Preached at St Alban, Holborn

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, One God. Amen

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew V:5)

Of all the attributes commended to Christians I suspect that meekness is pretty low in the popularity ratings. Patience, humility, forgiveness, justice, mercy – these all present a positive image of the qualities they represent, whilst it is difficult not to regard meekness as rather insipid. “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” seems to belong to the imagery of the nursery rather than the world at large. When we discover that the etymology of our “meek” derives from the Germanic meuk, ‘soft’ and Old Norse mjukr, ‘soft, pliant’, whose linguistic cousins are words like muck and midden, it is not surprising that meekness is understood as passive submission.

Yet this image of weakness and pusillanimity conveyed in the English is absolutely the opposite to what our Lord was saying in the Beatitudes, or indeed, elsewhere, in the New Testament. Praütes, the Greek word used in the scriptures, however, consists not in a person’s outward behaviour only; nor yet in his relations to his fellow-men; but rather is an inwrought grace of the soul and the exercise of it is first and chiefly towards God. It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore neither dispute nor resist them. The meek are God-controlled, and through their prayers, God gives them mastery over their passions – especially anger. Meekness is not passive gentleness, but strength under control. It is the fruit of power, not weakness. The common assumption is that when a man is meek it is because he cannot help himself; but the Lord was ‘meek’ because He had the infinite resources of God at His command. Meekness in fact is the opposite to self-assertiveness and self-interest; it is equanimity of spirit that is neither elated nor cast down, simply because it is not occupied with self at all.

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