Gentleness and the Sword
In our Creative Way Down cohort we have been experimenting with the beatitude of meekness, the one that carries the promise of inheriting the earth.
Meekness - much like mourning and poverty of spirit - is not really a desired attribute in our world. It suggests weakness, victimhood, blandness and cowardice to our ears.
It is not, of course. Both Moses and Jesus were described as meek. Neither of them were pushovers.
The good Reverend Barclay defines meekness as a middle point between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness. Some have taken to describing meekness as having a sword but keeping it in its sheath.
There certainly is truth to the notion that meekness is “power under control.” But this definition has been warped somewhat to mean something like: “I could kick your ass if you gave me good reason to, but I choose not to (but please give me good reason to!)”
Putting aside the reality that most men certainly overestimate their overall ass-kicking abilities, this take on meekness seems to emphasize the sword that the person isn’t (currently) using. It portrays meekness as a barely suppressed rage and violence that will keep its peace for the time being, but is looking for a righteous opportunity to explode.
And isn’t the world just filled with righteous opportunities?
There are no end to justifications for violence when we really want to be violent - be it personally or geo-politically. I have had numerous conversations with Christians eager to excuse the bombing of schools in Iran because certain enemies were also killed - and Lord just knows they needed to be killed, Jesus’ commands about loving our enemies be damned.
This isn’t meekness. “Power under control” may be a helpful qualifier for those who lean towards fearfulness or uninvolved neutrality, but there is another word that should take prominence when we speak of the the meekness of Jesus:
Gentleness.
Jesus is gentle. Yes, he makes a whip and turns over tables and exorcises the Temple and unclean spirits and has harsh words for the male religious hypocrites, but a far more defining characteristic of Jesus is his gentleness.
He is gentle with the outcast. Gentle with the afflicted. Gentle with those who are lost and without a shepherd. Gentle with children and women. Gentle with those possessed by unclean spirits. Gentle with those who came to arrest him, to try him, to condemn him, to kill him.
He looks on people - even those who reject him - with love.
There must have been something about him that invited the unlikely - notorious sinners, Samaritan women, tax collectors, Roman soldiers, the sick and unclean - to approach him, to touch him, to make their requests known.
You don’t do that with someone who is carrying a sword with an attitude of barely suppressed violence, looking for an opportunity to strike.
Would that the Church today could walk the journey back through poverty of spirit and mourning to the kind of gentleness exhibited by Jesus, the kind that would make drone strikes and genocide and bigotry and stand your ground laws unthinkable. The kind that would rather take in the sword than take up the sword.
Only that kind of Church has any legitimacy and integrity in the world. Any form that lives by the suddenly unsheathed sword will die by the unsheathed sword as well.