Bible Text:

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”          (Matthew 5:5)

A certain boss complained that he was getting no respect from his staff. He went to a local sign shop and bought a sign that said, “I am the boss” and taped it to the office door. Upon coming back from lunch that day, he found a post-it note attached to the sign. It read, “While you were out, your wife called. She wants her sign back.” 

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw tells a delightful story on himself. He was wandering one day through Bloomingdale’s in New York City. He had just arrived at the pinnacle of his career. He had been on television first in Omaha, Nebraska, then Los Angeles, and then Washington, DC. Now he was in the prestigious position of evening news anchor on NBC in New York. He was feeling pretty good about himself, celebrating the benefits of his celebrity. 

A man in Bloomingdale’s kept looking at him. Brokaw was sure he was about to receive some kind of accolade. “You’re Tom Brokaw, right?” came the question.

 “That’s right.”

 “You used to do the morning news on KMTV in Omaha. Right?”

 Brokaw responded affirmatively. He waited for the laudatory comments that were inevitably to come. “I knew it the minute I spotted you,” said the man. There was a pause. Then he asked, “Whatever happened to you?” 

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

 Harry Truman used to tell a story about what happened to him soon after becoming president. Veteran politician Sam Rayburn took him aside and gave him this advice: “From here on out, Mr. President, you’re going to have lots of people around you. They’ll try to put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but their own. They’ll tell you what a great man you are, Harry. But you and I both know you’re not.”

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

I imagine that when Jesus spoke this third beatitude, the jaws of the hearers dropped open. They were surprised to hear Jesus say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” They were perplexed when he said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” But with this one, their jaws dropped and just hung open for a while.

I can even imagine there might have been some murmuring in the crowd. You know, the kind of low rumble that takes place when somebody says something that is disconcerting. Meekness is not a particularly popular principle. It was not popular in Jesus’ time, nor is it popular in ours.

 In two weeks the movie “Terminator 3” will appear in the movie theaters. It’s another of those Arnold Schwarzenegger action films. If I had a little more media savvy I might show a clip from “Terminator 1” on the screen in the sanctuary this morning. It would show the very end of the first movie, where the Schwarzenegger character says in his Austrian brogue, “I’ll be back.” 

In some ways that’s a more appealing image for many of us. We are not particularly impressed by “Blessed are the meek.” 

For us this beatitude may tend to mean, “Blessed are the timid,” or “Blessed are the spineless, the submissive, the subservient,” or “Blessed are those who have no assertiveness training, or “Blessed are the ineffective,” or “Blessed are the mild-mannered and the soft-spoken.” 

Someone once even said that “Blessed are the meek” literally means, “Blessed is the geek!” 

Is this what Jesus is saying here? Is this the kind of life-changing attitude that comes in Jesus “Little Instruction Book for Life”? 

People might have listened a little more closely if Jesus had said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit heaven.” However, Jesus did not say that. He said they shall inherit earth. This is a here and now instruction.

Translators have played with this a bit. One translation reads, “Blessed are you if you do not assert yourself in such a way as to take advantage of others.” I think I like that. Another says, “Blessed are you who are content with who you are—no more, no less.” Perhaps so. A third says, “Blessed are you who claim nothing for yourself.” 

There is probably no perfect translation. Let me look with you at two possible meanings. These two meanings are complementary to each other. 

ACCEPT GOD’S GUIDANCE 

First, I think Jesus meant blessed are you who accept God’s guidance in all things. Meekness implies obedient humility before God. That’s why I chose the title from one of our Sunday night choruses for this morning’s message. “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” The beatitude means, “God, I accept the fact that you are in charge.” It means letting go of the controls, allowing, and trusting God altogether. 

There is a whole section in our hymnal on the theme of trust. If I counted correctly, there are at least two dozen hymns on that theme. One of them has a refrain that some of you will recognize, “Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him now.” 

Multiple forms of secular training are available to most of us. We can take assertiveness training or life planning courses. We can take motivational training or time management instruction. None of these are bad or wrong in themselves. But Christian discipleship stands in quiet, sure contrast. Discipleship is training in turning one’s life over to God. 

Do you recognize the name of Lisa Welchel? Some of you may. She is married now and has a different last name. But in the early 1990s she was one of the stars on TV’s sitcom, “The Facts of Life.” She played the part of Blair—a kind of arrogant, rich young woman. In real life Lisa was a beautiful young woman trying to find her way in the Hollywood arena. She was also a woman committed to maintaining Christian values. As you can imagine, that would not always be an easy thing to do. 

Her pastor asked her one time how she did it. This was her response. 

Well, you know, I feel that all the values the Lord has laid down for us are really for our own benefit. And if we think that we want to do something contrary to those values, well, that’s fine, but we’re only going to be hurting ourselves when we give in. God knows the future, and God knows why He set down certain rules. I feel that the Lord is just. Like he says, He is our Father and He is looking out for us. So long as I can remember that God’s rules are only for my good, and for my own happiness, and that God knows better than I do, then they are easy to adhere to.[i] 

Meekness is the confidence that God is always in charge. Meekness is the confidence that no matter what happens, you can yield to God’s guidance. Meekness is the confidence that God is at work for good in your life. And meekness is the confidence that you can be open to that good as the guiding principle in all of life. 

STRENGTH WITH GENTLENESS

Jesus also means, blessed is the one who has great strength, but who chooses to use it gently. William Barclay says, “Meekness is the virtue of a person to act with gentleness when he or she has the power to act with stern severity.” Meekness is the gentleness of great strength. 

A high-powered business executive was checking into a hospital for a brief stay. He was barking orders left and right. He was demanding attention. He was making calls on his cell phone. Along the way he met a nurse who put a small identification bracelet on his wrist. “What’s this for?” he demanded in a surly voice? 

The nurse replied softly, “This is so we don’t give you to the wrong mommy when you’re ready to go home.” 

Meekness is the gentleness of great strength. It is the parent who can easily overpower a child, but who chooses to act gently. It is the ability to be genuinely and appropriately angry, but to act on that anger without violence. That’s why Paul says, “Be angry but do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger.” 

Robert Schuller has the capacity (or uses some writers with the capacity) to come up with clever phrases that have some unusual alliteration. Listen to this one: “Passionate persistence without impertinence produces progress.”[ii] 

To have great strength, but to act with gentleness, is the way of Jesus. 

I can’t help asking myself whether or not this can be applied to a nation as well. If so, meekness is the grace of a nation of undisputed might that acts with judicious gentleness. 

We know that we in the United States have the power to subdue or destroy. What happens if we choose to walk the path of gentleness and patience? 

We know we can overpower tiny nations like Iran and North Korea. There is no question about that. But can we wisely (and prayerfully) choose the path of a gentle national spirit? 

There is a quotation from Shakespeare that reads this way: “It is good to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”[iii] Could this be the foundation of a national foreign policy? 

I must admit I am disheartened by some of the arrogance coming out of Washington, DC these days. I do not necessarily speak of the president, but I do speak of some of his top advisors. The opposite of meekness is arrogance. There is some dangerous arrogance being spoken in top levels of government. Arrogance is a spiritual matter, not a political matter. 

The practiced non-violence of Martin Luther King, Jr. never meant social impotence. It was strength with gentleness. Moses, the Old Testament leader, was a humble man. The writer says of him these words, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3) But Moses was obviously a formidable leader. 

Jesus possessed the absolute power of God in his being. But Jesus chose the path of absolute gentle servanthood. Is that a paradox? Of course. But it is worthy of reflection and modeling. 

Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who place themselves totally under the guiding hand of God. Blessed are those who use their power—or choose to use their power—gently. 

Does this sound like some kind of pious idealism? Maybe to some. But my friends, it is the call of God to every moment of life, and in every moment of history. This beatitude is knocking at the door of our hearts. It is knocking in this generation as never before. 

Blessed are the meek. It has just a bit of the sound of some lunacy. But it is the call of the Master of our souls. And it contains the promise of an undisputed quality of life. 

Amen.