Blessed Are The Meek/ Those Who Release Their Power

What does it mean to be strong? To have power? Perhaps someone with a fair amount of muscle, great intellect, or a lot of money and the right amount of influence? How do you envision strength and power?

Chances are, you likely wouldn’t describe strength and power using the word meek. Have you ever used the word outside of Scripture or even thought about it? Rebekah Eklund says we usually think of a meek person as someone who is passive or timid, someone who doesn’t stand up for him/herself. The meek one is mild, unassertive, and intimidated. While I don’t use the word meek in my everyday conversation, I too thought of it as a synonym with weakness.

Weakness is one without power, one who holds no influence, one who is dependent or vulnerable. We do not bless the timid and powerless ones, and yet here again, we find Jesus saying the opposite. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessing the vulnerable ones and the ones without power is what drew author Micha Barton to the beatitudes. In her book Blessed Are the Rest of Us, she talks about her son Ace who has Down Syndrome, is autistic and nonverbal. She went to the Beatitudes longing for a place where her son was included.

She shares in detail about how his classmates have learned to interact with him and understand him even though he isn’t speaking and wonders where does my son fit in, the one who doesn’t follow the rules of society’s expectations?

She says” I wonder if Ace is the free one, unable to meet our cultural expectations of what makes a good life. And he lives as a nondemanding presence for the rest of us, reminding us that we don’t have to meet those expectations either. Maybe that’s what Jesus is spelling out for us: blessed are the ones who have been released from the pressure to win.

Micha came to the Beatitudes hoping to find a place for her son in the dream of God. She held onto the fact that Ace, “despite being the last to speak, the last to use a crayon, and the one spinning a lid alone in a classroom, is the first in line in this dream.” She says “I want Ace, my powerless child, to have the honor of inheriting everything he can’t earn himself, everything the world says doesn’t belong to him.”

Do you know anyone like that in your life? Have you ever felt dependent and powerless? I think of my time in nursing home administration and the residents I served. I think of those who needed help with bathing and dressing and eating and taking their medicines. I think of the beautiful souls who could no longer remember their loved ones names or at times even their own name.

Blessed are the ones without power, the vulnerable ones.

But is this the only way to understand this beatitude? If we consider Jesus as meek: one minute he is gentle and lowly and the next he is flipping tables. He both identifies with the poor and shares harsh words with religious leaders. We know that Jesus had power, but perhaps it is more about how he chose to use it or even lay it down.

It might surprise you to know that long before we understood meekness as weakness, it was considered a virtue of strength. Prior to around the 18th century, meekness was a form of power, not weakness. What kind of power am I referring to? The power of exercising self-control, of not losing one’s temper, or one who knows how to pick their battles. Meekness in this sense began to be seen as the middle ground between the extremes of anger and spinelessness. Meekness is when you don’t return evil for evil, when you exercise patience, when you yield your ground to others and to God. Meekness is about exercising self-control in all areas of life, including what you do with your own power and influence.

Micha said the more she thought about this beatitude, it is more in line with humility than weakness. If that is the case, she says maybe this beatitude is also for those of us who have power, to invite us into a new way of living. She suggests meekness as a spiritual practice, “as having access to power but choosing not to wield it for oneself. It’s holding back our control, our comfort, our voice, in order to give that privilege to another.” The Greek word we get the translation of meek from actually can reference a wild animal that is being tamed. Practicing meekness is when we practice laying our power down for the sake of another. It is an intentional act of joining the powerless.

Here we are on Father’s Day, a day when we celebrate fathers and other father figures in our lives. We can expect a lot from these men in our lives and without near as much fanfare as we create around Mother’s Day. I don’t know how you are celebrating these fathers and father figures in your life this year. Maybe this day is hard for you or a day of remembrance of that special father in your life. I wonder what it would look like to celebrate some meekness this father’s day.

Not a celebration of intellect or brute strength or even who can make the best meal on the Blackstone grill but a kind of love that sets its power down. When I think of my dad, I think of his patience with customers most would overlook, those who struggled with mental illness, who could barely afford their medicines, or who were blind, widowed, or an disabled. I remember making deliveries with him after work, driving house to house in all manner of weather. I watched him stay on the phone repeatedly with insurance companies trying to ensure coverage for someone. For years, he served at the free clinic in town trying to help those without access to basic medical care.

And then there is my precious husband Jim whom I have the joy of watching as a father. I watch him set himself aside so often to bring joy to the lives of our girls, whether it is building a swing set or painting nails or making breakfast or planning a trip or helping to study for homework or taking their hands and speaking words of encouragement and love to them.

Perhaps you have some stories of your own, of someone who has shown you the strength of patience, self-control, and care for the vulnerable.

In our study of St. Francis that meets each week, we have learned about how he intentionally began to live among the lepers. Everyone thought he was a madman and didn’t know what to do with him. They didn’t know what to do with someone who gave up power and privilege for poverty and the company of leprosy. To be honest, I’m not sure we are any closer to understanding it today. It is still a shock to our systems. Others in history have intentionally lived among those society seems to skip over. Henri Nouwen lived at the L’Arche Daybreak community (a community for adults with intellectual disabilities) the last 10 years of his life as their pastor. Similarly, one of my dear mentors spent 25 years of his ministry serving the mentally ill and well beyond that in his retirement.

Maybe there is something about the kingdom of God that is found when we set aside our need to win or prove anything or climb any sort of ladder or display any sort of strength and simply enter into the space with others who never had that opportunity anyway. Those who if they inherited the earth wouldn’t try to control it, destroy it, or sell it to the highest bidder.

Jesus isn’t just blessing the powerless and the weak. He is inviting us into a life alongside and with, into a new dream in which “the land belongs to those who choose not to wield their power. The land belongs to the humble, to the nonviolent…the ones who release their power and the ones who never had power to begin with will inherit the really real.”

This is the power of meekness. “When we let go of the power we hoard, power grows wide enough to share.”

So blessed are those who never had the power to begin with (the weak ones), and the ones who had the strength and kindness of heart to lay theirs down and share it.