Blessed Are The Meek

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
Blessed are those who mourn,
Blessed are the peacemakers

And today, blessed are the meek.

You’ve already had a few moments to consider what meekness might be. Let’s spend a moment or two thinking about what meekness definitely isn’t.

(At this point we watched a clip from 'The Apprentice' where the candidates are introduced in all their arrogant glory!)

Rhona and I don’t sit down to watch much TV together, but the Apprentice is one of the few programmes we just can’t miss. There’s something absolutely compelling about watching folk like that falling flat on their faces week in and week out.

I’m sure the TV production company egg the contestants on, but they all come out with this utterly arrogant tosh at the beginning of the series and part of the fun is seeing Alan Sugar puncture their egos when they make a mess of the tasks they’ve been assigned to.

They start out the series pumped up, aggressive and ruthless because they believe that’s the way to get on in business, and to a degree they’re probably right. But even in the hard-nosed world of Lord Sugar and his ilk, too much of that’s not a good thing.

The most aggressive contestants are often the first to be fired because they haven’t got the skills to get on with other people. And the ones who do best tend to be the ones who learn a little humility and humanity along the way.

Arrogance, in all its forms, gets peoples’ backs up. A lesson, perhaps, for any billionaires planning to make substantial investments in the North East of Scotland.

We don’t like arrogance. But equally well, the jury’s out on ‘meekness’. It’s not a popular word in our day and age. It carries overtones of spinelessness or timidity. If someone described you as meek, I’m not sure you’d take it as a compliment.

So part of what I want to do today is redeem that word, because in the ancient world, and in the thought world of the Old and New Testments, meekness was seen as a virtue, and not a failing.

Aristotle thought of virtue as a happy medium between two extremes, and meekness – the Greek word ‘praus’ – is exactly that.

Aristotle observed that there are folk who are too easily angered, and folk who don’t care enough to get angry about anything. In his view, ‘meek’ is the word that describes the person who gets that balance right. The person who gets angry at the right time about the right things.

And there’s clearly something in that. Gentle Jesus meek and mild took children in his arms and blessed them, but he also threw the tables over in the Temple courtyard and chased the moneychangers out with a whip. Angry at the right time about the right things. Measured, in other words.

That same idea is found in a nautical use of the word ‘praus’. A meek wind, was just what you were needing if you were a sailor. You didn’t want a gale that could wreck your ship, or a light breath that wouldn’t carry you anywhere. But a fair, strong wind – a ‘praus’ wind - was just right for making progress.

So we can see right away that meekness isn’t the same as weakness. Meekness is strength that’s measured and under control.

Another everyday usage of ‘praus’ in the ancient world came from farming. Horses or donkeys which had been broken and tamed for use were described as ‘meek’. They were both controlled and controllable. They could get things done.

Sometimes the word was used in medicine. Doctors spoke of a ‘meek’ remedy, which was one that was soothing and could take away pain.

But more often than not, meekness was held up as a virtue against pride. The meek person was aware of his or her limitations and was teachable, unlike the proud person who thought he or she knew it all.

Quintilian, the great Roman teacher of oratory once said of a class he was taking “they would no doubt be excellent students if they were not already convinced of their own knowledge!” Had he been living in our day, he would have been tuning in to the Apprentice!

So contrary to what we might have thought, it’s good to be meek.

And when Jesus said “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”, his original hearers would have picked up on something straight away. They’d have heard echoes of Psalm 37 which says almost exactly the same thing.

The Psalmist urges his hearers not to worry when they see the wicked or arrogant prosper, and not to try and copy them. Why? Because in God’s good time, “the humble will possess the land, and enjoy prosperity and peace”. Or as it says in other translations: “the meek shall inherit the earth”.

Now throughout Psalm 37, the writer contrasts the way of self-reliance against the way of meekness or God-reliance:

Self-reliance/ God-reliance (meekness)
Fretting / Trust
Envy / Contentment
Anger / Delight
Scheming / Hoping
Impatient / Patient
Restless / Settled
Prosper Now / Prosper in Future
“Driven out” / “Inherit the earth”


Throughout the Scriptures, Old Testament and New, this is writ large time and time again so we don’t miss it. If we rely on our own strength and ignore God we’ll find trouble, If we admit our need, and make room for God, we’ll find blessing.

Now let’s pause for a moment and remember to whom Jesus was speaking that day. A mishmash of a crowd, and closer to hand, his own disciples. Was this a message they needed to hear?

Do you remember the four ways people responded to the threat of Rome?

Pharisees – all about purity. They were angry and worried, scheming in the background. Envious of Jesus’ popularity.

The Herodians – all about compromise. They wanted to prosper now by making alliances with Herod and with Rome. They were worried about their place in society.

The Zealots – Impatient for change; Angry at living under occupation. Plotting revolution.

And the Essenes – They fretted about sin and were restless for change, so they washed their hands of everybody else and tried to set up their own Utopian societies in the desert.

Not much meekness or trust or patience evident in those responses.

And we might have expected better from the disciples, but they didn’t have a monopoly on meekness either.

The brothers James and John were nicknamed “Boanerges” which means “Sons of Thunder”. Judas and Simon had revolutionary tendencies, and Peter was just Peter – bumbling and barging his way through life like the big burly fisherman he was. Opening his mouth and putting his foot in it almost every time.

Remember how Jesus caught them arguing about which one of them was the greatest? And the time James and John cornered him and asked him if one could sit at his right hand and one at his left when the Kingdom finally came? The very opposite of meekness. They needed this teaching too, these young Apprentices.

And so do we,

Perhaps some of us will be naturally inclined to meekness. But I think most of us will have to stir ourselves in one of two ways.

Remember what Aristotle said about meekness as a virtue – it’s always found somewhere in the middle of two extremes?

Maybe those of us at the timid end of faith need to find the courage to stand up and be counted. Doing nothing and saying nothing while professing faith is not meekness. It’s weakness. As the Irish politician Edmund Burke reminds us, “All that it takes for evil to prosper is that good people do nothing”.

And maybe those of us at the more vociferous end of the spectrum need to learn to tone it down a bit. Not to bully or cajole with our words. Not to present every option in the form “it’s my way or the highway”. Not to act like we always know it all, but to swallow our pride and become teachable.

If you cast your eye across the pages of the Scriptures, it’s staggering how many of the leading lights were, in their own way, meek individuals. Moses had a stammer; Jacob was always second best to his brother Esau, the alpha-male; David was the runt of the litter; Ruth was a refugee; Jeremiah was just a scared young lad when he was called to be a prophet; Mary was an unmarried teenager when she gave God her yes.

It’s reminding me of an old adage you’ve heard from me before: God doesn’t need our ability. He needs our availability, In the light of what’s been said this morning, maybe we could put it this way. God doesn’t need people who think they know everything. He needs folk who are humble enough to learn. People who are meek.

This Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of my ordination. And I spent the year leading up to that as an apprentice, working with a minister called Martin Forrest in Possilpark in Glasgow. I hadn’t intended to do my probationary year in the inner city because in the long term I didn’t see myself in that kind of ministry, but I really liked what I saw of Martin and his church and knew he’d be a good guy to learn the ropes from.

I’d had some exposure to inner city ministry prior to that, but Possil was a notoriously bad area, even for Glasgow. Crime and drugs and all that goes with them were endemic. Martin had between 80-100 funerals a year and many of them were drug or violence related deaths. And I remember talking to Martin right at the beginning of my time there and wondering aloud whether I would be tough enough to survive fourteen months there, full time.

“It’s not about being tough” he said. “There are more than enough tough guys in this parish. That’s not what people here need. They need somebody who can be kind and listen to them and treat them with respect.”

Crucial words for me, right at the beginning of my time there. That’s exactly how Martin was with folk, and that why, after 13 years of service there, he was missed as much by the community as was by the church.

“Blessed are the meek” says Jesus. “For they shall inherit the earth”.

Not the pushy ones. Not those who court the powerful, or take up arms, or act tough, or think they know it all. The meek.

And when will they inherit it? In God’s good time. It may be a long time coming. But the future, in him, is certain.

One last observation before I go, in the form of a question. Why is it the meek who inherit the earth, and not some other group of folk?

As I thought about that, I remembered a key scene from the Lord of the Rings movies.

In the story, a Ring of immense magical power is forged by the dark Lord Sauron. The ring is lost, but after millennia it’s finally rediscovered and a council of all the races of Middle Earth is called to decide what to do with it. Some want to use it as a weapon against Sauron, others want to hide it somewhere safe, but it becomes clear that their only real option is to destroy it in the volcanic fires in which it was forged. But who will bear the ring on this quest? Can anyone be trusted with it, or will its power corrupt them and see them using it for their own ends?
Old enmities come to the surface as the meeting descends into a shouting match. The different races can’t agree about who will bear the ring.

And in the midst of all the chaos, a Halfling called Frodo – a member of the smallest and least significant race – steps forward and offers to carry the ring to its doom, and quite possibly his own. His courage and humility shames the others into silence, and they agree to his becoming the ring-bearer.

And what we come to understand later is that Frodo is exactly the right person for the task, because he’s the only one who didn’t covet the ring for himself.

In Tolkein’s story, the meek one is given the ring.
In God’s story, it’s the meek who inherit the earth,

The reason’s the same in both cases, I think:

the meek are the only ones with whom it can be trusted.

Amen, and thanks be to God.

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Prior to sermon we watched an excellent video clip by Poppy Scotland in which veterans reflect on their experiences in the forces and in war. The opening quotation picks up on the last line of the video.


“I wish to God somebody would just sit down and say “let’s stop this carry on”.

I first saw that clip a couple of years ago and it’s stayed with me ever since. Not only is it beautifully made, it sums up a great deal of what needs to be said on Remembrance Sunday.

It reminds us of the courage and camaraderie of the men and women who served, and serve, in our armed forces. It gives us some idea of the burdens they carry – the heavy responsibilities and terrible memories that they have to live with. And it reminds us of the sheer waste of war and the awful consequences for our world when nations or governments or neighbours decide they have no better option than to fight one another.

“Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain” says the Psalmist.

Why indeed?

It strikes me there are only a handful of reasons why wars are ever fought: greed for land or natural resources; enmity for people of a different race or religion; or fear of the consequences of not taking military action.

Very rarely, wars are fought to restore justice or protect the innocent, but by and large, most wars start because of greed, enmity or fear. And if you wanted, you could distil that down even further into one good-old fashioned Biblical word – the word ‘sin’, which is shorthand for leaving God out of it and going our own sweet way.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

Because of sin. The basic problem of the human heart. A problem that sets us against God, against one another and even against ourselves: bringing division and robbing us of peace. And it has always been so.

In the Genesis story, we’re told that in the beginning, Adam and Eve were at peace, walking with God in the cool of the day. But then comes the famous incident with the apple. The newly created humans go their own sweet way. And what happens? Division. God blames Adam. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, innocence is lost and harmony evaporates.

And the sins of the fathers are visited on the children.

Eve has two sons, Cain and Abel. Abel offers an acceptable sacrifice to God, Cain doesn’t. Cain gets jealous and decides to murder Abel. And God says “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”.

And it still cries out to this very day; from the gutters of Baghdad, the hills of Helmand Province, the back streets of Belfast, the ovens of Auschwitz, the beaches and fields of Northern France, the grassy plains of Africa; from every place where blood has ever been shed in anger.

And with a remarkable unanimity, those who’ve fought in and survived these wars find themselves echoing the last soldier’s words in the video we’ve just watched.

“I wish to God somebody would just sit down and say “let’s stop this carry on”.

Well somebody did sit down; 2000 years ago on a hillside in Galilee; with a group of folk around him as divided and diverse as they could possibly be.

Orthodox Jews, pagan Gentiles, city dwellers, country folk, rich and poor, righteous and unrighteous.

And on seeing that crowd, rife with cultural, religious and social tensions, Jesus spoke these words: “Blessed are the peacemakers. For they shall be called children of God.”

We’ve been speaking about the Kingdom of God these past few weeks, and part of what the Kingdom’s about, is you and I learning to heal the divisions that opened up in Eden. Learning to choose the way that leads to peace, even when that way is immeasurably tough.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

I wonder what you think of when you hear the word ‘peacemaker’? Perhaps like me you’re thinking of some worthy individual in khaki fatigues sitting down in a tent somewhere, trying to get two warring sides to agree.

Or someone in a suit, patrolling the halls of the United Nations building, whispering urgently into the ears of the politicians and generals who hold the balance of power in the worlds’ conflict zones.

Whatever truth there is in those images, I don’t think that’s what Jesus means us to take from these words.

It’s much more down-to-earth than that. It’s about how you and I are in daily life. Are we the kind of folk who divide and polarise, or the kind of folk who draw people together and bring unity? Are we troublemakers or are we peacemakers? Willie Barclay puts it this way – “Blessed are those who work for right relationships – for they are about God’s work”.

You see, the way of the world since Eden, is to reduce things to the comfortable falsehood of back-and-white certainties. We’re right, they’re wrong. We’re good, they’re bad. We’re chosen, they’re not chosen. God loves us; God hates them.

We’re expected to take sides, because that’s how things work in a fallen world. You have to choose sides, they say. Are you with us or are you with them? Black and white.

But here’s the thing – if God has met me, in all my ambiguity, in all my mixed motives and incompleteness, and if God has spoken into all of that, and declared his love for me despite all that I am, how can I deny God the right to speak into others lives in the same way, even if I think of them as my enemy?

When you really get a hold of the grace of God – or better still, when the grace of God really gets a hold on you – suddenly the world doesn’t seem as black and white as it once did. You’re less ready to pigeonhole; to give up on people; to assume the worst. Because God hasn’t pigeonholed, or given up on, or assumed the worst of, you.

The more you begin to see others from God’s perspective, the more reluctant you are to judge them or condemn them. It sounds terribly wishy-washy and liberal doesn’t it?

But it sounded that way on Jesus’ lips too. Later on in this same chapter of Matthew’s gospel he says: “You have heard that it was said, “Love your friends and hate your enemies”. But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil”.

“But God – don’t send your rain and sunshine on those people! You know what they’re like. Don’t bless them. Bless us! We’re your children”.

“And they too are my children, though as yet they may not realise it. And if you come at them in my name with hatred and venom and fear, is it any wonder they get confused about what my love is like?”

How do you come at people? How do you view and respond to them?

Troublemakers can’t see beyond the differences and divisions between folk, and they deal with people accordingly. Greed, enmity, fear, argument, progroms and war follow.

Peacemakers see further, because they see the other with the eyes of God – a God who wants nobody to perish and everyone to come to repentance and faith. Healing, reconciliation and true peace – shalom – follow.

Want to know which you are this morning? Troublemaker or Peacemaker? Look behind you. If there’s a trail of argument, fall-outs and grudges littering your past, maybe that’s your answer. And maybe today’s word is a word for you. It’s not too late to change, but you’ll need God’s help to do it.

But let me finish with one more observation. Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers. He doesn’t say “Blessed are the peace-lovers”.

We all love peace, but in a world like ours it has to be made. Peace will not fall into our laps. It has to be worked for.

And the temptation is always to sit back and not deal with things, supposedly in the interests of peace, when what’s really needed is that we take the bull by the horns and deal with situations instead of avoiding them.

There’s a high cost in that. Because sometimes, in working for peace, you ruffle feathers that need to be ruffled. You expose things that others would rather sweep under the carpet because you know that real peace isn’t possible until everyone faces up to reality.

As I was thinking about today, it struck me with renewed force just how ironic it is that one of Jesus’ titles, according to the prophet Isaiah, is the Prince of Peace.

When you take a look at his life and ministry, it strikes me that it was anything but peaceful. The ongoing battles with spiritual evil, the very public spats with the Pharisees, the plotting and scheming that went on among his enemies, the controversy that followed him almost everywhere he went. And then, at last, of course, his arrest and scourging and crucifixion.

That’s what the world does to peacemakers.

But right ‘til the end, what’s he doing? He’s doing what peacemakers do. He’s trying to reconcile people with one another and with God.

He looks down and sees his mother, weeping: standing beside the beloved disciple, John. And feeling her loss, he says – “Take this man to be your son. John, take this woman to be your mother”.

To the thief, dying beside him and finally admitting his guilt, he promises reconciliation with God – “Today you will be with me in paradise”.

And in a black-and-white world where we’re taught to hate our enemies, he prays that those who nailed him to the cross might be reconciled with God: He says “Father, forgive them. For they don’t know what they’re doing”.

Blessed are the peacemakers, said the Ultimate peacemaker. For they shall be called children of God.

Where in your little corner of life, is there a need for a peacemaker?

At home, maybe? Or at work? In the clubhouse, or in the boardroom?

Someone who can be strong enough not to take sides, and risk falling foul of everyone because you refuse to caricature people. Someone who refuses to write people off. Someone who can say what needs to be said in the right spirit, rather than shooting from the hip and aiming for maximum damage.

It’s a costly way to live. But it’s the Kingdom way. And it leads both to blessing, and to peace.