Meek, never mild
Matt 5: 1 – 12
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 13 July, 2003

MEEKNESS ISN’T WEAKNESS. Get that fixed in your mind. Meekness is not weakness. Repeat it over and over. Meekness isn’t violent, but it is never weak and it is rarely mild.
  If the meek inherit the earth, then it's wise to learn how to be meek. The powerful and the well-to-do snatch the land from the people, but the meek inherit the earth. Go for meek, and you get God's inner blessing and you get the earth as well!

  In last week’s Herald, there was a cartoon about Dilbert. He works in a big, unfriendly, and quite loony organisation. His boss comes to him with a high priority job to do. “If I work quickly and don't take any care, I'll have this finished before lunch,” thinks Dilbert.
  Later, you see him in the lunch room. He tells his co-workers what happened. “Today, I traded my integrity for a banana!” he says.

  Meekness is about integrity. You can't have much meekness if you don’t have much integrity. And if you don’t have meekness, you will miss out on a big slab of god–like blessedness, and if you do, then you don’t stand to inherit the earth.
  I explained over the past weeks about how there are two Greek words for blessed. There’s evlogitos, where someone blesses you by saying something good about you or on your behalf. And there’s makarios, which is the kind of inner blessedness that God has, a blessedness that can’t come from someone superior to you, because no one is superior to God. It’s the same kind of blessedness that is part of God’s own nature. Yet, in his grace, he shares it with us.
  Well, I told you about those two for two weeks running, so I’m not going to tell you a third time, even though you had a chance to forget last week. Would your mother have told you three times to go and have your bath?

MEEKNESS — NOT VALUED
  So today’s focus is meekness. Jesus said,
How blessed are the meek! They shall inherit the earth.
  Our society doesn’t much value meekness. If you think about what has been happening worldwide lately, you’ll see how little room there is for meekness.

  When George Bush decided to invade Iraq, he pushed ahead without leaving room for the United Nations to manoeuvre. He accused the UN of weakness because they wanted to finish the round of inspections before recommending any action. It was Cowboy George, with both guns blazing.
  He was always talking about the smoking gun. Guess whose holster it was in?

  When John Howard decided that the people on the Tampa must not land in Australia, he and Philip Ruddock talked about being tough, sending a strong message to the world. The boarding of a Swedish ship carrying sick people and forcing it to turn away was very close to an illegal act under Maritime Law. Then there was the Siev-X tragedy, where another ship was turned away and sank with the loss of about 130 lives.
  That’s what the uncontrolled use of power is like. That’s what a society that has no place for meekness turns into.
  It’s like that fellow Hicks in the US military prison in Guantamo Bay. Our Government is happy to allow the US to exercise its naked power against prisoners of war, regardless of International conventions, or even esttablished Anglo–American law. People like Hicks have to be punished, not on the basis of what they have done, but on the basis of who they are. A strong message has to go out to the world.
  All these show what happens when meekness falls from the world’s vocabulary.

MEEKNESS DEFINED
  So what is meekness?
  The Greek word is praus. One person who used the word, praus, was Alexander the Great. He had a favourite horse, named Bukephalos. It was a strong horse, a battle–horse, able to carry a rider in armour, quick and steady on its feet. He could rear up in battle and strike down an enemy with a single blow of its feet. He could kick out behind it and break a soldier’s limbs. This was a strong and warlike beast.
  Yet Alexander loved his horse because he was a meek horse.
  As you can see, meek is certainly not weak when it comes to war–horses!
  Bukephalos’ meekness was in the way that he had his power under control. He didn’t get over–excited by the battle and rush ahead, he didn’t begin lashing out wildly, striking friend and foe alike. He didn’t leap and thrash so that his rider had to work hard to stay seated. He kept it all measured and controlled. He was a meek horse.

  Jesus says that the meek inherit the earth.

  That’s where our world has gone totally wrong. It has come to the conclusion that the powerful grab the earth for themselves. Power is slipping from control; the power that once was on the side of the angels has become the demon power of anothere Godzilla, rampaging across the landscape.

  But the meek will inherit the earth, and find blessing in the process.
  Meekness is the ability to hold your power in check. It is the ability to see beyond the immediate and to respond instead of react.It is the ability to act with integrity, to do what you have to and to do what is right, not just to do what gets you ahead.

UNCHECKED POWER LEADS TO FAILURE
  I sometimes help people in their marriage problems.
  Nicky was very pushy, and had to get things. They might be things like money, things like the right kinds of home and furniture, holidays in the right places, and so on. Denny was prepared to wait longer to get things. Many marriages are a bit like that. One has the goals, the other provides the anchor. As long as the differences are not too extreme, it probably works.
  The problem was that the more Nicky went after these goals, the less the goals were realised.
  Buying furniture meant that holidays had to be on the cheap; wanting all the furniture at once meant that half of it wasn’t really good quality, so it fell apart before something better could be afforded.
  Nicky pursued wealth at the expense of family and relationships. And the more Nicky’s goals were thwarted, the more angry Nicky became and the less able to plan effectively.
  Nicky’s very real power to get things done was out of control, so it didn’t achieve what it could have, if it had been under control.

  We see the same kind of thing in Iraq. The US had to attack, now, regardless of the situation. Now Donald Rumsfield has admitted that it is costing the US something like $6 billion per week to occupy the country, apart from the cost of losing three or four soldiers each week in the post–war fighting.

  Power out of check tends not to achieve what was intended.

  World War II had lots of lessons. Hitler wanted to create the Thousand Year Reich. He felt that Germany had been humiliated for too long. It was divided until the mid 19th Century. It fought against France inthe 1870s, but gained little. It competed with Britain at the end of the century, and was always pipped at the post, sometimes rather unfairly.
  Then came World War I. Germany was not only defeated, but made to pay and keep paying. In the 1920s, France invaded the Rheinland, trying to divert the coal into France, even though people were freezing to death in Germany. And the rest of the European powers stood back and watched.

  So Hitler wanted to make the country great again.
  But he didn’t control his power. He invaded Czechoslovakia. He invaded Poland, Sweden and Holland. He tried to invade England.
  If he had refused to pay more reparations, if he had refused to keep putting German money into the coffers of the rest of Europe, Emgland and the US would probably have supported him. They’d have helped Germany rebuild after 20 years of repayments.

  But when he attacked on all sides, someone had to act. He had had power, but he didn’t hold it in check, and he dragged the entire world into the conflict.

UNCHECKED POWER IS DEMONIC
  I was talking to John Brown a little while ago about road rage, and he said that it is growing, and that it is generally driven by demonic forces.

  When you think about it, it, too, is power unrestrained.

  I had someone run into my old Sigma one afternoon because of road rage.
  He tried to race me from the lights, and tried so hard that he missed a gear change. So he didn't have enough room to pull in in front of me before he came to parked cars. I slowed down to let him in, but he was in a rage by then, and didn’t notice that I had slowed down. When he didn't take the opportunity, I speeded up again and he had to wait for me.
  So he chased me all the way from Newtown to the Arncliffe turnoff, ran into me and then drove off down the side street before I could get his number.
  He had the power to catch me, he had the power to attack, but my guess is that he probably did damage to his own car in his thrust to damage mine.

  I am sure that John is right in many instances. After all, what is not under God’s control is under the control of the world, the flesh and the devil, with the devil manipulating all the time behind the scenes.

  James reminds us that

...the devil goes around like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he would devour.

  Unbridled power is Satan’s modus operandi.
  Someone — was it Rudolf Bultmann? — said that the devil inhabits those parts of our lives that we can‘t talk to God about. And it is the very nature of uncontrolled power that it is not brought to the feet of God and surrendered to him. It is self-focused. It is radically self–interested. And what is self–interested is, by its nature, sinful and rebellious against God.

GOD SEEKS THOSE WHO SURRENDER POWER TO HIM
  Do you remember that image in Revelation where the twenty–four elders are gathered around the throne?

REV 4:9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
  11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honor and power,
  for you created all things,
    and by your will they were created
    and have their being.”

  My father used to say that it would be awfully noisy in heaven with all those crowns being flung around the place, specially with the glass floor.
  But what is a crown? It’s a symbol of power and authority. These elders are laying their power and authority at the feet of the Lord who is worthy to receive glory and honour and power. He is worthy because he made everything, and he knows how it works and where power can safely be employed and where it can’t be safely employed.

JESUS, OUR EXAMPLE
  Jesus himself was the great paradigm, the great example and pattern for us to follow.
  In Luke 22, we read,

LK 22:39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

  An angel came and ministered to him. There’s an old song,

  Jesus had power in himself, and he had power by his right as Son of God, but he chose to keep it under control. He could have snatched power — the Devil’s offer in the desert still stood. But he chose to go the way of the cross right to the end. He chose death rather than abuse of power. He was a man of integrity, and unwaveringly followed his vision to death and beyond it, to resurrection and vindication.

SUMMARY
  Meekness doesn’t mean the refusal to use power. Jesus repeatedly used his power to heal, to deliver, to perform signs and wonders. But he refused to use his power for his own ends. He refused to smite his enemies or to fill his own belly. He kept his great strength under control at all times.

  And, as you remember, he also used his power to drive the money changers out of the Temple. He used power violently to judge evil when it was right to do so. But he never used it abusively or out of control.

  Some Christians think that meekness means that they don’t act against injustice, that they become praying doormats, that they keep quiet when any good person would cry out. That is not meekness, it is weakness — and meekness is never weakness.
  But if you are tempted to use your power abusively, if you are tempted to snatch for yourself what you have no right to; or if you find yourself abusing or bullying others, look at yourself! Bring that power under the control of Jesus. If you try to control it by yourself, it will only pop out somewhere else where it does more damage. Bring it under Jesus’ control Ask him, “Lord, what will you have me do?” He will lead you and show you the way. And you will not lose. The earth itself will be yours!

  May God bless us all as we learn true meekness.
AMEN