Why do the meek inherit the Earth? That seems … wrong. And inaccurate.
Meekness is not a word we use regularly. When I googled meekness, the example sentence provided was, no joke, “All his best friends make fun of him for his meekness.” Yikes. We associate meekness with timidity or mousiness, something closer to a vice than a virtue.
Yet Jesus states it baldly, in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5, NRSVue). He is indirectly quoting Psalm 37:11, where the meek also inherit the land.
Jesus even cites his own meekness as a reason for people to trust him. “Follow me,” he says later in that same gospel, “for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29, KJV). Surely Jesus is not calling himself a doormat. And even if he was, timid passivity is certainly not a good reason to follow someone, nor is it a reason to inherit the Earth.
Newer translations of Matthew 11:29 often use “gentle” instead of “meek,” as in the NIV, NRSV, and many others. But Matthew 5:5 often remains “meek,” even in the newer translations.
So, what is meekness with which Christ identifies himself? The kind that makes him worthy to follow to the end in our weariness, the kind of meekness that inherits the Earth, in the repeated phrase of the Beatitudes and Psalm 37?
We have clearly become squirmy around this word — but meekness actually expresses something central to the Christian life, something we would do well to reclaim as followers of Christ. Gentleness is a good word, but it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as historical meekness. Let us become word nerds for a minute and look at the medieval meanings of meekness.
Medieval Meanings of Meekness
For medieval theologians and thinkers, meekness was a virtue, a habit of being in the world, that measured angry responses. In Thomas Aquinas’s words, meekness “moderates anger according to right reason,” regulating the desire for vengeance, destroying hatred itself.
In other words, meekness is not quite the same as gentleness. It can be quite stern. Meekness adapts anger as it needs to be adapted to contexts and circumstances. It is a form of patience specifically geared for handling anger. In a little fifteenth-century treatise with an evocative title, The Tree and the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost, the author writes that “patience ordains us to the fruition and use of endless peace.” As the type of patience measuring anger, meekness, too, ordains us towards cultivating peace. In practicing meekness, we become someone who can catch an elusive glimpse of the eternal peace of the Kingdom of Heaven even in anger and then chase that vision.
Meekness really has nothing to do with being a mouse or a doormat. A meek person is someone who handles her anger well. She is angry in the right contexts, with wise responses that are neither overheated nor too cold. The meek person is never bitter nor hateful, both of which are warped forms of anger.
The meek are not controlled by their anger, though they can still be angry. In fact, the anger of the meek has the power to change unjust social systems or to reset relationships, because it is oriented ultimately to the abiding peace of Jesus and towards recognizing the image of God in each person, however much of a jerk they may be.
Christ the King, the Meek Lamb
We begin to see why meekness is a virtue that Christ claims for himself. Christ the King is the meek lamb who did not open his mouth before the slaughter. We witness his crucifixion as the great final rejection of humanity’s wasting wrath.
But we also see Jesus flip tables, we see him call out religious leadership, we see him heal the ill and speak to the outcast and violate social taboos.
The meek do not wilt under pressure, submitting to oppression because they are too weak to fight back. Only the meek are courageous and loving and powerful enough to refuse to return violence in the face of the sword that pierces the soul and the nails that perforate the hands and feet.
And yet they are no passive or repressed bystanders; they act upon their anger in moments and places where it would be wrong not to act upon anger at religious hypocrisy, at exploitation of the needy, at cultivated ignorance.
The Only Free Person
So then, back to my original question: why do the meek inherit the kingdom? A collection for preachers which offered material for sermons shockingly claimed that “meekness deserves to be a leader.” We can begin to see how this surprising statement can be true. Only the meek are not purely reactive to and within their contexts; they alone can reject an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and break the perpetual cycle of human violence. A meek person is a free person, the only truly free person.
The meek inherit the earth because they are the only ones who can be trusted with that truly kingly inheritance. Only meek Mary is mother of Jesus. Only the meek Jesus can judge hearts; only the meek Savior can rule the world.
Adapted from Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life by Grace Hamman.
In accessible and thoughtful chapters, scholar and writer Grace Hamman shows how learning about pairs of medieval virtues and vices can help us reevaluate our own washed out and insipid moral vocabulary in modernity. Our imaginations for the good life are expanded; our longing for sanctification sharpens. Old ideas can give us new fire in our practice of the virtue — and in that practice, we imitate Jesus and become more human.
Grace Hamman, Ph.D. (Duke University) is a writer and independent scholar of late medieval poetry and contemplative writing. Her work has been published by academic and popular outlets, including Plough Quarterly and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Grace hosts a podcast called Old Books with Grace which celebrates the beauty and joy found in reading the literature and theology of the past. She lives near Denver, Colorado with her husband and three young children.
