Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Julie

In my translation it’s ‘blessed are the humble’, so I started thinking about where we see Jesus being meek and humble in the gospels, referring to the point I’ve made before about it not being just words, but actions, that count as well. I think it’s helpful to put the two together when we interpret Jesus.

So the first example that came to my mind was the entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey. That was clearly a deliberate action and it was humble and meek. We’re in Lent, and I’m sure lots will be said about this episode in our churches as we approach Easter.

The other phrase that I thought about was the invitation Jesus gave to the weary to come to him and take his yolk upon them. ‘I am humble’, he says, ‘and gentle. Let me teach you and you will find rest for your souls’.

So I think that perhaps what he’s saying here is: those who are meek, and not the self-important, are the ones who can learn from him and find rest – a place to rest in safety in the land.

Craig

I think the donkey example suggests that it is possible to have power but exercise it with restraint. Jesus wouldn’t have got on that donkey and walked into Jerusalem at that particular time if he wasn’t hugely and supremely self-confident, and also knew exactly what he was doing. So there’s a sense of assertiveness but in a meek way. So maybe we are talking about being authoritative rather than powerful.

And I think meekness is about refusing to enact the vengeance that we hear about every time we turn on the radio at the moment. But there’s also an element of allowing yourself to be trampled as well, because Jesus eventually did that didn’t he? He gave himself up: Matthew records Jesus as remarking that he could have called upon thousands of angels to protect him. So meekness requires a strong core I think.

Julie

Yes, as you’ve been speaking, Craig, some other verses came to mind – the part of Philippians 2 about Jesus giving up his divine privileges, humbling himself and living as a human, and ultimately his death on a cross. And that’s about him giving up power and authority.

Helen

I wonder if what his audience heard was him blessing their meekness. It sounds as though he’s saying, ‘I recognise your circumstances, and that you’re not acting powerfully, but I don’t see you as weak’. I wonder if it’s a call to them saying, ‘you’re not weak, you have strength, you have power’.

Simon

Another way to translate meekness might be gentleness. It reminds me of the fable in which the sun is able to get a man to remove his cloak when the wind can’t. The Kingdom of Gentleness can achieve things that the Kingdom of Violence never can.

Julie

I think some of the people Jesus was speaking to were oppressed; they had had their power taken from them. They hadn’t chosen to be meek and humble – it had happened to them through the force of others. We’re talking from our privileged position, so can we really understand how his audience would have understood his words about being humbled?

Craig

The second-half of the phrase is that the meek shall inherit the land or the earth, and that seems to link back to Psalm 37:11. It uses exactly the same phrase: the meek shall inherit the land. So Jesus is actually echoing Jewish scriptures rather than inventing a completely new idea here.

And it’s covenant language, isn’t it? Because the land is so often part of God’s covenant promise to his people. Those he’s speaking to have no land, and are in risk of losing their identity. So we’ve got to be very careful when applying it to our own 21st century comfortable life in a sovereign country with national borders, because they literally had no homeland.

Julie

Yes,

Craig

And the land is viewed, as it still is today, as a symbol of God’s blessing. So that’s in it there somewhere as well.

Julie

You’re right, we’ve got to be very careful applying that today – as we’re recording this session, wars are happening in that same part of the world. People are fleeing their land because of war. That’s a massive humiliation, isn’t it? Their loved ones, homes and livelihoods are being taken from them in violent and dramatic ways.

Craig

There’s a feature of the Beatitudes I have to admit that I struggle with. So many of the blessings that are promised seem to be located somewhere in the future. I’ve long moved on from the very simplistic theology that making a decision to follow Jesus is all about assuring that I will go to heaven, but I confess that this may have led me to swinging too far in the opposite direction. So, discovering that the kind of heaven assumed by evangelical theology could not have been what Jesus was thinking of because nothing like it exists within Judaism, may be why I was attracted to a charismatic theology that attempted to pull forward some of the blessings of the Kingdom of God into the present.

Having seen what this kind of God this thinking creates, and the consumerist Christian culture that inevitably results, today I view the now-focused blessings of the kingdom as embracing the fact that Jesus’ teaching is both inherently wise and powerfully countercultural. That is enough for me.

So what we have here just feels too close to that ‘one day, when you get to heaven, this will be yours, and in the meantime, you have to put up with being abused and traumatised’ platitude. I can’t accept that Jesus was doing that here.

Julie

Isn’t that true of quite a lot of the Beatitudes we’ve already looked at, that there is a present discomfort or sadness, but the hope is for something in the future? Right now life is difficult, acknowledging you’re poor in spirit or are mourning, but these are statements of faith – they say that something better is coming.

Craig

Yeah, but I find myself resisting that. I’m not saying I’m right in doing this, I’m just speaking my struggles out loud. And I find myself resisting that because Jesus’ message was not all about everything being made right in heaven. I’m not concerned about looking forward to what happens when I die. I’m thinking about how all this makes a difference to life as it is lived by poor and dispossessed people right now. My struggle is in believing that Jesus is talking about something which a lot of the people that he speaks to will never experience, and I think that moving the focus onto what happens after they die prevents us from working for justice and fairness whilst we’re alive.

Simon

Although we can see that belief in a supernatural afterlife was emerging in Jesus’s day, I think that pushing all future hope into a totally different existence called heaven is a big misread. Most, if not all, Jews in Jesus day were expecting the return of the Messiah to bring about justice in the world they new. When we read the phrase ‘Eternal Life’, particularly in John’s gospel, it tends to make us think of heaven, but a more literal translation of that phrase would be ‘life in the age to come’, which feels more like this life, only different. So, technically speaking, we’re all New Agers!

Helen

I wonder how the people who were hearing the Beatitudes felt as they were listening. I wonder how they felt as they were facing oppression, with no choice but to be meek in their poverty whilst literally mourning so much loss, and experiencing so much injustice. I wonder how hearing Jesus speak impacted them. Did they recognise that there was something more to their lives, despite being powerless to change their situation and having such little hope?

I can’t take myself out of my own life enough to really be sure, but I feel as though, if I was standing there, I’d be thinking, ‘that’s all very well for you to say, but it’s not going to put food on the children’s table, is it’?

And at the same time I can also imagine feeling hugely inspired by Jesus’ sermons, believing that what he was saying may change my view of God in relation to what ever was happening in the here and now. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that this tension between the practical struggle of every day life and the wider picture that Jesus gives us is difficult to appreciate for us living in our world today.

Julie 

Well, it’s back to the title of this podcast series, isn’t it? Was Jesus naive? These statements can seem so simplistic and hard to hear when you’re experiencing the oppression, poverty and suffering that we still see in the world today. 

And that’s why we’re doing this right now, isn’t it? That’s what’s led us to this point as a Collective. To look at these statements of Jesus and ask if they still reveal something of God and if they help us to know how to live in the world as it is now.

Craig

I’ve got to phrase this ever so carefully because, looking at pictures of Gaza last year I was just so aware that what was their present reality back last autumn was a much worse version of the life many of these people have always lived. 

So the shock that I experienced when I saw the devastating images from Gaza, when I am living in a land where everything is safe, where I’m extremely comfortable and my needs are extremely well met, was impossible to categorise.

I was so aware that many of these flesh-and-blood human beings had experienced nothing but oppression, opposition, and poverty since the day they were born. And I now ask myself whether, if someone were to say to them that there’s something better in the future, and that this future might be when they die, maybe that’s the only hope they can conceive themselves experiencing.

So perhaps it isn’t as patronising as I thought. Perhaps it’s the only thing you can say to somebody who was born in a war zone when it’s just getting worse. The alternative is to import weapons that other people profit from, fight a futile guerrilla war and be slaughtered by those who have better weapons and can amass a greater degree of force. And I’m finding the power of what I’ve just said is really hitting me. I’m really feeling it. I’m almost in tears as I’m saying these words.

And so those who are saying that these Beatitudes are pie in the sky, they are weak words and have got no relevance to today, I’m just wondering if that’s a typical response from those who live privileged lives. Those who have agency and power.

Helen

Yes Craig, I think I would agree with you. As we put ourselves in the shoes of someone in real need, with little hope of things getting better, maybe the most comforting thing we can say is to acknowledge that it’s hard now and to point to how we believe things are going to get better.

And also to accept the possibility that this wonderful blessing – that the meek will inherit the earth, might be in the life to come, or in the lives of future generations, however we might want to interpret it. But, in this instance, I think we are looking at the life to come.

It is very humbling to stop and think that this promise, which may not be for our generation, could be the most comforting thing that a person might hear in the life that they are living right now.

Craig

I think that’s profound. You expressed that really profoundly, Helen.