Blessed are the meek...

  "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  -Matthew 5:5

Gentleness, by Irena Sophia

I don't know very many gentle people--a few.  And, of course, you have to force yourself to think of them because they don't distinguish themselves usually.  They are quiet types.  They quiet waves instead of making them.  They may be viewed as "passive," an adjective that our culture demeans by equating it with meekness.  

Yet, according to Vincent's Word studies, that's exactly what Jesus meant---mild, gentle, "it was applied to inanimate things, as light, wind, sound, sickness. It was used of a horse."  The first light of early morning or late afternoon, a soft breeze, a whisper...  This is what it may look like in nature.  

Jesus uses it also to describe himself: 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." -Matthew 11:29

Take My Yoke Upon You, Larry Chandler, 2003

Do I think of Christ as gentle?  He allowed the masses to press in upon him with their many demands, yet he fed and healed them anyway.  He forgave and loved those who repeatedly failed him.  He allowed himself to be arrested, tried unfairly, giving us his very life.  "Take my yoke and learn from me,"---do I want to learn this meekness of His?  If I am honest with myself, no. It sounds painful.

The Biblical Illustrator offers up this antecode: "A missionary in Jamaica was once questioning the little black boys on the meaning of this text, and asked, “Who are the meek?” A boy answered, “Those who give soft answers to rough questions.”"

Do I give soft answers?  Not typically.  And in this season of my life particularly, the answers seem to be growing more rough than soft.  I'm failing. 

Yet we are told that if we learn from him that we will find rest for our souls.  Even more,  we will inherit the earth. An inheritance and rest.  It seems elusive, impossible--certainly so apart from Him.   Even with Him, it demands of me a type of submission that I find threatening.  It puts him in charge and requires me to follow.

Blessed are those who mourn...

Every one flies from sorrow, and seeks after joy, and yet true joy must necessarily be the fruit of sorrow. - Adam Clarke

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  -Matthew 5:4

How can mourning render one happy?  This is especially the case when Vincent's Word Studies defines this type of mourning as "signifying grief manifested; too deep for concealment. Hence it is often joined with κλαίειν, to weep audibly (Mar_16:10; Jam_4:9).

Blessed are those who fall apart outwardly and weep aloud?  Blessed are those undone with their grief? This is an exact emotional state that I work hard to avoid.  When I break down in tears, it means that I am at the absolute end of my resources, at a complete loss of what to do.  These types of tears come when I am personally defeated.

But perhaps this kind of sorrow is not primarily a self-focused type of sorrow. McNeil in the RWP notes that this kind of sorrow “is most frequent....for mourning for the dead, and for the sorrows and sins of others."  Other see this sorrow as the type born from a sense of one's sin, a contrite state of grief.

This “mourning” must not be taken loosely for that feeling which is wrung from men under pressure of the ills of life, nor yet strictly for sorrow on account of committed sins. Evidently it is that entire feeling which the sense of our spiritual poverty begets; and so the second beatitude is but the complement of the first. The one is the intellectual, the other the emotional aspect of the same thing. It is poverty of spirit that says, “I am undone”; and it is the mourning which this causes that makes it break forth in the form of a lamentation - “Woe is me! for I am undone.”  -Matthew Henry

from Mel-is-a-fan

I like Henry's point here--that this type of sorrow inherently brings our souls to knock at the door of God for help.  Wallowing in one's grief is not the same thing at all.   This type of grief has a purpose and a point---"for they shall be comforted."

There are so many sorrows in our world--deep ones.  I think most women, like myself, avoid looking at the sorrows of the world too closely precisely because we sense their danger---that they could swallow us whole if we let them.  We push back and keep things in out of a sense of self-preservation.

The happiness here is not the sorrow itself, but the promise of comfort.  The truth that we will be comforted transforms the landscape of grief, but we must have the grief to experience the need of comfort:  “There can be no comfort where there is no grief” (Bruce).  Those who mourn are blessed because of the full circle that comes from the truth that the sorrow will be accounted for and transformed by His comfort.  

This explanation doesn't scratch my every itch.  If I had my way, I'd banish the tears before they hit the cheek.  I would keep them from forming in the first place.  But it's His economy, not mine.  I don't get to make the rules, but I don't have the weight of solving the equation myself either.  In His broadest wisdom, He has chosen to embed the joy of comfort, of release, within the blueprint of the world's sorrows.

Blessed...

I've read the bulk of the mainstream commentaries on the Beatitudes with some success.  Three weeks in, I keep trying to lay ahold of them in a deeper way.  Though I am not getting much farther in terms of specific understanding of the verses, I do feel like I'm moving forward in a gentle but significant way.   One of my biggest obstacles has been the concept of being blessed.

Originally, the concept of blessedness, which comes from the Greeks, does not carry a sense of morality with it inherently.  In its earliest use, it meant simply "happy" and was used in conjunction with the condition of the Greek Gods.  They were deemed happy because they were apart from and above from the frustrations and evils common to man.  

In the Bible, blessed still carries this primary meaning of "happy," although through centuries of Christian use, the term has taken on different connotations.  When someone uses the term today, it conveys a sense of moral judgement from above.  When we say "bless you" or "be blessed," there is an unspoken God in the equation who originates the blessing.  



And maybe this is why I don't use the term casually or like it when others do.  The overly villianized "bless her heart" is just an extreme example of the way I've seen "blessing" thrown around capriciously.  I don't like being told to "be blessed," either as it insinuates the said blessing is something I need to receive properly.  It's as if I can be blessed if I am willing to be.  The passive construction has a edge to it. 

Ugh. Yuck. (Sorry)

I do like "may God bless you" because the intent here is clear and right.  It recognizes that the pronouncement of blessing comes from outside.  There is a blesser and receiver.  The right image here is that I am interceding for and wishing for God's blessing on that person----His happiness, His favor--to be bestowed upon that person, willing or not.  To me, this is more than semantics, it is a proper statement of the spiritual reality behind His blessing.  He has the power to bless or curse.  I can choose to believe that or not, but either way, He will be about His business.   Let's keep that clear.

What about saying "bless you" when someone sneezes?  To me, this has become a polite courtesy divorced from any sense of of God.  I guess the expression does imply that someone is not openly hostile to the concept of a Christian God (which is still saying something, especially in Asheville).  But because it's become almost entirely secularized,  it doesn't bother me.  What bothers me is when His Church uses it.  It's when the term is used by Christians in an overly causual or hyper-spiritual sense that I bow up inside and resist.  

Getting back to the concept of blessing in the Beatitudes,  here I think Christ is pointing firmly to the true state of our spiritual condition.  Because the true state of our condition is so far removed from the world's perception the lesson requires this level of direct grit.  We need some cold water splashed on our souls and often.  It's more this shock of awareness that I think He's about here.

I don't know that Christ intended that we fully understand what it means to be blessed in any of these senses exactly.  He wanted us to know that what man perceives as "blessed" is very different than what God knows is blessed.   This and some level of what that might look like is enough for us to be busy with for now.

Fra Angelico (1387-1455), The Sermon on the Mount, Museum of San Marco, Florence, Italy

Mulling the Beatitudes

Corita Kent, Beatitudes Wall, 1964

I've stalled in the Beatitudes for two weeks now.  Every time I revisit the words, I find new 
reasons to linger.  Pithy statements.  Deep waters.  Each pronouncement is a riddle.  

The "blessed" are characterized by traits that our world tries to avoid:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

We value the rich in spirit.
We value those who are joyful.
We value the self-confident.
We value having received justice.

They strike discord in my spirit.  They seem unnatural, counter-intuitive.  Don't we pity those characterized by these words?  Don't we kindly wish--even pray--for such oppressive circumstances to resolve?

And what does Jesus want me to DO with these statements?  Should I count myself blessed when I match the description, rendering them as a kind of spiritual pep talk? Should I count others blessed when they are mourning or meek and give them the same pep talk? A

What is His purpose in declaring them?  

It's taken me several mornings to get this far. As much as I'd welcome the satisfaction of crossing them off my list and moving on, I'm not nearly there...barely beginning...to think them through.

But, here is a question for today at least:  what does it mean to be blessed?  

We would view the word happy as a synonym for blessed; however, I'm not sure that's the crux of things. To me, blessed is more than a feeling, like happiness.  I would not substitute the word happy for blessed because it's emotion-based, experiential feeling.

But blessed, I suspect it's more of a declaration about reality, a declaration inherently coming from an outside source.

I'm not sure at all about it right now, but at least I have some clear questions.