This week I read a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings on the Sermon on the Mount which I found very challenging. Jesus said:
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matt 5:5
But who exactly was Jesus talking about and how should we apply this principle today? Bonhoeffer wrote that the meek are:
"those who renounce all rights of their own for the sake of Jesus Christ. When they are berated, they are quiet. When violence is done to them, they endure it. When they are cast out, they yield. They do not sue for their rights; they do not make a scene when injustice is done to them."
I am not sure that I agree. Was Jesus meek? While he went "like a lamb to the slaughter" and championed non-violence when Peter tried to free him by cutting off one of his assailant's ears, his previous form was distinctly combative. Does a meek person go to a respected rabbi's home to declare that his host and others at the table were like "whitewashed tombs" that made great effort to be outwardly holy but were rotten underneath, doing nothing to help the poor or support people in their faith?
What about other great campaigners for justice? Could you describe Caroline Lucas (the UK's first Green MP), Baroness Cox or even Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself as meek in this sense? This was after all a man imprisoned and later killed by the Nazis for being one of the few German Lutheran pastors to consistently preach against Nazi philosophy and racism and to work for the resistance movement.
Elias Chacour in his book "Blood Brothers" wrote about his struggle as a Palestinian Christian with two approaches to the destruction of his home village and eviction of his whole community during Israel's takeover of Palestine in 1948 (known as the "Nakba", or "catastrophe" to Palestinians). On the one hand, some Christians joined the violent resistance movement, while others considered "turning the other cheek" meant to meekly accept the daily injustice that persists to this day. Chacour took a different approach: to champion his people's rights and dignity, to work for their good with education and other aid projects but at the same time to love those who persecuted his people (just as Desmond Tutu preached that the end of apartheid was not about blacks winning and whites losing, but achieving a just society where the "rainbow people of God" lived side by side, without one oppressing the other).
So it seems to me that to avoid seeking your own rights may be laudable if you are thereby seeking another's, but it depends which side you're on: to stand with others means recognising the dignity and rights of every human made in God's image, including your own and you risk denigrating others by claiming you have no rights yourself. Those who moved into poor neighbourhoods in Manchester with the Message Trust's Eden Projects did so because this made the community's struggles their struggles too - this is what true solidarity looks like.
Often the meaning of a Bible passage can be illuminated by looking at other places where the same concept or idea appears. Here is an extract from Psalm 10:
O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth may strike terror no more. Psalm 10:17-18
you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth may strike terror no more. Psalm 10:17-18
To me, this says that "the meek will inherit the earth" is a promise that in seeking justice for the orphan and the oppressed and standing in solidarity with those whose hearts are in need of strengthening, we are doing God's work. It is part of the promise that as Bonhoeffer went on to say: "Those who now possess the earth with violence and injustice will lose it, and those who renounce it here, who were meek unto the cross, will rule over the new earth."
We do indeed criticise those in power who seek their own gain, but we can also imply by this that power cannot also do some good. Indeed, Church Action on Poverty's approach is that those in poverty in the UK are consistently marginalised, discriminated against and shouted down - what the poorest need is not to meekly say "my rights don't matter" but to be equipped and supported to get their voices heard. For example, one group of women with experience of fuel poverty in Manchester were equipped through a "school of participation" programme to get their voices heard, and recently produced a guide to avoiding fuel poverty caused by unfair energy prices on pre-payment meters.
How can it be acceptable in a civilised society that we have policies that forced nearly a million people last year into starvation in need of foodbanks? This is what the current government's benefits sanctions regime has achieved, and the solution is surely not to meekly accept injustice but to follow the example of the Methodist Church and others in robustly defending the rights of everyone to a safety net that actually works, not punishes people for crimes such as being 10mins late for a meeting at the JobCentre.
This week I also read a moving interview with Caroline Lucas sharing her hopes and struggles as the only Green Party MP in the current parliament. Some of the ways in which our parliament work militate against good decisions, the power of the whips is too great and there is much bullying and doing people down. Should we not struggle against this? And is it wrong to seek power in order to make a bigger difference and address previous abuses of power?
So let us pray for the powerful, the arrogant, those who clamor most for their own rights, that they might become truly meek and seek the good of others rather than their own good. And let us pray for ourselves to stand in solidarity with those who have no voice, so that all may be heard.
The next Lent meditation will be published on or around Wed 4th March.
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