Beatitudes: Like God are the meek…
Beatitudes: Like God are the meek…
…for they will inherit the earth.
The Greek word for “meek” here considers power that is under control. It can particularly be pictured as the taming of a wild animal. Think of how a lion can be brought to heel or an elephant can be taught to be contained with a mere rope.
Even God’s power, his omnipotence, is tamed. As one theologian has said it, “God is omnipotent* (with an asterisk).” This is because God is Love, his nature is loving, so his power falls under the control by his love. God is the most powerful, but even God’s power is tamed or checked - his power serves and submits to his love.
God is meek.
Thus, as we also become meek, taming our power and bringing it under the control of Love we are becoming like God.
In a world ruled by power, this Beatitude can be difficult. As we work to bring our power to heel and strive for meek lives, it can seem like we are simultaneously watching everyone else unleashing every bit of power they have to grasp and clutch for gain on top of what they already have accumulated.
In the world we currently live in, meekness can feel a lot like weakness while the world seems to fall under the control of those who are willing to flex their power to take from and run over others.
God knows what it looks and feels like to be meek. It looks like defeat, abandoned by friends, hanging on the cross, having lost at everything according to the way the world operates. It feels like the meek will lose the world and that is why he ensures to inform us here that the meek will gain the world in the end, just as Jesus has.
The deeper grain of the world, hidden under the millions of slaughtered bodies, is the way of Love - power tamed by Love, meekness, will win the world in the end because it is the true way of the world.
Weakness is not found with the meek. The meek are the ones brave enough to trust God and see things his way.
One theologian put it this way:
“Biblically, meekness is… making choices and exercising power from a divine rather than social point of reference.”
The old woman with the black crust of bread had a choice to make. She had the power to let the horrible Nazi soldier go hungry and the power to feed someone’s starving son. The power of choice was in her hands, and rather than make the social choice from the view of those around her who were jeering at the defeated soldiers, she made the meek, divine choice to exercise her power on behalf of a hurting, hungry human being.
Her power to hold onto her piece of bread was tamed and guided by divine Love - she was meek, like God, incarnating him into her flesh and action that day.
Real meekness becomes possible as our third step in the Beatitudes, only after we have first come to a poverty of spirit - setting aside our advantages - and subsequently become sensitive to pain - to mourn for ourselves and to mourn for others.
Only then is our power truly tamed to be exercised with meekness, without the superiority of privilege and without understanding the pain in us and others.
Once we are like God in meekness, we will join God in craving righteousness…