Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis March 9, 2008

Psalm 37:1-11

“Doorways to the Realm of God: 3. “Big and Meek”

“Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass. . . . The meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity” (Psalm 37:1 & 11). Jesus echoed this Psalm in his third beatitude: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” I find these words reaching across a span of 2000 years and shaking me by the shoulder. “Hey, wake up!” they tell me. “Now is the time to mobilize the meek. Because unless the meek boldly step forward with vision, initiative and courage, the earth that you inherit when the haughty have fallen won’t be able to sustain you.”

Does that sound strange–the meek boldly stepping forward with vision and courage? Aren’t the meek the shrinking violets, the passive pushovers who quietly go along with what other people want? This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the Greek word that is usually translated as “meek”–praotes. There are just two people who are called meek in the Bible–Moses and Jesus. I don’t think anyone thinks of them as pansies!

Praotes is the word that was used for an animal that was no longer wild and unruly but tamed. A horse that’s praotes can gallop down a racetrack at 45 MPH. It can chase down a careening steer so its rider can rope it and innoculate it. It can hurtle over high fences in horse jumping competitions. Its strength isn’t diminished and its spirit isn’t lost. But its energies are directed to a higher purpose than its own, the purpose of its master.

There are horses who have been “tamed” by having their spirits broken, just as there are people who have become meek by being shamed, rejected, or filled with fear of punishment. This is the kind of meekness we recoil at. But of course this wasn’t what Jesus was promoting.

Horse trainer Monty Roberts popularized a way of taming horses that he calls “joining.” He loved watching wild horses as a youth, and he learned from them how the oldest mare would “tame” a rambunctious or aggressive colt. Horses feel safe when they’re with their herd, and very vulnerable when they’re alone. So the mare would drive the unruly colt away from the herd and give it a kind of “time out” until it indicated by bowing and walking with its muzzle next to the ground that it had repented and was ready to come back. It was now praotes, and Monty watched in amazement as it went around and made up to the other horses it had been bothering.

So Roberts put a wild horse in the coral with him and kept it away from him until it showed the same signs of submissiveness, or praotes. Then he used horse body language to indicate to the horse that he was safe, and the horse came right up to him and nuzzled his shoulder, asking in horse language if it could join him. Using this technique, Roberts can get the wildest horse to willingly submit to bit, bridle and being mounted within half an hour. He then determines what the horse’s natural gifts are–running, jumping, maneuvering, and trains the horse to develop its natural gifts.¹

The horses love it. They enthusiastically trot out to him when they see him coming, eager to see what that day’s lesson is going to be. In hands of a master that cares about them and respects their uniqueness, being praotes doesn’t diminish these horses in any way. It brings out the best in them and expands their abilities.

That’s what Jesus wants for us–to join him in submission to God. When we become praotes before God, we surrender our will to God’s higher will. We surrender our mind to God’s higher wisdom. We surrender our gifts to God’s higher purpose. We see the world from a bigger, broader perspective than our own selfish desires. We begin to see the world and other people as God sees them. Does this diminish us? No, it makes our lives so much bigger, richer and deeper.

When I think about going back to the self-centered, self-directed life I had before I handed over the reigns to God, I feel so small, confused, and crammed into the little box of my own ego. In God I find such freedom and boundlessness along with purpose and direction.

But doesn’t our world try to keep the reigns in the hands of our small egos at every turn? In Greek, the opposite of praotes is hubris, an arrogant, self-centered, self-contained pride. Our culture wants us to live our lives as individual consumers absorbed by our own wants and needs, competing with each other to get ahead, displaying our status by what we buy, and creating our own little tailor-made world with our own TV, computer, cell phone ring, looking for fulfillment in our own self-sufficiency.

Hubris was a central theme in many ancient Greek tragedies. In Greek dramas, hubris always blinded the main characters to something crucial and proved to be their downfall. When all you can see is yourself, you’re going to miss seeing some crucial aspects of reality.

This is why the Psalmist says, “Do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass....Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more” (Psalm 37:1, 10). They create an unstable situation that can’t be sustained.

Our hubris as self-centered consumers blinds us to reality in a way that threatens our own downfall. We want something, and so we buy it, and when we’re done with it, we throw it away. We’re happy, the people who made and sell it are happy. Everybody wins. But we’re blind to a few things.

• In the past 30 years, 1/3 of the earth’s natural resource base has been consumed.

• U.S. industries admit to releasing 4 billion pounds of chemicals they know are toxic every year. And only a fraction of the synthetic chemicals used in manufacturing have even been tested for toxicity.

• Of all the things humans normally eat or drink, you don’t want to know which one has the highest levels of many toxic contaminants. It’s human breast milk.

• We Americans produce about 30 pounds of trash a week per person. But 70 times that, or over 2000 pounds of trash per person per week, is created in the process of manufacturing what we buy and throw away.

• Guess what percentage of the total stuff that flows through our production system is still in use 6 months after we buy it. One percent. The other 99 percent is used up or trashed within 6 months.²

• To produce one pound of beef takes thousands of gallons of water, as much as the average American uses for all purposes in several months.³ And as you know, a whole lot of places are running low on water.

• Global climate change is already affecting many species of plants and animals, important water supplies, and farmers.

In the complex process of extraction, production, transportation, distribution, consumption, and disposal, the only part the media wants us to see is the part where we buy and use the product. They want us to stay blind to what trees, mountains, rivers, and air quality are sacrificed for us, what third-world laborers were exposed to toxic chemicals and inhumane working conditions to make it for us, how much oil it took to transport all the parts from all over the world, what the wages and benefits are of the cashier who sold it to us, what chemicals it releases into the atmosphere when it’s incinerated at the landfill, or for how many centuries it sits in the landfill leaching toxins into the ground water.

If we have enough hubris, this isn’t such a big deal. I can get my needs met, ignore the big picture, and let somebody else clean up the mess.

Listen again to the words from the Psalmist: “Do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass. . . . The meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.”

Abundant prosperity. That sounds hopeful. But is it possible to sustain it? We are told that it is within our means to create a sustainable human civilization where everyone gets enough to live a safe, comfortable and happy life. But that can’t happen as long as everyone is intent on loading up on as many of life’s goodies as they can for themselves, regardless of the immense hidden costs to the earth and other people.

Being proates, or meek, doesn’t mean shrinking into a needless, wantless nobody shivering in the dark so we don’t use any energy. It means opening our lives, our wills, our purpose, and our vision to something much bigger than ourselves–to God, who doesn’t diminish us, but who opens the door to true abundance, to true fulfillment, to a life that is rich with meaning, flowing with gratitude, and energized by God’s power.

The meek are not small, they are big–much bigger than people who are so trapped in their own egos they can’t see any farther than indulging their own selfish needs. The meek are not weak. They are already becoming a powerful force that is beginning to change the way cars, houses, buildings, neighborhoods, and cities are designed, and how food is grown, and how things from tires to tennis shoes can be recycled, and how renewable energy can be harnessed.

Most of you have already begun to take steps towards a sustainable world. You combine errands and car pool to save on gas; turn your thermostats back a little; use compact fluorescent bulbs; buy produce that are fairly traded, energy efficient, previously owned, or locally grown; and some of you have cut down or cut out meat consumption. And I don’t see any of us suffering for it. In fact, it feels good to be doing things that are good for the world, not to mention good for our budgets.

But at its heart, exchanging hubris for an attitude of praotes is a profoundly spiritual shift. I suspect that one reason that Americans consume twice as much as we did 50 years ago, and that we spend 3-4 times as many hours shopping as our European counterparts do, is because we feel disconnected from God, from our own spirits , from each other, and from creation. So we get seduced into trying to fill the empty feeling with things, status, entertainment, and distractions.

Moving from hubris to praotes begins with opening the connection between our spirit and God’s Spirit through repentance, trust, gratitude or praise. It means letting love rule in our hearts instead of greed, pride and fear. It means asking God to show us where God can use our gifts in the service of others. It means seeing ourselves as part of one human family sharing one world together. That’s praotes, humbleness, meekness.

And when we do this, we do begin to inherit the earth and its many gifts, without even having to purchase or possess them. Which satisfaction feels deeper to you–going to the store and buying something you saw on TV, or opening to God in gratitude for the precious gift of life and health, for the people God has given you to love and be loved by, for a simple gesture of thoughtfulness by someone you know, for an opportunity to do something for someone that they really appreciated, for the beauty of the earth around you? Which satisfaction feels deeper to you–watching a love story in a movie or picking up the phone and telling someone you love them and are thinking about them? Which feels more fulfilling–watching an action movie on TV or taking action to make the world a better place?

We were created to be big and meek. We have it in us to raise our children–not on the garbage of greed–but on what nourishes their souls–love, gratitude, generosity, fairness, respecting differences, integrity, responsibility, and working together for a common goal.

We have it in us to continue building up a church where everyone is embraced, no matter how much they make, what their background or lifestyle is, or what their abilities are; a church where joys and sorrows are freely shared; a church where spirits are encouraged to unfold and gifts for ministry are unleashed; a church where Christ’s Spirit of love, peace and joy is experienced and shared right in the midst of us; a church from which Christ’s love, truth, wisdom and hope are carried into the world week after week.

We have it in us to be the future we wish to see in the world–a future where abundance is sustainable because it is in harmony with the way God has designed Creation.

Blessed are the praotes, the big and meek, surrendered to God and therefore agents of God, for to them God shall entrust the earth.

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