The Beatitudes of Jesus are eight wisdom sayings that stand at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are not moral teachings as much as they are soulful riddles that invite the hearer into a new way of being human. They are an invitation to see, from the inside of our lives—from our souls—what it could mean to be truly human. At this time of such a massive reassessment of human life on this planet, the Beatitudes, what I call, "Novel Attitudes," could point the way to a better way of life for our communities and our world.
This sermon reflects on the overwhelming challenges we face today, not only the COVID19 crisis, but also the travesty of ongoing white privilege and its affect on violence against black and brown people and the disproportionate suffering in those communities. In the midst of outrage and fear, here is a timely call for another way forward in order to create a world our children and our children’s children will want to inherit.
1.
It’s been a grim week. I won’t catalog the statistics. It doesn’t help. Not really. We’re all aware to one degree or another of the mess we’re in. Some of us feel it acutely; others among us are defended against it or deny it.
I found myself near tears talking to one of you this week, recognizing the enormity of the problems we face. The revelations about the racially motivated killing of Ahmaud Arbery, and the failure of the criminal justice system to confront this chilling act, highlights the dangers and disparities and injustices so many Americans face, the complicity of those in power, and the polarization and powerlessness we feel. Outrage is building for so many reasons.
And now we sit with this biblical text, this saying of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek.” Jesus’ words seem outrageous.
“Meek” seems the opposite of what we need right now. We need outrage, we need action, we need the collective will and muscle of the nation not only to come together for the common good, but to stand against the lies and prejudice and polarization that are tearing us apart just when we need to come together.
When we think of “meek” we think of those who let themselves be dominated, those who are mere doormats for those who prey upon the weakness which their meekness manifests.
In the early 1980s, I stood on the plaza at the Dachau Concentration Camp in Munich, Germany where over 35,000 Jews and other political prisoners were murdered by the Nazi regime. I thought to myself, where were my German ancestors who lived in and around the camp? Why did they not act against such obvious cruelty and inhumanity? Why were they so meek?
I determined, then and there, never to be meek in the face of dangers, threats, and injustice.
2.
So, over the years, I tried to be the opposite: strong not meek, which meant never weak in the face of dangers, threats, and injustice. But the problem was, most of the models I had were unhealthy. Expressions I’d been led to believe were signs of strength, were in fact, expressions of toxic masculinity: a father whose inability to manage his fear manifested in outbursts of anger; a high school coach who once showed his strength by throwing me against a locker; a professor who intimidated me through her intellect, and ridiculed my opinions when they countered hers. Schooled by the long tradition of patriarchy—the rule of men—I knew of only one way to be strong, and it was muscular: physically, intellectually, and verbally.
The way we commonly deal with our fears of being vulnerable is to do everything we can to make ourselves invulnerable. Countries stockpile nuclear weapons. Nations build walls. We hire security and buy guns, some of us earn one degree after another, or climb to the top of our field—all in an effort to make ourselves invulnerable.
It’s not just a male problem, it’s also a problem for all of us—regardless of our gender—who live in a society schooled in patriarchy.
Most of us believe meekness means weakness and that true strength is muscular—physically, intellectually, and verbally. When we feel weak, when we feel vulnerable, we feel afraid, and so, we defend ourselves; we build fences inside us and outside us; we do what we can to make ourselves invulnerable. And right now, the reality of fear and the vulnerability we feel manifests itself in the defensive reaction of outrage, and outrage too often manifests itself in the classic signs of toxic masculinity: abuse, violence, intimidation, and ridicule.
Like us all, I’m a product of patriarchy, I’m affected by toxic masculinity. Sometimes I’ve perpetuated both. But I know, maybe you do too, that both patriarchy, and the toxic form of masculinity it perpetuates, are not helping us. They’re leading us toward ruin.
There’s got to be a better way. A better way to be men, a better way to be women, a better way to be human.
3.
“Blessed are the meek,” says Jesus, “for they will inherit the earth.”
The future belongs, says Jesus, to those who find a better way to deal with fear, people for whom violence is the last possible option when dealing with conflict. Likely, Jesus would say that violence is no option at all for those who walk God’s way upon the earth: the impulse to respond to vulnerability with violence is just too easy, too quickly justified. To create the future where the Commonwealth of God, the Kin-dom of God, works for everyone, we’ve got to find another way.
“Blessed are the meek,” says Jesus, “for they will inherit the earth.”
Meekness for us means doormat, it has overtones of timidity and submission. But the word “meek” in this saying does not mean doormat or timidity or submission. The word is defined by the life of Jesus. And the life of Jesus shows us the very opposite of submission and timidity, and he certainly was no doormat. Jesus was a man of enormous courage, extraordinary soul-power, who could stand up to the powers, who could feel outrage, who could challenge injustice, but who never gave-in to violence: physical, intellectual, or verbal.
Jesus overturned the stereotypical toxic masculinity and pointed the way, not only toward a new way of being a man, but toward a new way of being human regardless of gender.
We avoid vulnerability because we equate it with weakness. But Jesus embraced vulnerability as the way of strength; as the only way to be fully human; as the only way our children and our children’s children will inherit the earth.
Jesus is a symbol for the way into the future. Jesus had, in the words of Brene Brown, a “strong back” and a “soft front.” Jesus held two things together we often hold apart: strength and vulnerability.
4.
In our congregation, we know Dr. Brene Brown. Many of us have her books, we listen to her talks, her conversation with Krista Tippet was part of our Lenten study this last winter and spring. She’s a sociologist who studies shame and vulnerability. She teaches people how to find the courage they need to do hard jobs, to gather the strength to lead through these tumultuous times, to find ways across the impasses that plague us, and to foster hard conversations we need in order to help rebuild a better world.
She says that whether she’s working with CEOs or special forces troops, politicians or NFL teams (all groups highly defined by patriarchy) she always asks them the same question: “Give me an example of courage that you’ve seen in your life, or that you, yourself, have engaged in—any act of bravery—that wasn’t completely defined by vulnerability.” No one can. Because there is no courage, no real show of strength, no way to justice, no healing, in fact there’s nothing novel, nothing new without some expression of vulnerability.
Have you ever been brave or done something hard or created something new that didn’t require risk, that didn’t cause you some fear, that didn’t make you in some way vulnerable?
I doubt it. There’s no show of courage without vulnerability. A “strong back” and a “soft front” go together.
Have you ever come across a tree or a flower or a fruit that didn’t require that a seed drop its guard, make itself vulnerable, break itself open?
I doubt it. There’s no creativity without vulnerability. A “strong back” and a “soft front” go together.
Has a woman ever given birth without courage and risk, without fear and enormous vulnerability? No. And yet, isn’t a mother’s work, bringing a child into the world, one of the most remarkable expressions of human strength?
Yes, it is. There’s no new life, no future, without vulnerability. A “strong back” and a “soft front” go together.
5.
With this counter-cultural saying, “Blessed are the meek,” Jesus isn’t calling us to be doormats; he’s not asking us to be timid; he’d never condone that we are submissive and subservient in the face of injustice, ignorance, and evil.
Jesus is opening to us a new vision for the way we act in our difficult world; this is a Novel Attitude about what power actually means in these frightening and dangerous times. Jesus embodies both a “strong back” and a “soft front”—power through vulnerability.
This is our calling now. But we cannot do it alone. We need a community.
When you and I look out at the world as it now is, it frightens us. Outrage is building and with it the possibility of devolving into deeper and more dangerous expressions of the old ways of power. I’m not saying outrage is inappropriate; it is appropriate. But what we do with our outrage may not be.
Many people will want to make themselves invulnerable. They’ll stockpile weapons. They’ll build walls. They’ll lob word-bombs at each other. They’ll hide in bunkers of like-minded people behind face coverings and with plenty of Clorox wipes. They’ll make weapons to protect themselves.
That’s one option. But it won’t take us where we need to go.
Brene Brown says that “one of the greatest casualties of trauma is the loss of our ability to be vulnerable.” We are right on that traumatic edge now. And unless we dwell in communities of people who are learning to live a different way, we’ll only leave our homes when we’re all armored-up—when we’re carrying a hundred pounds of inner PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). We’ll shackle ourselves with this ungodly armor because we cannot tolerate the fear and vulnerability we feel. We will want strong backs and strong, invulnerable fronts. Strong, strong. But strong backs and strong fronts only turn human beings into fortresses and weapons, captive to the old ways.
Religious communities like ours can make a difference. We are one of the few public places in our communities where people can come (physically or virtually, it doesn’t matter) and be open and honest about our fears, express our feelings, and be held by songs and stories, rituals and relationships. In sacred places like this, we can help each other take off our inner PPE for a time. We can help each other keep our fronts “soft,” our backs “strong,” and our hearts open—which is the only way we’re ever going to birth something new.
When we do, we are helping to create a better future for our children and our children’s children. Let’s help make it a better earth than the one we inherited.
Strong, soft. Not strong, strong. Strong backs and soft fronts.
Strength through vulnerability is the way.