Greetings dear friends across the world who are the very Beloved of God:
I'm writing each morning on a different beatitude because through the ages, these very words of Jesus have proven to be the anchors for believers facing hard and perilous times. They are statements of how to act; how to behave; how to monitor your inner world and reaching out hands. These are all statements of how to be; how to live in a world Jesus believed in and mirrored for us. The Beatitudes alter how we look at the world now. The Beatitudes are the new, yet ancient, normal in the Kingdom of God that Jesus describes that his followers are moving into.
Today, let's look at "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5.
The Message puts it this way: "You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you."
Crisis--this pandemic is bringing us to the new terrain of meekness. We find ourselves in this new terrain by loss. We do not end up here by strength; personality; ego or wealth. We become meek through loss. Loss that brings us into the land of meekness is the loss of what is most important to us. What could that be:
the loss of our comforts in our routine that have been hijacked from us?
the loss of seeing our soul friends and family?
the loss of our rhythms that make us feel like aliens in our own homes now?
the loss of a job we counted on, that we needed, that put food on the table?
Awakening to our loss is awakening to the terrain of meekness. We feel low. We've been brought low. We acknowledge our weakness. We lament our calamity. We grieve and weep trying to get the yuck inside of us that feels wordless out of us--out of our souls.
Precisely in that moment of sheer vulnerability is something we begin to inherit ....Jesus says it is the "earth"--that place of the ground of our being. That place where all people return to dust--that place where everyone is on level ground: future kings, present presidents, stay at home mom's, and hard working medical care professionals. When we inherit the earth, we all stand equal. We all stand in sheer need. We all need a miracle. It is the place where the pompous hate and the proud loathe. It is the place where many of us go kicking and screaming because it feels unAmerican; unEvangelical; unJesus perhaps. But here we are. Here in this new low land, we find ourselves. Meekness is undoing us and this is perhaps what a God ,who we believe to be sovereign, might just be up to. I am not a prophet to say. If this is the case, dear friends, then we truly have nothing to fear.
It is in such places as this, that we, now together, are in solidarity. It is in this place that all of us are joined in heart but separated and in isolation. Together we stand. Divided we fall. Together, we are becoming meek but rest assured-- it is not for any of us to tout our horns that this will make us great again. It just may be that we are being invited into meekness because we've thought too highly of ourselves; perhaps have clung to idols of country rather than a Kingdom. We have to learn to think in Kingdom ways if we want to live in the kingdom. This is what Dallas Willard told me in the monastery many years ago when my small kingdoms were crashing. At that time, I was building my own kingdom as a mega-pastor. It sadly was not the Kingdom that Jesus described.
It is this place where we all say, " I am a New Yorker." It is a place where we finally understand our inner-connectedness as human beings. It is the place where it doesn't matter a damn if you believe in predestination or not. It's not about the size of your company or church. It is not about our resume or pedigree. Meekness does not distinguish. It is this new, soft , tender, exquisitely impressional ground where we all morph slowly into becoming meek.
What's so odd, dear friends, is that in this new and low place, we can be cared for in a way that we did not expect and did not pray to happen. God's economy is not dependent on senate votes. God's economy of love is vast, deep, unfathomable and rich.
Meekness is the new currency of the Kingdom!
Contemplative Question: Are your willing to be a New Yorker? and/or
List several synonyms of meekness below that describe a shift happening in your right now: