person. In such situations, my children are known to rightly chide me and call me out. “Chill, dad!” is their righteous admonition. But I don’t do chill in my voiture. Someone once told me that it’s my “prophetic personality” coming out. Whatever.

The same reactions arise when I read about certain events, political opinions or decisions, personal views, and cultural trends. I quickly envision the administration of holy wrath that the actors or speakers more than deserve. I write scathing denunciations in my head, engage in astounding feats of oratorical legerdemain, and demolish every argument advanced in answer to my unassailable logic. I begin to warm up to the designation: A prophet indeed.

As usual I find that I am missing the mark, whether on the road or in my response to headlines. In my militant indignation I lose sight of the promise to the meek – that they will inherit the kingdom. I am more at home with forceful conquering by the self-assertive. In light of Jesus’ words, I need to reconsider how he wants to subvert my proud determination to set the world in order on my terms rather than on his.

This promise of inheritance is our first clue to understanding meekness. The kingdom of God is a gift from the Father that he freely bestows on his children. In the “now” of our lives as disciples, we have an assurance of all the love of a father who, when we ask for bread, will not give us a stone. That we are not beggars in God’s City – that we don’t have to struggle and fight for our portion of the Lord’s bounty – is an integral part of our being his heirs.

But beyond today there is even more to God’s gift. For when the Lord brings to a close the temporal universe, the meek will inherit the earth. This statement is reminiscent of Psalms 37, which concerns itself with how true Israelites live in expectation and trust that God will give them the land in which to dwell securely. The psalmist depicts the patient waiting of those who hope in God in the face of a world that often honors wickedness and injustice.

The challenges to patience and to believing God’s promise are varied and constant. They range from the petty (the time that my wife Joanne returned to her shopping cart in Wal____ to find a woman throwing out all Joanne’s merchandise and claiming the cart for herself) to the more consequential offenses that we experience personally or vicariously (bullying, slander, discrimination, oppression, undeserved reproach or anger …). In the midst of such individual and global affronts to our humanity, Jesus declares that meekness trains us for the peaceful endurance that brings us safely to our inheritance.

What, then does meekness look like? We can begin an answer by considering two figures – Moses and Jesus – who stand out as those specifically described as meek. Numbers 12:3 says that “Moses was more meek than any man on the face of the earth.” The word translated “meek” is also used of poverty or humility; at root, it means lowly or afflicted. The claim for Moses’ meekness occurs in the midst of opposition to his leadership by Miriam and Aaron. Instead of pushing himself forward – as he had the right to do – he allows the Lord to intervene and determine the outcome. Later, in Numbers 16, Moses faces a similar uprising by men who accuse him of self-serving in his governance of Israel. Again, he eschews the path of insisting on his position, rather relying on God to defend and uphold him.

What I find interesting is that Moses apparently did not begin as a particularly meek man. When we meet him in the second chapter of Exodus, he is busy murdering an Egyptian who has beaten a fellow Israelite. Moses’ reaction is an entirely free-reign display of his emotions without proportionality or reason. Even if he had been right to intervene, his solution is not that of meekness. The consequences are striking: The very next day, as he attempts to play peacemaker between two men, Moses finds that violently taking the law into his own hands is a serious obstacle on his path to leadership and ministry.

Jesus – as the Beatitudinal Man – goes beyond even Moses in meekness. In Matthew 11, he says of himself that he is “meek and lowly of heart.” Peter tells us that “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). The reference is to Messiah before and during his crucifixion, enduring insults, shame, nakedness, and scorn without retaliating or answering in kind. His posture was submission to the Father and mercy even toward those who treated him with hatred and contempt. Contrary to Moses’ leadership failures, Jesus’ demeanor makes him the perfect one from whom we can learn the way of true freedom.

All this leads us to a definition of meekness (and to an understanding of how to eventually build it into my driving habits). It seems to me that meekness is surrendering our lives to the Father in the midst of difficult circumstances that we cannot or should not influence or control. Meekness is especially challenging when we are either certain that we are right, or could otherwise control events or people by our own strength and will.

We should be clear that being meek does not mean the abdication of godly purpose and action. It does mean that I don’t need to assert myself where God is not asking me to, or to insert myself where he is not calling me to. Meekness allows us to act boldly when that is our place; but we do so in submission to the Lord and to outcomes that do not depend on us. Meekness is not an excuse for passivity, but a curb on our unenlightened zeal. As such, it is something that bears fruit both internally (in my mind, heart, and emotions) and externally (in my words and behavior).

So when I am tooling down the road behind all you slow pokes, meekness enters and brings God’s peace to my spirit and I can rest in him. And when I want to counter every idea with which I disagree; or correct every grammatical error that I hear; or fume and stew over every news item that stains the public airways; or push my agenda on others, meekness calls me to believe that God is able to bring his purpose to pass, even when the world seems literally hell-bent on preventing him from doing so. In this way, meekness walks as the companion of hope, and keeps us from the all-consuming anxiety and fretfulness of our unmoored age.

In the end, we are happy not when we trample about bearing the weight of our own crowns, but when we walk freely under the gracious and light yoke of Jesus. Servants, not kings; at peace, not waging our reactive wars; loving reconciliation, not vindication. These are some of the fruits of meekness that come from the Meek one himself.

Oh – and driving along behind you in the slow lane without losing my cool.