The Blessed Meek

Read Matthew 5:5-6

Matthew 5:5–6 NIV

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Let’s Pray.

So, this past Friday night we had our big, end of the year event for our Confirmands. We typically do a lock-in style thing where the kids are there overnight or until midnight. We play games, we do multiple, in-depth bible studies, and we look at the questions that we ask when we profess our faith publicly before the church. And, I have something to admit to y’all. I love being your pastor, but I really love working with the youth. There is something so special about seeing a young person’s eyes light up when they experience something new or learn something about Jesus that alters what they thought previously.

But, like all things, there is one aspect that I have always struggled with the most and that is the games. Those should be the easiest part, but I always struggle not to come up with a game, but with picking teams. How do you create fair teams? What’s the best method? Somehow, I’m 38 years old and I still have that grade-school, playground issue of how to pick teams for a pick-up game of some kind or another and make it competitive. You either have to pick two of your start athletes – kids that are driven to win – and you let them pick the teams. But there’s a downside here that you really don’t want to have happened, especially at youth group where you want students to feel valued and loved and seen. There is always going to be those kids that are picked last, every time and they have to sit there waiting to be picked last or see how “ends up with them”. It’s awful. I absolutely hate it. So, the other choice is to pick them yourself. And that sucks because you don’t always know exactly who is going to be equal to who quite as well as the students do and, ultimately, you have to admit in your head that you’re doing the same thing that the kids were doing – separating the strong from the, let’s call them “meek” today for the sake of our scripture. You may not be saying it out load, but you realize you’re doing it in your head and as fair and honest as it may be, it still just doesn’t leave you feeling clean when you’re done – or at least it doesn’t for me.

And as you’re figuring out who the “strong” students are and who the “meek” students are, you start basing your assessment on what “strong” is supposed to look like. What is strong supposed to look like? When we think of strong people, we typically think of people who are self-assured, who have a physicality about them – athletic or tall or powerfully built. We think of strong as being intelligent, quick witted and quick thinking, observant, pliable yet assured in their beliefs. Aggressive and willing to take that first step, to lead, and to be willing to take what they need and defend what they have. If we’re being honest. We may not like all of those descriptions, but I bet every single one of us wants our children to be “strong” as opposed to society tells us is going to happen to the alternative.

And this definition of strong isn’t new. It isn’t only about the kids in a game at youth group. It is the same way that the human world has defined strength from the very beginning. Even in sales we’re taught to negotiate from a place of strength, not a place of weakness. A place where we have power and we have the willingness to exert that power in a negotiation.

So when Jesus is telling us what it looks like to be “blessed” – in other words, to be Kingdom people and his people – he is really challenging us to what we think of ourselves when he gives us this command: blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Most of us would think, “yeah, because inheriting it is the only shot they have at getting it.”

But over the past two weeks God has been opening my eyes and my heart. He has been challenging me and He has been preaching this sermon into my heart far more than I could do with words in 20 minutes this morning. See, I have been caught up in defining strength the same way. I believed that my strength came from my mind. From my ability to absorb knowledge and think quickly, putting to words complex issues in a way that – hopefully – people can understand. I thought my strength came from how I was able to push myself beyond what my body and my mind tell me I’m able to do. It came from being assertive and self-assured in my capabilities. And for all of the humility I have been trying to maintain, I didn’t realize that in trying to being strong I had allowed pride to rear its ugly head in me a different way. I’ve been angry. And a few weeks ago I said something at home that was hyperbole and over the top. But it wasn’t nice. Sam heard it and she turned and she said something like, “Are you serious?” And I said, “No. I’m not serious. You know I’m speaking in hyperbole.” And she looked at me and said, “Yeah, but words matter.” And that statement has been cutting into my soul in a good way ever since she uttered them. It’s become a new motto in my heart reminding me to use my words in a way that Jesus would want me to use them. In prayer, in praise, in uplifting others and it was in that space that I realized that all of that anger was just an outlet. It was an outlet for me to work my pride out because my anger always came from a place of knowing “I could dot it better. I would never make that mistake.” And, ultimately, I realized what I was thinking without thinking it was that this person was below me and THAT is not humble.

The danger with defining strength in the way that we define it isn’t always the results. Strength is a good thing. But when we find strength this way it leads us towards a place where that strength isn’t coming from a place of righteousness. We’ve stopped – as the next blessing tells us – hungering and thirsting for a righteousness that cannot come from ourselves! If you noticed, when I was describing where my strength comes from it wasn’t even that I didn’t explicitly and only say “my strength comes from God”. Yes, that is the perfect, Sunday School answer, but we’re not in Sunday school. We’re in church and we need to be real, that’s not how the majority of us think. But what I should have realized was that all of these things aren’t mine they are given to me. That statement – given to me – gets at the heart of what we’re talking about today. It is God that gives us all of our strengths so that we might own them and use them for the Kingdom of the one who gave us the strengths in the first place. They are ours, but they were given to us so that we might steward and use these strengths – that we might be fed but we must never stop hungering and thirsting – needing as we need life itself – the one from who all of these things come. If we can do that, we will continue to be fed.

We need that feeding, that sustenance, because God desires for us to be strong, and that gets us back to where we started with all of this. We still have to address this “meek” thing because how do we get from meek – a word that is defined as submissive, weak, or spineless – when God tells us that he gives us strength and power. Because meekness doesn’t sound like strength and power.

Instead of looking for a definition that fit “meek” in some revealing way, and trust me, I looked it up in Greek and Hebrew as well as its translation across different bibles and I couldn’t reconcile God calling us to be strong and give us strength with Jesus’ desire for us to be meek. Instead of looking for a definition, what helped was looking at who is described as meek and amazingly enough there are only two who are described as meek. One in the Old Testament and One in the New. In the Old Testament it’s Moses.

Now, I don’t know about y’all, but those are not two men who the word “meek” comes to mind. Moses was the some of a King who killed a man with his bare hands and worked the land for 40 years in the desert before he came back and rescued his nation from Egypt and led them through the wilderness for another 40 years doing all kinds of wild feats of strength and leadership.

In the New Testament, in case you haven’t already guessed it, it’s Jesus. He describes himself as meek and lowly or meek and humble at heart. Jesus wasn’t what I could call meek by our standard definition of weak, submissive, or spineless. We’re talking about the man who led 12 men for three years through all kinds of experiences. The man who stood up to Pharisees and Saducees, who was put on multiple trials and defended himself and exonerated himself if but for the crowd. A man who endured 40 lashes and carried his cross to be crucified. The man that held not only his own body weight up on the cross, but all of mankind’s sin with it. That doesn’t sound very meek to me...

Strong is what comes to mind for both of these men because when we’re talking about the “meek” in the Bible we’re not talking about a spineless, weak people. It’s about finding a humbled strength that doesn’t come from a place of aggression or self-interest. It is a strength that comes from a place of love that has been purified from anger. Meekness is a strength that comes from a place of living in proximity to God.

Now that’s a kind of strength that I can list the details of and we can all nod along and say, “Yes, I want that for my kids.” That’s a kind of strength that we can all nod and say, “I want that for me.” The good news is it is here for you in Jesus Christ. When we live in proximity to him, when we watch our words as if we’re speaking to him when we say them. When we think about the desires of our hearts, we should consider them just as we would if we were one of his 12 disciples walking along with him. What we’re going to find is we are stronger than ever. Assured in where our confidence and our strength comes from and constantly thirsting and hungering for more. Not for our own righteousness or our own strength, but for the righteousness and strength that comes from our God like living water saved for those closest to him. His blessed meek.

Let’s Pray.