A Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zechariah 9: 9-10 Romans 8: 9, 11-13 Matthew 11: 25-30
In the years preceding the American Civil War, the unity of several American Christian denominations was sundered over the question of slavery. Here is one, quite strident, voice from that era. It is retrieved in Joshua Zeit’s Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation (2023):
The Old School Presbyterian leader James Henley Thornwell, known as the “Calhoun of the southern church,” was incensed by the suggestion that slavery was a sin. “If Slavery indeed be consistent with the Bible,” he wrote—and Thornwell was sure that it was—it naturally stood to reason that abolitionists bore “tremendous” responsibility for the split. It was they, after all, who “in obedience to blind impulses and visionary theories, pull down the fairest fabric of government the world has ever seen, rend the body of Christ in sunder, and dethrone the Saviour in His own Kingdom…Are our country, our Bible, our interests on earth and our hope for heaven to be sacrificed on the altars of a fierce fanaticism?”
The slavery of Blacks in the American South is now a settled question. But as Christian denominations again divide, this time over questions of human sexuality, retrieving Thornwell still serves a purpose: sometimes the best way to learn a concept is through its opposite. Whatever his virtues, James Henley Thornwell was not meek!
The words “meek” and “weak” both flow into English from old Germanic and Norse roots. They rhyme, and many would consider them to mean the same thing: lacking in power. Or, at least, that being meek is the demeanor of those who are weak. Lacking power, one has no choice but to be quiet, gentle, easily imposed on, submissive.
Yet our faith proclaims meekness to be a virtue. Indeed, it is a strength that is characteristic of God himself. Because all power belongs to God, God can only enter our lives in meekness, deliberately setting aside all pretensions of power. If God did not do this, God would overwhelm us.
God’s relationship to us is a bit like parents letting kids be kids, or an elephant tiptoeing through tulips. Indeed, the best image of God’s meekness can be found simply by looking into the heavens. The sun in the sky is our great blessing precisely because it maintains its life-giving distance.
Likewise, humanity can only be itself when the divinity, from which it emerges, sufficiently withdraws.
Meekness is not surrender. It is a strength that does not need to scream.
Atheists ask for proof of God’s existence. Unfortunately, they are requesting what can never be granted. Something subject to proof cannot be God. Why not?
A God proved is an idol. When something is proven or explained, it becomes a part of our world. But the true meaning of the word “God” is what draws us forward, out of ourselves, beyond the world as it is today. Like the distant sun in the sky, God makes living things to grow.
Indeed, because thinking of God as a hidden object or entity is so misleading, jettison that picture, and try to replace it with one based upon the nature of time. God is our fundamental, radical future. God is always coming-to-be. As such, God stands beyond the calculations of the moment.
Western society is, in so many ways, unraveling. Is that reversible? Who can say with any real certitude? But one result of our collective weakness is the rise of the impatient, the assertive, the overbearing. These are the voices of those who fear their strength to be slipping. Only those who know their strength, who know its source, can afford to be meek.
Zechariah prophesied:
See, your king shall come to you;
a just savior is he,
meek, and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass (9:9).
And our Lord Jesus, whom we receive as the fulfillment of this prophecy, bids us join him in meekness.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29).
In meekness, our understanding of Christology, who Christ was and who Christ still is, determines our anthropology, what we think it means to be human. For a Christian, meek does not mean weak because the meekness of Christ does not emerge from a lack of power. Far from it.
Questions of race, economics, and sexuality are not trivial. Because they involve and evoke our human potential—and do so in the shadows of a fallen world—concerns such as these will always be characterized by some degree of strife. But we can strive for the good without abandoning meekness. At least, we can if we have confidence in the faithful God of the ages who is always coming to be. Only those who fear that the Good has forsaken them need give way to aggression.
Meekness is not surrender. It is a strength that does not need to scream. Meekness is not passivity. It is a sureness of presence that spurns aggression. Meekness is of God. Like the sun in the sky, securely settled into itself, it shines in sure love upon the good and the wicked.
