LIVING IN THE SPIRIT OF GENTLENESS

WHEN I AM MEEK, I AM STRONG

Luke 17: 11-19

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

October 12, 2010  Proper 23C

For much of our culture, “meekness” or “gentleness” is something to be avoided like leprosy.  How in the world can you get ahead, in this world, if you are gentle, meek, and mild?  No, the person who is most perceived to be a hero, who is most admired, or who gets press or news time, is the person who asserts themselves, who is overbearing, or is the person who screams the loudest.   We live in a day, where the dominate watch-word of the world has become “the survival of fittest” or the presentation of “the strongest and the loudest.”  It is laughable, in today’s overly-politizied,“dog eat dog” world, to even entertain for one single moment the words of Jesus who once said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth!”   Most would say, “Jesus was a nice guy and all, but nice guys finish last.”  Look what happened to him!  Meek is just, well, too weak!

When my wife and I were learning to drive in Europe,  I had made a comment to someone about having passed a “fender bender” along the road, and how I noticed two drivers waving their arms at each other, often yelling, or even being very emotional.  I could imagine this in Italy, but this was Germany.  I wondered to a German friend, “What’s going on?”  They gave me this advice:  “If you are in an accident, and even if the accident wasn’t your fault, speak up for yourself and speak loud and clear, because if don’t speak up for yourself, the authorities will assume that you are the guilty party.”  

I remember hearing what a parent once told his child before riding the school bus:  “If somebody starts picking on you, or bullying you, take up for yourself.  If they push you, turn around and punch them in the nose and they won’t ever hit you again.  Whatever you do, don’t just stand there and take it.”  None of us want our child to be a victim of bullying.   Most of us do not blame that Father in the news who stormed on the school bus to verbally attack the kids who were bullying his daughter who had Celebral Palsy.   We all know there is a need to stand up for the weak or to stand up against the evil.   Jesus too, had to take a stand against the bullying religious establishment of his day.   But the question of “how” is what this Fruit of the Spirit called either, gentleness, meekness, or humility is about.  Is there any place for “gentleness” in our understanding of what it means to take a stand as a Christian?  Or is it true, that for most of us, especially in this day and time our “in your face” culture , is this understand of a “meek and mild” Jesus just too weak?

IS MEEK REALLY THAT WEAK?

In our text today we see Jesus, as Jesus always is in the gospels, at the intersection of much that is still troubling in this world.   This healing of the ten lepers comes in the midst of the irritating rubs of religion, race, and illness.   Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem (the religious capital) and he is going near Samaria (considered the residence of those of lesser race) and he encounters 10 lepers (one of the worse physical conditions in the ancient world).    Jesus is not afraid of taking on any of these “evils”.  He has his face “set” on Jerusalem and is headed there at his own peril.   Jesus also that he needs to go “through” or “near” Samaria” when his disciples had wanted him to go around and avoid contact with the half-breeds.   And finally, Jesus is not afraid to touch or reach out to the leper, even though it was against the law to do so.   Whatever you want to say about Jesus, you can’t say that he was weak.   Jesus had great inner strength to take on the most difficult and deadly issues of his day.  In our text today, he is still walking straight into all of them.

As we look straight into this text, at least, as Jesus appears in all the gospels, he was a person of incredible inner strength and determination.  This Jesus who invited the masses to “come unto me all who are weary bearing heavy loads” so they will find rest in him, ….because, as he said, “I am gentle  and humble of heart.”   This very gentleness, this meekness and this humility, whatever it was and whatever it meant was anything but weak. 

Interestingly, the greatest hymn of early church, attested that Jesus’ meekness and humility was the very key to his power, his greatness and his strength.  When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, he  quoted that hymn which declared Jesus’ strength was indeed his humility, when Paul wrote:   ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,

 ⁷ but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸ he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,

 ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 (Phi 2:5-11 NRS).  

The main point of this hymn cannot be missed:   It was Jesus own humility, both his gentleness and his meekness which gave him the incredible strength to “be obedient to the point of death---even death on the cross.”   Because Jesus was meek, gentle and humble in this way, now, Paul says, God has exalted him “above every name” and now “every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord”.  It was not because Jesus paraded his greatness and strength, but because he displayed gentleness, meekness and humility that God elevated him to power.   Because of this, Paul reminds the church at Philippi, that they want to be strong and have God’s blessing, they should have “this same mind that was in Christ Jesus.”   This was the challenging message of Jesus’ that it is through his “humility” he counters the “power-plays” and “political ploys” of the world.   Our world still says, as that world did: “If you take the way of selfish power, arrogance, and pride, you will succeed.   Paul says the truth of Jesus points us in the opposite direction.   The power ploys of this world will ultimately fail.  Only the way of the cross, of humility, of meekness and gentleness, will count you among the “blessed” who “inherit the earth.”  (Matt. 5.5).

IS THIS A “WAY” WE CAN REALLY GO?

This is certainly what the Bible teaches about humility as being the way to God and the way to claiming the future, but will it work?   While there should be little doubt that this is the way that Jesus went and is the way God’s people are told they should be, is this really a way that we can realistically “be” in our own world?  Who wants to be like these weak, sick, and humble lepers going around crying out, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”   Most of us would agree, with that old Mac Davis song which expresses our reservations about humility and meekness: 

“O Lord, it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way. 

I can’t wait to look in the mirror, cause I get better looking each day. 

To know me is to love me, I must be a (heck) of a man. 

O Lord, it’s hard to be humble, but I’m doing the best that I can….”

How can we dare to eat “humble pie” in this “dog-eat-dog” world?  I mean, again, look at where it took Jesus as he ended up “dead” on the cross?   Maybe there is a place for meekness when life finally does humble us, and that all this talk about “meekness” is something we can at least think about as we prepare for the “weakness” that is to come,   but what does it have to do  with the “strength” we need to live and survive today in our world?   How could anybody, in their right mind or body, dare agree with Jesus that the “meek inherit the earth”, or as dare believe, as Paul believed, when he said, “when I am weak, then I am strong”? 

Maybe it makes sense for a hurting leper be humbled and to cry out to God for help, but what good is it to humble ourselves while we believe we are strong and need to be strong to stand up to this crazy, evil, and increasingly “stupid” and “sick” world?   Again, who can blame that Father for getting on the school bus to confront his daughter’s bullies?   Who can blame the outrage of that Florida preacher, who might have been unpolished, but at least he stood up out of nowhere, against the evils of extreme Islam and the terrorism that threatens us all as he dared to burn the Koran?   Who can blame the American voters for forming a Tea Party with the intent to stand up and be bold enough to vote everyone who is currently in office out of office, because of the economic situation today?  

For most of us, when times get tough, the tough need to get going, if they want to survive.   For those of us who feel like we are “in charge”, or that all has been “perfect”  in our lives up to now, or when we, like Mac Davis, feel like, at least in the past, we have been a “heck” of a people, what sense does humility make?  Certainly we can understand why these lepers have to be humble--as the way of gentleness might be necessary for the sick and dying--- and of course, we’d all like our doctor to be “gentle” with  us----there can be a place for gentleness and meekness, but it just seems too soft, too passive, and too dangerous for the living and the thriving, who don’t want to end up being numbered among the sick or dying?   What good can “humility” possibility bring to those who know the advantage of being well and strong?  

HUMILTY AS SURE STRENGTH AND HEALING

Turn to the ending of this story.  While all ten of them received the healing of their leprosy, only one of them was “humble” enough to return and say ‘thank you’.  Just as interesting, and perhaps even more  important, is that it is only the one who returned in “humble” gratitude, who hears Jesus say “Go your way, your faith has made you well.”  

Let’s think about this in the most practical terms.  Humility for this one leper was that he did not take anything for granted.  He continued to be just as “humble” when he is healed, as he was when was ill.   Only this “continued” state of humility gave him full and lasting wellness.   This is the clear teaching of this story, but what does this have to do with us, in our own self-absorbed, self-focused, and power crazed culture?   We all want our own country to return to economic and political “wellness”, but do we really have a clue how “lasting wellness” might be connected to our own “humility?”    
  

Many of us are blessed by living within a very good marriage.  And when you live within a good marriage, over time, you can begin to take the goodness of your marriage for granted.  Your wife or your husband does all these nice little things for you, over and over again and are always appreciative?  No. You become used to these things.  You start to expect these favors, gifts or blessings from your spouse.  There is no longer the fresh and genuine appreciation and it can all become routine, a habit, an  expectation which is taken for granted.   The same kind of thing happens with children who live in a good home with a loving mom and/or dad.  The kids can easily begin to take the blessings and pleasures of their family life for granted.  It becomes no big deal that their parents do all of these wonderful things for them.  It is expected.  It is part of life. 

It can be the same way in our national life.   We can start expecting liberty, security, and wealth, when it is really as much a gift as it is also part of the result of how we have decided to live together, with both diversity of backgrounds, but also with a unity of spirit and need.  We can start taking our liberty and our unity for granted, thinking that no matter what we believe, what we do, how we spend our money or live our lives, and no matter how we treat each other, this great nation will always be here.    So also, within the household of faith, we can become used to God’s blessing and care for us through our fellowship with each other.  We begin to take God for granted.  We begin to expect his blessings as our God-given rights—not as gifts, blessings or expressions of unmerited grace .  Whereas someone who hasn’t been part of the Faith for long, may be deeply grateful to God for the smallest of blessings, when we become USE to them, we can start to take everything for granted.   This is what we can do with each other, with God, with our health, or with our spiritual life.   This is what the 9 lepers did.   They were so “proud” of their new condition of health and healing that they forgot to who they were, who gave them strength, and they failed to return in humility to give thanks. 

You would think, that in life, the people who have the most to be thankful for, would be the humblest, gentlest, and meekest people of the earth?   Unfortunately, it seldom turns out this way.   Most often it is the people with the least who are not only the most humbled in their appreciation for what they have, and who also seem to find the strength to survive the worst and almost impossible situations of life.  At least this is how it was for Pastor Martin Rinkhart, who was pastor of  a church in Eilenberg, Prussia from 1619 to 1649, during the Thirty Years War in Europe.  The Thirty-Years war was a war when Christians (Catholics and Protestants) tried to kill each other---to prove which church was in the right, which was the strongest and which was the true church of God.   There was no humility in that struggle to destroy each other, and it almost succeeded.   The lack of “humility” in their struggle is one of the main reasons almost no Europeans go to church today.
  

From the year the war began until the year the war ended,  Pastor Rinkhart was the pastor in the same walled city, which was also his hometown.  His was a walled town, so all the refugees from the thirty years war flocked into his city to find safety inside the city walls as the battles raged around them.  His town was overrun with poverty, the plague, and all the perils of war.  It was awful.  It was hell on earth.  By the end of the thirty years war, he was the only pastor left in town alive; all the other pastors had died, so he alone was to bury the plagued villagers and refugees from war. Somewhere in the middle of all of that suffering, he wrote a hymn, which is perhaps the second greatest hymn of the Reformation, and perhaps of all time:“Now,thank we all our God; with hearts and hands and voices; who wondrous things hath done; in whom this world rejoices.  Who from our mother’s arms, has blessed us on our way, with countless gifts of love and still is ours today.”  When the “dust” and “dirt” of that awful, prideful” war cleared, the only virtue left that could heal the arrogance, ingratitude, and false sense of pride, that brought all the terrors down upon Europe, was humility.  Only the heart that remembers the source its true strength, can survive what can happen in this world.  Only the “humble heart” inherits the hope of the world. 

Speaking of humility, hope and gaining the healing of heart our own “dog-eat-dog” needs, let close with another story of leprosy and humility that is closer to home.   In his new devotional book, “Out Live Your Life” Max Lucado (p. 143ff., Thomas Nelson, 2010)  writes about Molokai, the beautiful pearl among the Hawaiian Islands with its “gentle breezes.”  But in 1840, Father Damien went to that Island for a different reason---to help people die.   The leprous people who lived there, were taken there to die, and they would die, but they would not die alone.  Father Damien wanted them to know that God loved them, and after working with them for 10 years, he wrote in his diary the most humbling message; “I want to sacrifice myself for the poor lepers.”

Father Damien went against even the “pride” of his own life.  He stepped down of his own place and position and immersed himself in the humble world of dressing sores, hugging children, and burying the dead.  His choir members sang through rags, and his congregation took communion, with stumped hands.   But because Father Damien felt these people mattered to God, they would matter to him, even though it seemed they didn’t matter to anyone else.   Father Damien put himself in the lowest place, with them.  In the end, through his own, humble, compassionate touch upon the lepers in that Hawaiian colony, he literally became one of them, contracted their disease, and on April 15, 1889, four days shy of Good Friday, he too, died of leprosy.

What Father Damien did goes against everything we would do.   You didn’t hear Father Damien explaining why they got way, nor did you hear him telling those lepers how bad they were, nor did keep his own hands from getting dirty or his heart from being touched.  What you see in Father Damien, is what you always see, when you look into a humble, self-sacrificing, meek and gentle heart.  You see Father Damien loving people, not labeling people.  You see the kind of person who holds the world together by dying to themselves.    This was and is the most telling truth of “meekness”, but it is no way a weakness.  This kind of gentle, meek and selfless humility, which was also the humility of Jesus, must be the humility that brings us back to Jesus and back to each other,  if we want to see real healing, lasting wellness, and lasting strength come in this world.    Amen.


© 2010 All rights reserved Dr. Charles J. "Joey" Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.