Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth
Again, I’m puzzled by these beatitudes. They’re kind’ve like a song or a set of statements you will nod and agree with because it resonates with your soul, but when it comes down to it, actually thinking about what they mean, they’re quite tricky.
It’s often been stated that these 9 sayings are the manifesto for the rest of the sermon on the mount and therefore fundamental for the christian life. These get developed in the didache which is a book of teaching the early church formulated to help with the question “how then shall we live?” They’re practical injunctions for us to do what is good in this world, to live out love in this world.
The Sermon on the Mount is a speech in the Matthean Tradition where Jesus spoke to those who followed up the side of a hill overlooking lake Galilee. It’s likely that it’s a conglomeration of teachings that Matthew has compiled into one sermon to make a point—and that point is that how we think we need to live is actually not how it’s best to live. A vision of the kingdom of heaven is one where God’s love, divine love is the foundation upon which we build our life, our values and our action.
However, that we have it in this form and embedded in a narrative takes nothing of its force away, rather it gives it more force and makes it more enduring—which I think over time we begin to understand.
A quick recap on where we’re up to then.
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Those who mourn
And the meek…
Obviously to understand this we need to define meek and also what inheriting the earth might mean.
Contrary to how some view scripture, this is not simple and straightforward—in fact, this is a really twisty turn beatitude. Professor William Barclay came up with three understandings of the word meek which I’ll share with you. They overlap I think, but they’re very different emphases.
The first reading is based on Aristotle’s understanding of virtues.
For Aristotle, virtues were seen as the true way between extremes (the Golden Mean). Take an emotion or feeling and you can see the vices of deficiency and of excess. The virtuous disposition sits in between them. Have a look at this wee chart.
| Feeling/Emotion | Vice of Deficiency | Virtuous Disposition (Golden Mean) |
Vice of Excess |
| Anger | Lack of spirit | Patience | Irascibility |
| Shame | Shyness | Modesty | Shamefulness |
| Fear | Cowardice | Courage | Rashness |
| Indignation | Spitefulness | Righteousness | Envy |
Aristotle: “Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy”
Anger seems to be a good lens to look at this through as most of us will identify with times we’ve completely lost our nut at someone but also when we’ve held our anger in check for the benefit of peaceful encounter. We’ve also experience the lack of spirit or apathy toward many things that we perhaps should be angry about.
To do it well is what is asked of meekness. And the consistency of how we do it is a sign of good character.
It does at the heart of it seem that self control, particularly in the area of misdirected anger—or apathy. Meekness is not inactivity or neutrality. Its baseline is goodness not status quo. But meekness has the gravitas of knowing one’s self and one’s limits to be able to be a change agent in conflict.
To quote Barclay yet again because he’s just so on point with this stuff:
a general rule for life that it is never right to be angry for any insult or injury done to ourselves; that is something that no Christian must ever resent; but that it is often right to be angry at injuries done to other people. Selfish anger is always a sin; selfless anger can be one of the great moral dynamics of the world.
Meekness is the happy medium between too little anger and too much so Barclay suggest the following translation of the beatitude:
“Blessed is the one who is always angry at the right time, and never angry at the wrong time.”
The second meaning is where the word is translated in an agricultural sense. It’s the where say a horse has been broken in and accepts that it is ok to be controlled by someone. A taming that, rather than being disempowering, allows for trust in a human that its best interests are in fact being looked after in their hands.
Perhaps a better analogy for people is in team sports. At some point, for the sake of the team, you will have to let go of autonomy to achieve the success together. It’s not a suppressive act, but a guidance for a greater good that if you break from can create chaos.
We often talk about this as self-control. Similar to the Aristotelian golden mean, there’s an internal wisdom that holds our impulses, passions, desires, monkey brains in check.
Blessed is the one who has every instinct, every impulse, every passion under control. Blessed is the one who is entirely self-controlled.
The third way of reading this is possibly more familiar. Meekness is true humility, which again is an accurate appraisal of oneself. It doesn’t self-deprecate, is not ashamed of success and is also satisfied with doing well. Even in the greatest success it still sees the humanity of those around it. Greatness is of no interest to humility.
In the Christian tradition, humility is also understood by cosmic context. “I am created by God—and that without God, I am nothing.” My success is not my own—it is a gift from God. Conversely my failure to accept these gifts from God will result in dissatisfaction.
I think this is why I like the hesyachastic prayer method that has at its core the Jesus prayer. In our contemporary setting the word ‘sinner’ has terribly burdensome, punitive and primitive associations. Pietists turned it into a blunt instrument to control people at the expense of their humanity.
Humility has no issue with praying this for it accepts the accuracy of it without carrying the burden of wounded pride that would see it as a judgement.
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
As Barclay comments, “Blessed is the [one] who has the humility to know [their] own ignorance, [their] own weakness, and [their] own need.”
Puts the right cosmic order in place.
In reading for this the following proverb from proverbs 16:32:
Proverbs 16:32 (NRSV) One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.
There’s something powerful when in the presence of those slow to anger: calm. There’s something disempowering when in the presence of shouty anger: chaos.
I wonder then, if the blessing condition is meekness, then what do we make of the promise of inheriting the earth. What exactly does that mean?
Again there are many interpretations of this and it’s ambiguous, but I wonder if it means that, when all is said and done, they will be the “last one standing”. I guess that from the word inherit which in my mind is when all the blustery ones are exposed, the earth which is solid and stable will be left in the hands of the meek. Dunno.
O the bliss of the person who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because they are God-controlled, who has the humility to realise their own ignorance and their own weakness, for such a person is true royalty for humankind!
But this is too long. I invite you to talk about what you might think would be a good translation.