Sunday, February 1, 2015

February 1, 2015--Blessed Are the Meek


From Rev. Thomas Ott

Today is all about establishing the greatest football team in the world by watching to see who can impose their will on the other. But Jesus commended a different form of power, one that is dedicated not to dominating but to serving. Today at FCC we pause to remember that Jesus blessed meekness. Here are my reflections on the third beatitude:
Matthew 5:5: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 
The Strength of Meekness
It seems a bit ironic to be talking about “meekness” on Super bowl Sunday. Meekness is always in short supply in the media hype surrounding the National Football League’s championship game. Tonight’s contest provides the ultimate stage for establishing bragging rights to being the best of the best. The team that is awarded the Lombardi trophy at the end of tonight’s Super Bowl will hold the title of being the greatest football team in the world for the next twelve months.
All week long, the media has been saturated with stories of players trash talking their opponents, analysts arguing over which team will dominate which aspects of the game, commentators speculating over which players are most likely to win the Most Valuable Player awards. Today is all about establishing the best of the best: who is the best quarterback, the best coach, the best receiving core, the best pass defense, the best offensive line, the best running back? Earlier this week Patrice and I watched a program that even rated the best television commercials from past Super Bowls.
There is a reason that the Super Bowl has become the premier television event of the year. Last year 111.5 million people tuned in to watch the game. Professional football players have become our modern day gladiators. We revel in the battles they fight, we claim for ourselves the victories they win and we vicariously live out our own conquest narratives through them.
It is ironic that we are focusing on meekness today, on Super Bowl Sunday. Here in America, we idolize power, control and dominance. We live in a culture that divides people into winners and losers. In every arena of life we are preoccupied with the question, “Who is strong enough to impose their will on others?” Who has the votes, who has the wealth, who has the social influence, who has the seniority, who has the inside knowledge, who has the physical strength to get what they want?
The desire to dominate permeates our political culture where collaboration has become a sign of weakness and compromise equated with betrayal. It pervades our corporate culture where hierarchical levels of authority and compensation reward those who are the most effective power brokers, who curry favor to win influence, who put their own advancement ahead of the welfare of their colleagues. It suffuses our school classrooms where pecking order is established through social alliances, fashions designate tribal loyalties, and hallways divide territory into friendly or hostile turf.
In our culture, we divide people into winners and losers. We view life as a zero sum game. One person’s gain is another person’s loss. One group’s advancement is another group’s decline. One team’s victory is another team’s defeat.
But today, on Super Bowl Sunday, we were reminded that Jesus commended meekness as one of the true sources of blessing in life: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Meekness doesn’t get much air time on Super Bowl Sunday. In our culture, meekness is associated with weakness. The meek are those who are too intimidated to speak up for themselves, too accommodating to stake their claim to what they want, too timid to impose their will on others.
But the meekness that Jesus blessed is anything but weak. The meekness of Jesus was powerful enough to feed five thousand hungry people, to cure seven quarantined lepers, to raise Lazarus from the dead and to launch a movement among Galilean peasants that has persisted for 2000 years and has changed the course of history.
The meekness that Jesus blessed isn’t weakness. It is strength devoted to serving the welfare of others. Meekness isn’t the absence of power, it is power placed in the service of others. The meek use power not to dominate but to serve. The meek engage others, not as competitors or rivals, but as brothers and sisters created in the image of God. When confronted with difference, the meek respond not with fear or animosity but with curiosity. When faced with competing interests, the meek seek not to dominate or coerce but to find common ground. When forming coalitions of influence, the meek seek not to advance their own self-interests but to serve the common good.
In order for any of us to claim the blessing of meekness that Jesus promised, we have to opt out of our culture’s win-lose mentality. Meekness requires a willingness to exert power on behalf of the powerless. It is about being salt and light and leaven for the good of others. It is about living with the awareness that our welfare is tied to the welfare of those who have the least. It is not about trickling down. It is about bottoming up. It is about making sure everyone has enough and no one takes too much.
The strength of the meek comes from knowing that “love does not insist on its own way.” It comes from praying the prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will, but thy will be done.” It comes from heeding the prophet’s call to, “seek the welfare of the city.”
Meekness isn’t weakness. Meekness is power dedicated to serving the common good. When we embrace the meekness that Jesus commended, then we inherit, not just our own piece of the pie, not just a place to call our own, not just our own little corner of the world; we inherit the earth. When our strength and our influence and our power is directed towards the welfare of the whole world, then the whole world becomes our world. There is no longer us and them. There is only us. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Today, on Super Bowl Sunday, we are taking a moment to honor a person in our faith community who embodies the strength of meekness. Wes Kimble is a nurse anesthetist who is leaving this week on his 20th trip to Guatemala as part of medical missionary team through an organization called HELPS International.
For months now, Wes has been busy behind the scenes organizing a team of 96 physicians, surgeons, nurses and volunteers to set up, equip and staff a temporary surgical hospital in the rural highlands of Guatemala. In Guatemala, half of the population lives in poverty and those who can afford medical care can only find it in the large urban areas. For twenty years Wes has been organizing medical teams to provide care to people who otherwise wouldn’t have any access to the help they need.
When Wes was asked why he travels all the way to Guatemala instead of helping poor people right here in his own country, his answer was people here will receive medical care. It may not be the same level of care as those who have good health insurance or the financial resources to pay for their treatment, but they won’t be turned away. In Guatemala people die because they don’t have any access to medical care.
I don’t know anyone who would call Wes week. He’s a big guy, so even if I didn’t know him I wouldn’t call him week. But those of us who are blessed to know Wes know that over the course of his lifetime he has made a tremendous impact on our community through his work as an anesthetist in the operating room at the hospital here in Battle Creek, in this church as one of the principle leaders of the six and a half million dollar renovation project that transformed our gathering space, in his family as husband, father, grandpa, in his volunteer work with HELPS International. Everywhere his life is invested, Wes makes an impact. But never out of a desire to control, coerce or co-opt.
That is what has made Wes so effective in organizing medical care for impoverished people in Guatemala. He doesn’t dominate, he doesn’t assume he knows what people need, he doesn’t impose his knowledge, skill or expertise on others. He offers what he has to share in service. He doesn’t go down to Guatemala to convert people. He goes to be a servant in the service of those who come to him in need of healing.
Today’s Super Bowl contest is all about establishing who is the greatest. But Jesus said, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 23: 11-12).”
This morning we are honored to commission Wes Kimble for his 20th medical mission trip to Guatemala. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Amen.

No comments:

Post a Comment