Most of us don’t like people that give us a dirty look let alone loving those that seem to be working strongly against us.  Yet the command stays the same.  Love your enemy.  I get it, I really do.  This isn’t easy.  No one wants to do this.  Most of us by now have been able to escape this way of living by justifying what love is and by justifying what an enemy is.  We hear it everywhere.  I just don’t like that person.  That person is annoying.  Well, I don’t have to be friends with everyone.  That person wants me to fail.  We have nothing in common.  I have to protect my children from their children.  We’re just going in different directions.  They are rude.  They are always against everything.  They are crazy!

These are generally excuses we make when explaining why we don’t like someone or don’t want to hang out with them.  Unfortunately, all the things that are mentioned are pre-requisites to love the person according to Jesus.  I know for sure that love doesn’t mean shallow “hello, how are you conversation” in the mall.  Then we pat ourselves on the back for going out of our way to be nice.  I know for sure that love means that yes, you do have to be friends, and you do have to spend time with them.  The whole idea of protecting our social life by not being around those that are draining and annoying is probably the hardest thing to fight against.  For some reason we feel entitled to pick our friends, pick every circumstance we are in and pick the style of people we spend all our time with.  Our picks of course are generally centered around people we like, people that get us and people that think the same way as us: the exact definition of someone who is not our enemy.

I don’t really have any suggestions to fix this.  It is broken though.  Maybe disciplining ourselves to spend time with our “enemy” once a week.  You know, take them out for a coffee, invite them over for dinner.  Oops, I didn’t mean to mention that.  It sort of made me feel uncomfortable thinking about all those situations where I am inviting the people over I can’t stand the most and we and my wife sitting there trying to be loving.  Seems awfully forced and awkward.   I can see the excuses coming up already.  I really believe this stuff though, I just don’t want to.  To really change the world and spread this gospel the way Jesus did, that means spending time with people that we don’t want to spend time with.  The goal obviously is that we start to see ourselves in the other and we connect and begin to love others because they are human, and we are human.  Jesus doesn’t want us to love our enemy to torture us, he wants us to love our enemy because they are us.

This obviously isn’t a rule or a command that we must do.  That isn’t the point.  Loving your enemy is a prerequisite to experiencing the gospel.  It gives you an opportunity to die to yourself.  See yourself in your enemy.  See what God was up to.  Love someone who isn’t like you.  If we want to be Christians, if we really want to follow Christ then we need to make decisions to intentionally do these things as a community of people living out kingdom values.  If the world is going to change, it won’t be because a bunch of Christians annoyed all the annoying and crazy people.  We can’t just think good thoughts about them.  We need to be proactive and reach out and love our enemy.  If we are going to work alongside of God and his redemption of all things, going out of our way to love people that we are inclined to hate is the first step.

Related posts:

1. Loving the Unloving
2. I Don’t Like You
3. Severed Friendships

It keeps us from turning commands found there into isolated rules of principles that are assumed to have special status because they are in the Bible.  Rather is proposes that Christians (and we hope others) take them to heart (and mind) because they have been found to be crucial to a people formed by the story of God.  Such commands stand as reminders of the kind of people we must be if we are to be capable of remembering for ourselves and the world the story of God’s dealing with us.

To take the prohibition of adultery, it does not claim to be intelligible in itself, but draws its force from the meaning and significance of marriage in the Jewish and Christian communities.  Marriage in those communities derives from profound hope in and commitment to the future, witnessed by the willingness and duty to bring new life into the world.  Moreover for those traditions family and marriage have special significance as they are also an expression of the relation these people have with their God.  the prohibition against adultry does not therefore derive from a set of premises concerned directly with the legitimacy of sexual expression, though without doubt it has often been so interpreted, but from the profoundest commitment of the community concerning the form of sexual life necessary to sustain their understanding of marriage and family.

Nor does the prohibition against resisting evil derive from an assumption about violence as inherently evil, but rather from the community’s understanding of how God rules his creation.  For how can a people who believe God is Lord of their existence show forth that conviction if they act as if the meaning of their existence, and perhaps even history itself, must be insured by the use of force?  The nonviolence of the church derives from the character of the story of God that makes us what we are–namely a community capable of witnessing to others the kind of life made possible when trust rather than fear rules our relation with one another.

Stanley Hauerwas – A Community of Character, Pg 70

Related posts:

1. Biblical Authority Link
2. Authority: Trusting More than Yourself
3. Authority: Authoritative vs. Influential?

Many Christians demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. … I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon?

Kurt Vonnegut, “Cold Turkey,” In These Times

We are almost done the beatitudes this summer.  It has been a good summer of being challenged to see what is really going on in this famous sermon by Jesus.  Let’s do a little summary of where we’ve been so far.  The first four beatitudes are poor in spirit, mourn, meek and those that hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Jesus works at two angles in this sermon.  In the first four he is describing a condition that we are in.  Mourning, meek, hungry, poor…..these are all describing conditions where God meets us.  The first four beatitudes is when God meets you where you are at.

The second four are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers and those that are persecuted.  These last four are more about relations.  These last four are about how after God meets you, he then transforms you to interact with others completely differently.  After you’ve recognized and you’ve become the first four, you can no longer relate to others the same way at all.  God completely transforms the way you look at and treat people.

So we are looking at being a peacemaker, and apparently, by being one you get the great title of being called child of God.  Now there are a few terms that we should get out of the way in terms of what a peacemaker is.  For starters, a peacemaker is not the same thing as a peacekeeper.

Q: What is the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker?

What I would see the difference between the two is that you can keep peace with guns.  Walk into a room with two people fighting and pull out a weapon and those two people are probably going to stop fighting.  Walk into a country conflict with your advanced machinery and you will keep the peace for a little while, they will all be awe of your presence.  What ends up happening though is instead of there being conflict between two sides, not there is just conflict on three sides and you become the third side.  Then we end up calling extremely destructive bombs, like Richard Nixon did, “the peacekeeper.”  This isn’t peace.  Oppressive and strong people call their attempts to control; peace, but we know better, you might create a sense of peace for a while, but there is no real peace there.  If you have to take sides, you misunderstand what peace is.

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice and brotherhood.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself

John 6:15

The peacemakers are are the ones who are not so convinced of their own truth that they are unable to see the truth in another.  They do not have to make the other wrong in order to believe that they are right.  The peacemakers are able to entertain the idea that truth might be bigger than their own particular piece of it…..they are those that are open to truth in others, even when it challenges their own truth.

– Kathleen O’Connell Chesto

“When I ask your opinion, you tell me what you think.  Now I have what you think and what I think.  If I argue with what you think, you give me five reasons why you think it.  And if I argue with each of those five reasons, you give me five more reasons for each of them.  Now I have thirty reasons why you think what you do.  And I can use them to make a good decision.”

“This is the argument of the peacemaker.  It is not the contentious arguing of those who are trying to explain or justify themselves and their actions.  The peacemakers do not argue to convince us of their truth, but that we can convince them of ours.  “Persuade me, Broaden my truth, enliven my vision with your own particular piece of reality.”  As my son would point out, it’s how they listen.  It is the listening that is essential, the listening that marks this as more than argument, the listening that leads to wisdom.  And when the need to explain ourselves and our position is greatest, then the listening demands total silence.”

- Kathleen O’Connell Chesto

“To be a peacemaker means not to judge or condemn or speak badly of people, not to rejoice in any form of ill that may strike them. Peacemaking is holding people gently in prayer, wishing them to be well and free. Peacemaking is welcoming people who are weak and in need, maybe just with a smile, giving them support, offering them kindness and tenderness, and opening our hearts to them. It is welcoming those with whom we may have difficulty or whom we may not especially like, those who are ….. different than us. It is to approach people not from a pedestal, a position of power and certitude, in order to solve problems, but from a place of listening, understanding, humility, and love. When we relinquish power, we become more open to the compassion of God.”
-Jean Vanier

Bing a peacemaker is part of being surrendered to God, for God brings peace. We abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of enemies. -

Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed with all the tension its exposure creates to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war – at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”
– Father Daniel Berrigan

The peace intended is not merely that of political and economic stability, as in the Greco-Roman world, but peace in the Old Testament inclusive sense of wholeness, all that constitutes well-being. … The “peacemakers,” therefore, are not simply those who bring peace between two conflicting parties, but those actively at work making peace, bringing about wholeness and well-being among the alienated.
Robert A. Guelich

You may have the bulldozers, planes and helicopters that smash houses to rubble, the commandos who descend from ropes on ships and kill unarmed civilians on the high seas as well as in Gaza, the vast power of the state behind you. We have only our hands and our hearts and our voices. But note this. Note this well. It is you who are afraid of us. We are not afraid of you. We will keep working and praying, keep protesting and denouncing, keep pushing up against your navy and your army, with nothing but our bodies, until we prove that the force of morality and justice is greater than hate and violence. And then, when there is freedom in Gaza, we will forgive … you. We will ask you to break bread with us. We will bless your children even if you did not find it in your heart to bless the children of those you occupied. And maybe it is this forgiveness, maybe it is the final, insurmountable power of love, which unsettles you the most.
- Chris Hedges

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

Now peacemaking is a divine work. For peace means reconciliation, and God is the author of peace and of reconciliation. … It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the particular blessing which attaches to peacemakers is that “they shall be called sons of God.” For they are seeking to do what their Father has done, loving people with his love.
John R. W. Stott

Related posts:

1. Blessed are the Meek: A Sermon on the Beatitude of Meekness
2. The One About the Net (A Sermon on the Parable of the Dragnet in Matthew 13:47-50)
3. Matthew and Michelle’s Wedding May 2010

Here is what I’m coming to grips with from the help of this book; we justify absolutely everything.  I think that we are inherently good and that we long to do the good and right thing.  Just like our first humans, Adam and Eve, the sin that we commit isn’t just simply doing something that is wrong or forbidden.  It is taking a bad thing and twisting it up with all sorts of good and noble motives and then spitting it back out as a good thing.  That’s when it gets complicated.  Adam and Eve were tempted with what seemed like (and very well could be) good and righteous things.  Knowing good and evil, not dying and being like God aren’t exactly the worst things to desire.  So all the foolish decisions we make on a day to day basis I’d would have to wager that we just honestly do not think they are foolish.  For the person who does a foolish thing, knowing that they are foolish, then I think you are the exception, and this little article isn’t about you.

Who, especially Christians, would say listen, I know this is wrong in what I’m about to partake in, or purchase or buy, but I’m going to do it anyway.  No excuses, I am just straight up going to do this wrong action.  I have never in my life heard anyone say that.  The closest I’ve seen is someone say something along the lines of that they know this might not be the best way and then offer a slew of reasons as to why they are going to do it.  Eventually all those reasons eventually lead the person to believe that it is the right thing to do.

So for example.  Let’s say you were debating to sell your entire CD collection and give the money to a family you know who is struggling for groceries.  When the idea first pops into your head, you might think, wow, that is a great idea, that is the noble and right thing to do.  Then what happens though is that over time, you just really don’t want to sell all your CDs.  So instead of just stopping with the philosophical games there and admitting that the right thing to do would be to sell your CDs and you’re just not going to do it you start to justify and make up reasons why it is actually the wrong thing to do to sell your CDs.  You say things like hand-outs don’t actually help anyone and you don’t want to prolong their misery.  Or that you deserve those CDs, or that those CDs actually mean something important to you and that you’ll just buy them a few groceries later on down the road.  By the end of the situation you have gone from it being the right thing to do, to being the wrong thing to do, and the only real thing that has changed is your desire.  You have completely changed your moral compass based simply on your desire.

We all do this.  I honestly believe that if we actually thought something was wrong, then we just wouldn’t do it.  Or if we actually thought something was right, then we would do it.  Very few of us are meek enough to say “I hold the belief that swearing is a poor choice and is not best practice, but I swear anyway.”  No excuses, just admitting that our life does not line up to our beliefs.  I would much rather have someone admit that they are a hypocrite and that their actions do not line up to their beliefs than have someone  constantly changing their beliefs to accommodate their actions.  Here is what I think best practice is to be a truly humble and meek Christian.  Look into your life and realize your flaws, or have your best friend do it for you.  Things will come up like we waste way too much, we drink too much, we destroy the environment without giving it a second thought, we shop way too much, we don’t make anytime for those that are less fortunate, we judge everyone we meet for the first time….and instead of making any excuses at all, not even one.  Just admit it.  Say yup, I am those things.

I think with this honest approach to our lives we will start to see a lot more peace.  Sounds odd to make that connection but I see how it can work.  When people can admit they are wrong, and they aren’t in the right at times, without needing to justify their way out of their bad decisions, it makes it a lot easier to just be in a relationship.  If I’m constantly making excuses for my bad eating habits (i’m too busy, i don’t like healthy food etc) then not only do I just keep eating poorly but I now have changed my philosophy about eating to fit how I do those things.  Instead, what if I just said “I have bad eating habits.”

It’s odd even ending a paragraph like that, because we want resolve, we want reasons for the bad things we do.  Admitting who we really are, being humble and having an honest approach about our own misgivings will go a long way for how we live and also for our theology.  No longer will our theology be shaped by how we live and the poor decisions we make but instead our actions begin to be shaped by our theology.

Related posts:

1. Refusing to be Wrong
2. Thought-Provoking Art
3. Faith Can’t Be Wrong

For the last four years at the story, we have been looking for the right way to raise our kids in the church.  Of course, we have come up against a lot of problems.  Some of the problems being:

1. Children get 45 minutes a week in a separate room to learn child-appropriate lessons, build relationships with other children and experience the Sunday gathering at their level.  Only 45 minutes with their own programming and a few hours if you include the singing and the potluck.

2. Every parent parents differently at home.  Every teacher teaches differently at their  schools.  Because we only get 45 minutes, there is no good way  to build a discipline or rhythm into the day or the children for how things are done or what is expected.  So we are forced to plan things by the lowest common denominator to work with the most amount of kids.  This usually means that plenty of the unique kids with special needs, or that don’t like classrooms or that are disciplined differently don’t get the right kind of love or attention.

3. The curriculum in most books and in most packages that we have seen or purchased is complete crap.  It teaches bad theology and cleans up the stories and almost always ceases to place the stories in the proper context of the entire narrative of the scriptures.  The only option we could come up with was to write our own, which of course we have no time to do that, so I just stay constantly frustrated with what we are teaching.  It’s like playing a preacher’s video over and over again because we don’t have time to prepare our own sermon, and the preacher sucks.  We would never do it for our adults, but we do it for our kids all the time.

For the longest time, we’ve really put not much a lot of consideration into the kids and what was happening.  We would try and find suitable curriculum and rotate different parents through the teaching schedule and just let it happen.  We did make some changes, and I think these changes were very positive for our community.

1. We put in a toddler area into the middle of the seating for Sunday morning.  Parents could stay in the service with their children played or coloured.  It was a great way to integrate everyone and meet them where they were at.  Sure the kids got loud, but we’ve never not had that happen, so it was a good compromise.

2. During the singing, we gave all the kids instruments of some sort, usually percusison.  Over the past year we’ve watched as kids who were normally disruptive, running around and moping because of the singing, move to the front, grab and instrument and sing along.  The kids are learning our songs and worship is now more centered around them.  It’s amazing how much kids learn beautiful songs when you just keep singing them over and over again.  When kids are involved in singing, it’s easy for a community to follow suit.

However, once the kids move off into the other room and their own curriculum starts happening, our creative direction sort of ends.  We don’t really know what to do.  And I think I’ve figured out what our problem is.

I feel like our problem is that we have focused all of our attention on what the kids are learning and what curriculum to use or create.  Instead, what we should be focusing on is how we treat our kids, how we are teaching them, how we are sharing the stories of our faith with them and working together as a community to co-operate in raising our kids as a community.  I’m really not interested in having the pressure of parents for 45 minutes a week to infuse in them as many Christians character traits as possible.  What I am interested in is working alongside of the community and the children to build relationships with them, grow with them in a healthy way and all learn through our growth.  We’ve been trying now to just teach them what we know, teach them what is right and use the right curriculum so that they are engaged and interested throughout the entire 45 minutes and come out “learning something.”  Instead, we should be spending our time focusing on families (pun intended, but not really) and how they interact with each other and interact with the community at large.

This means we need to be spending time helping the teachers and the parents be better teachers and parents.  This means that we have to start creating a culture that we have reached a consensus on in how we treat people, treat families and treat children.  This means that we have to work together, especially parents, to figure out boundaries, rituals and agree on the stories that are important to pass down.  This isn’t about curriculum anymore.  It’s about an entire lifestyle that we are creating for our children so that they are meaningfully integrated into our community, not just another program that we organize so they are entertained.  Curriculum will always have very little impact on our children.  The environment that we raise them in, the relationships that they build and the experiences that they have with each other and with the community has a whole will be what defines their relationship to the church as they grow up.

We’ve been reading Godly Play recently, and I just finished reading Honey, I Wrecked the Kids and have been dabbling in some Montessori philosophy of education.  This I feel is just the first layer of unpacking everything we need to learn as a community and how to grow with kids.  But for the first time, I feel like we are on the right track.  It feels good.

Related posts:

1. Children’s Ministry for a Non-Parent
2. Church: Where Children Fit
3. Children Make me Laugh

I love Lost. As most of you know I was a bit disappointed that it was all over and especially the way the writers ended everything, but nevertheless, it was still great writing and television. Since the show ended there are a few pieces I wanted to point to that are certainly worth the read.

First, and probably my favourite, was a 13,000 word essay on Lost by Jennifer Galicinski. It is entitled LOST: A Critique of the Modernist Quest and Prophet of a Better Way (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It is absolutely excellent and for anyone that found themselves lost in the weaving storylines might find this helpful. It’s also a great critique on philosophy tying it in with the imagery and storytelling of Lost. Awesome. Chris Seay should be writing stuff like this instead (he wrote a book on the gospel according to Lost before it was even finished. WHAT?

I put together a quick response to her essay here.

I wrote this when Lost first finished. 5 Reasons Why LOST Disappointed. Which after reading Jennifer’s essay above, it was probably a bit premature considering I didn’t put a lot of work into it.

This was a hilarious video that summarized a lot of how you feel after watching Lost.

An Open Letter To Anyone Who Thought The End Of Lost Was Awesome.

It would be a could compilation of links if I didn’t link to Lost and Gone Forever, who I followed and read after every single episode of the last three seasons. This site helped me understand and analyze the show much better.

Related posts:

1. Great Writing
2. A Night with Great People
3. The Great Divide

Related posts:

1. Loving the Unloving

The only time this way of living every becomes problematic is when I allow the philosophical side of me seep out.  Coincidentally, this blog is an outlet for that, as has the many social networks online.  I’ve used my blog for a place of wrestling with ideas, not where I list off what I’m supposed to think.  This has caused all sorts of issues.  I’ve had numerous people accuse me of not being a very good Free Methodist, and I’ve had people accuse me of being a heretic or tell me I’m out of God’s will.  If I was to use this marriage analogy again then I can see why this is both healthy or problematic.  If my blog was a place to constantly question my marriage relationship, marriage in general and flirt with the ideas of starting relationships with other females then I can see why my marriage might not be that healthy.  However, if it’s seen as building relationships, seeking to understand and appreciate the other and hoping that my wife joins me in this journey then I can see why this would be an important thing to have.  The latter is how I see my blog.
There seems to be two camps of readers on my blog.  There is my one world where I am supposed to be a good pastor.  Teaching people in the way of Christ, giving answers not asking questions and directing people to solid doctrine.  Half the people that read my blog or interact with me online have this expectation for me.  They have a certain standard of what a good Free Methodist should think and believe and I obviously fall short of that.  So they make no qualms about calling me out, disagreeing or straight up getting involved with my relationship with the FM’s.

The other half of the people want to and do engage in the academic/philosophical conversation.  Somehow this half is able to juggle the two realities along side of me.  If I ask an offensive question or link to an offensive article their first instinct isn’t to judge and figure out my intentions and compare to me the FM standard.  Rather it is to jump into the dialogue, seek with me and see what comes out of it.  The conversation flows better with these people, it’s more honest and their is less baggage.

The problem is, most people inside the church fall into the former category.  They all want to make sure I know what the right answer is, what the right thing to believe is and what the right way to act is.  They don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to dig deeper or wrestle, because they already know what the answers are.  There is no part of them that understands or wants anything to do with people or thoughts that fall into that second category.  While I was in school, it was all about the second category with very little room for the first.  Now that I’m back in Sarnia, everything is switched.  Somehow I can be a good pastor, hold to the Free Methodist doctrine and yet still struggle with, read about and consider contradictory thoughts and theology.  Maybe I’m just lying to myself but I like to think that I can decide to submit and sign on to one theology yet still have the freedom to seek and learn and grow with others.

This is the problem I’ve always had with statements of faith.  I felt like they limited you where you were allowed to go with your reading, thinking and exploring.  It was like a boundary that you were punished if you dare go outside of it.  I had to stop seeing statements of faith as restrictions and more of identifiers.  A statement of faith to me is an identifier of a community of people who have decided that this is who they are and this is what they are striving to be.  If it just says what everyone thinks, then I think we are truly limiting the creativity and growth of everyone who is under that statement.  I can still hold to a statement of faith that says I am a Free Methodist in one hand and with the other be seeking and evolving and growing and stretching in all sorts of directions.  I don’t know of any other way to identify myself with anything rather than looking like what they say they look like and making a choice to say “I am that.”  Identities aren’t decided by abstract theological ideas or disillusionment.  They are chosen and then lived out.

So I’m struggling to live in these two worlds.  Since leaving school, I am much more accustomed to living in a world of asking questions, reading books, landing in uncomfortable places, being challenged and having great dialogue.  Yet the deeper I get, the more I see that many people are just not interested and many are straight up opposed.  How do these two realities co-exist without one despising the other?  I’m still learning what that looks like.  One side thinks the other side is sheltered, weak and indoctrinated and the other side thinks the other is irresponsible, prideful and heretical.  At some point, somewhere the sides have to seek to understand each other and co-exist.  I’m just not convinced yet they can have great conversation.

Related posts:

1. Thinker Labs
2. Authority: Leading and Following
3. What is a Pastor?

Related posts:

1. Sign Dedication Service
2. Introducing Linking Life
3. Marva Dawn

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.

The first beatitude is the very basics of the Christian faith. It asks us to have an honest look at who we are and realize our own poorness and inability to hold onto any righteousness on our own. All are poor in spirit, but only some realize this and live in this reality. As the parables as well teach us, anyone who thinks he can make it on his own or come even close to being better off than someone else (Pharisee and the Tax Collector) is not poor in spirit. When we realize that death to ourselves is the only option and that life only comes by the death and Resurrection of Christ, that is when we become poor in spirit. We’ve also heard the opinion that being poor in spirit is not a quality that we should seek or desire. This isn’t saying you need to be poor. This is making a statement that it is those that are poor in spirit that the kingdom of heaven belong too. However, this of course makes you want to be poor in spirit, so that you will get the kingdom of heaven also.

This inevitably leads to the second statement by Jesus which Aaron spoke about last week. We end up mourning and crying out along with all the father’s of our faith. The earth, the angels, our spirits and Jesus all cry out and mourn the coming and redemption of all things. We mourn because things are not as they should be. We mourn because it doesn’t feel right, something is broken, and that something is us alongside of every else that we are surrounded by. We mourn because we are pour in spirit.

Out of these two, comes the statement by Jesus that we are going to focus on this morning.

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

This is a wonderfully backwards statement. The world in Jesus time, and conveniently enough for this sermon, the world today works completely different. In today’s world, in any world actually, the line would normally be something like

Successful are those that push to the top
for they can become anything they want

The world moves around through strength and power and success and self-congratulating and non-stop aggressiveness. We tell our children that they can be anything they want to be. Our schools are setup to be competitive in nature so our children are constantly compared to other children and then based on that we evaluate their performance based on a few letters. The more you assert yourself in this world, the better chance you have to get what you want. This is what we tell our kids, this is what we believe and this is how generally the world, and us, work.

Even in this Jesus time when he was saying these things, people would have not really grasped what was going on. The Jews had ideas for their kingdom that was going to be violent and militaristic. They were waiting for a Messiah to come and wipe their enemies and restore their power. They were trying to scheme all sorts of ways to speed up this process and bring back the control that they so longed for. They were expecting victory and world conquest. Then, this man who people claim is the Messiah launches into his victory speech. Remember the speech that Gladiator does before his army goes into battle? All his troops are lined up and ready to slit the throats of their enemy and then Russel Crowe gives his pump-up speech before the battle. That’s sort of an exaggeration, but this is kind of how I see Jesus’ sermon on the mount. Those that are listening to him are blood-thirsty and longing for freedom from their oppression by the Romans. They want vengeance. This Messiah is exactly that person who is supposed to lead them into that. Thousands follow him at this point in his ministry and it’s not just because he can do magic tricks. It’s because he was ushering in a new kingdom and people thought this meant forcing out the old. They were for their prophecies to come true and freedom to be taken a hold of.

If you’ve seen any war movie, the opening speech is usually a pump up speech that gets people ready to go into battle. People are hooting and hollering and banging their swords on their shields. They are all there to finally get what they deserve and give to the enemy what they deserve. This is how I picture the beatitudes. This kind of scene, with these kind of people just longing for God to end the suffering and free them from oppression and most importantly restore their power. Then Jesus gives his victory speech:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.

What? Really Jesus? What a downer. These are not what they would have expected. This was completely backwards and a little anti-climatic. Especially this blessed are the meek line. Like we get that the people who mourn are going to be comforted and we can even let the fact go that those that are poor will inherit their rewards later in heaven. But this blessed are the meek part doesn’t really fly. So why? Why not? What is meek and why is this so appalling?

Don’t get too caught up in trying to describe the word, sometimes it’s easier to describe the person. Generally the word meek as been thought to mean just humble. In many cases they are right, they definitely have similarities. Meek though has a whole bunch more meaning that doesn’t usually come with the word humble. Greek word Praus which mean gentle strength. So this word more denotes two different realities. Humility is only one of them. We can barely picture someone being strong and meek. A meek person is one who has great power and is confident yet full of humility and self-realization of who they actually are. It’s kind of a paradox. For this person will appear weak at times, but they will have great strength. They will have looked defeated yet they will be content with knowing they have won.

If we look at the word meek to simply mean “humble” then I think we have missed a step. We end up using teaching things like to go into the closet and pray, keep private, your faith doesn’t need to be on display. Jesus though constantly speaks against this type of humility in terms of becoming a disciple. Matthew shows us this in other chapters when he quotes Jesus saying things like ‘You are the light of the world.’ and ‘a city built on a hill cannot be hid.’ Jesus doesn’t want his disciples just to keep to themselves and be humble followers in a corner somewhere. He obviously wants his followers to be out there, not hidden, being light, not dark. Any attempts that we try to make ourselves invisible, Jesus diminishes. So meekness isn’t being hidden, or staying in a closet. So how does a humble person be meek?

So I’m just gonna throw this out there to get the conversation moving. Here is what I think a meek person looks like.

What qualities do you think I am wrong about in this list? Would you add any? What worries you about a meek person?

Lots of great discussion happened in this part.  Some said that you can still be worth something while not defending yourself.  Some said this description didn’t have enough outward action statements about what this guy does actually do.

So Jesus has done it again. He has flipped what was common feeling about how the world should work and he lifts up the losers and those that don’t have it together.

“…in the Gospels the kingdom message transforms those who meekly embrace it, just as it crushes the arrogant, the religiously and socially satisfied.”
- Craig S. Keener

So how do we be transformed into being more meek, if we have to meekly embrace the kingdom to do that? What comes first? Here is my suggestion. This is only one suggestion of a way that we can see the world and an attitude that I think will help transform us to become more meek. Paul echos the words of Jesus in a few of his passages in 2 Corinthians 6,  I think it might help us make more sense of what to do with Jesus’ statement.

We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

It’s this last sentence that I think is quite similar with what Jesus is saying here. How can one have nothing and yet possess everything? The same question I ask, how does one be meek and yet inherit the earth? So here is my suggestion. My thought here is that typically when we see a paradox in the gospels is because there are two different realities colliding. One one hand you have to die, but by doing that you live. Now this doesn’t mean that if you jump off a bridge, you are going to be resurrected. What it does mean though is you have to die to yourself spiritually, so that you can come alive in all things. How can we be sorrowful and yet always rejoicing? Well it’s the same like Aaron pointed out last week. Jesus was somehow able to live in both worlds. He was able to mourn the loss of Lazurus all the while knowing he could raise him from the dead. So there is a paradox here, but it’s an easier one to explain because it’s talking about two different realities and living in the tension of both.

To be meek is to understand and live in this tension of both realities. The realities are this.

• You have nothing and are nothing
• You possess everything and are loved

How do these two things work together? A meek man has somehow figured it out. This would be a good explanation of someone who is meek. Someone who has learned to live in both these realities.

On the one hand a meek man recognizes his sinful nature and sees himself as nothing special, nothing to be worshiped, not one to deserve his own way. On the other hand he recognizes he is a child of God, valued beyond all measure, and all things are his for the taking. Meekness can live in both realities. I found this quote online recently, and it came to my mind for this sermon.

All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.
When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities resources.
This is also the case with all of my stuff that Amazon and Walmart are holding for me. I have antiques, priceless art, cars, estates, and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice.
The world is my museum, displaying my collections on loan. The James Savages of the world are merely curators.
As I am the curator of their things, and thus together we all share the world.

When I first read this quote to people, they gawked because it obviously isn’t a reality. All of the computers aren’t literally mine. However, here would be where I think separates a meek person apart. A meek person would have the attitude where this quote is true whether or not it exists physically or not. This isn’t a statement that describes reality, rather it describes a approach and attitude to a way of looking at the world. Meekness has a large part to do with an attitude towards life, and very little to do with what actually happens in your life. Someone who is meek sees all humans as equal, all in the same boat, all deserving the same fate, all having access to the same gifts as anyone else. All the early church fathers saw all possessions as being in common with all, why would one have more rite to something? They can live their life with this reality. Someone could steal a meek person’s IPod and they wouldn’t really flinch, because they never had the belief that it was really theres in the first place. Someone could hurl insults non-stop at a meek person, and the meek person could go on living their life, because meek people live in truth, not try to create fake ones.

The next part of Jesus’ statement is that they will inherit the earth. When we look at this verse we could interpret it has someone who longs for power would look at it. This meekness is not simply a tool to gain power and inherit the earth. Some think that this verse means that the meek will one day rule over us all. I’m more inclined it’s more like what we were talking about earlier. There is a paradox here. There is statement of what will happen to meek people. What if it means that meek people, because they are meek, have an attitude towards the earth that sees it as all theres already. What if meekness is the quality needed to fully embrace everything that is yours already?

If you don’t have any lower to go. If you have already admitted to yourself that you don’t really deserve anything, that you aren’t all that you want yourself to be, only then can you be free to see the world for what it is and receive God’s grace and your value from a true source. If you don’t see everything in the world’s as being a gift to us all, then you will not see everything in the world as yours already. If you see yourself better than you are, then you only have down to go.

“He that is down need fear no fall.”
- John Bunyan

So this morning what I want to do is grab the journals and write down and answer a few questions, then I want you to comment on your own answers and internally wrestle with your own answers.

Do you get/stay offended when someone says something mean to you?
Do you complain a lot when you go through standard trials in life such as sickness or over material possessions?
Do you think you have anything to learn from children or the disabled?
Do other people annoy you a lot?
When was the last time you took the back seat so someone could surpass you?
Are you mostly a content/happy person?
Do you find yourself upset about where your life is at and unable to make change?
Do you love having new things and shopping?

After you have answered these questions, just write about it. Why did you answer these questions this way? Are they good answers that you are proud of or do you wish you would change? What steps are you going to make to change? I don’t ask these questions to make you feel bad. I think it’s important to ask these questions because they help reveal parts about you that you should begin to discipline yourself to change. Is we are going to be a community of meek followers of Christ, then we need to all be actively seeking this way of living. So be honest with yourself. Question your motives. Dig deep into yourself and ask these questions and then after, just write and reflect on your answers.

Let’s pray together.

Related posts:

1. Blessed Are the Peacemakers – A Sermon on Matthew 5:9
2. The One About the Rich Fool (A Sermon on Luke 12:13-21)
3. Doubt, Journey and Dirt: A Sermon On Our Relationship to Atheism