“The Blessing of Quiet Godliness”

Matthew 5:5

As a way of getting at the true biblical meaning of meekness and the blessings that go with it, I’m going to give you a brief peek into the lives of two very different men. The first guy’s name is Charlie. Charlie was a surgeon in Radford, VA. He was very good at what he did: extremely competent and talented.

Charlie was a big man, a really big man. He was also a loud man, really loud. His was an imposing presence. It was always easy to tell when Charlie was on the hospital premises. Even when he wasn’t visible, he left obvious clues to his presence. Trailing after him as he marched up and down the hospital halls was almost always a cloud of cigar smoke that was almost as blue as his language. On those rare occasions when those things were absent Charlie could be found simply by looking at the nurses and other hospital staff left cringing and weeping at every nurses’ station he passed.

Charlie was something else. He really thought he was special. If he were alive and active today, I’m sure that he would be spending a lot of time looking in the mirror and saying, “You da man!” He was, after all, a legend in his own mind. Humility was definitely not one of his more obvious attributes. In short, he was an arrogant jerk.

But a really good surgeon. I should know, he whacked on me a couple of times. Something happened when he donned his surgical gown and mask and slipped his great big old hairy hands into his surgical gloves. Those big fingers of his were quite deft and nimble. In his hands he held the gift of healing. In the operating room that arrogant, out of control jerk became someone gentle, kind, and disciplined. I’m sure that he thought that it was his intimidating size and personality that made him great. He was wrong. Using William Barclay’s translation of today’s text, it was Charlie’s gentleness that was his strength.

The other guy is my dad. Dad was a shift supervisor at a textile finishing plant in Dublin, VA. He never finished high school, but by the time I was an adolescent he had worked himself into a supervisory position. Every year at evaluation time, dad got graded down for being too easy. He didn’t quite live up to the cultural image of boss. He was anything but an arrogant jerk. Some folks probably considered him too nice to be an effective leader.

Well, they were wrong. At the end of every fiscal year it was his shift that led the plant in productivity. He was a good boss because he was a good man – and a respected man. He had a knack for getting those whom he supervised to work hard, and enjoy doing it. At his funeral the church was packed with his friends and co-workers. His strength, too, was made manifest in his gentleness.

Meekness – true biblical meekness – has absolutely nothing to do with being spineless, submissive, weak, or ineffective. Within the Greek culture in which the early church grew exponentially, meekness was one of the greatest ethical attributes. Those who were truly meek lived their lives in a perfect balance between too much anger and too much passivity. They knew how to be angry at the right time but never at the wrong time. They were disciplined and practiced self-control. They were not aggressive, arrogant, or proud. They lived a life of healthy humility, always aware of their faults and weaknesses.

From the Christian perspective such meekness is a matter of being God-controlled, exercising self-control for God’s sake. It is very much a derivative of poverty of the spirit. It is a humility that banishes all pride. To be meek in the Christ-like sense of the word is to have a firm grip on the reality that we are the created and not the Creator. The blessing derived from meekness is an inheritance from our Father God, something we are given not something we take or earn or demand.

There’s an old saw going around to the effect that the Presbyterians who settled in Appalachia faithfully kept the Sabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on. And then there’s that nasty old joke to the effect that the meek shall inherit the earth after the real men are through with it. The former gives credence to the misguided confusion of historic Calvinistic thriftiness with greediness. The latter reinforces the worldly notion that anything worth having must be earned, bought, or taken, and that those who lack the proper amount of ambition, wealth, or power must be satisfied with whatever’s left over.

The true Calvinist Christian knows that everything we have is a gift from God. Such gifts are blessings from God that we do not deserve, cannot earn, and especially cannot take by force. A faithful disciple of Jesus never loses touch with his or her utter dependence on God’s mercy, benevolence, and grace. The value of the world we are to inherit – the world God will give us – cannot be measured in terms of human worth or accomplishment. It’s not a territory to be conquered, a possession to be bought or stolen, or even a place to which we can stake a claim. It is the Kingdom God has promised us – the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the new earth described in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation of John.

That surgeon named Charlie came nowhere near possessing such a Kingdom with his temper tantrums, blue language, and intimidation of others. Only in the operating room, when those gentle fingers carried out the God-given gift of healing, did he come nigh unto the Kingdom. My dad’s supervisory style might not have been what the corporate culture defined as successful. The positive impact he had on all those folks he supervised over the years, though not measurable on any business’s balance sheet, was a hint at the Kingdom to come.

In the end, all of Charlie’s assumed areas of strength and accomplishment proved to be of no value whatsoever in the Kingdom of God. For all he took, he never humbly received what really mattered. My dad’s oh so quiet and gentle style was a powerful witness to his Christian faith and an affirmation of the ordination vows he took as a Deacon in the Presbyterian Church. He passed through life being loved and respected rather than hated and feared. His life provided a brief, though cloudy, glimpse into that great Kingdom to come.

I’m sure that Charlie had his good points beyond the operating room. His mama probably loved him. God even loved him, but didn’t care much for the arrogance. My dad was not perfect. Being a lot like him and sharing many of those imperfections, I know better than I like to admit just how imperfect he was.

Perfection is never the issue for Christians. We are not perfect. This side of heaven we will never be perfect. Our lives are at best a steady progression toward faithfulness in which pride and arrogance are replaced by humility, discipline takes the place of chaos, self-seeking becomes Christ-seeking, the need to be in control is surrendered to God’s control, and loud self-promotion is overcome by a quiet Godliness.

In the end the blessings of meekness are manifested within the characteristics of meekness: humility, discipline, surrender to God, being centered in Christ, and living a life of quiet Godliness. Such characteristics are signs of strength not weakness. Though they may not be respected in our me-first, winner-takes-all kind of world, God ultimately rewards them. The meek – the truly meek in the biblical sense of the word – shall inherit the earth: the new earth of God’s realized Kingdom, a world perfect beyond all imagination, our promised inheritance from above.

Blessed is the one whose life is marked by gentleness, humility, and quiet Godliness. That person shall inherit all that God has been promised us in Jesus Christ. Amen.