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.