We Fools
I Corinthian 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

February 3, 2002

We haven't been foolish enough for a long time. Mainline churches have generally, but not always, prided themselves being the opposite of foolish - dignified, influential in society, powerful, beautiful upon the eye.

Actually, to behave in this manner is foolish. Foolish, if we think think that's what characterizes us as uniquely Christian. Every power elite in history has aspired to and accomplished this dignity and beauty from the Roman aristocracy to the Axis powers to the "effete snobs" of the U.S. Congress.

God has waited a long time for us to get smart. While we believe we're even smarter than previous generations, it hasn't helped us to know God or to avoid recreating a terrible new cycle of violence and suffering. So God switched tactics and instead of wisdom, God chose foolishness to enable those who believe and have faith to really live.

What could be more foolish than the Beatitudes which begin Jesus' Sermon on the Mount? The Ten Commandments are reasonable, respectable, doable. No wonder everybody wants to practice the Ten Commandments - they are almost easy. Jesus escaped the crowds and sought seclusion on a mountain. Huddling with his disciples, he told them new foolish stuff. Only eight instead of ten, but they are foolish enough.

The most foolish, embarrassing thing Jesus may have taught is "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Nobody wants to buy that one. "Meek" is a King James Version word of Shakespearean ilk. We want to change it and distance ourselves from it, because we don't like the idea of being meek - weak, spineless, mean-spirited.
Mark Twain cynically translated the Beatitudes for the modern person: "Blessed are the meek for everyone will give them an opportunity to display their meekness."

If we can understand why we are meek, we will know why we are fools - and why we will have life that is full of living.

The road to meekness begins with the first beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Language is notoriously difficult at times to translate and get the right idea across. The poor in spirit are not soulless, despondent dregs who are right now out on the streets of Regina stealing your car.

The spiritually poor are those who have realized that they are truly destitute, that they have no real resources except God. They might be worldly wealthy, but they know that as a human being we cannot do anything right or good; it is only with God that we can live. We are not just fiscally poor, we are at the end of our ropes and have nothing at all which can save the world. Contrary to popular opinion, the word for poor in spirit is more severe than Luke's idea of the poor without any money or property.

Years ago I heard an audio tape of William Barclay's Bible Study on the Beatitudes. He changed my way of thinking because for years afterwards I looked at the Bible from a peculiar perspective and only about 20 years later when I stumbled across Barclay's The Daily Study Bible did I know the debt I owed him. Barclay restates this first beatitude, "O the Bliss of the one who has realized his own utter helplessness, and who has put his whole trust in God, for this alone he can render to God that perfect obedience which will make him a citizen of the kingdom of heaven!"

Jesus' next foolish statement is, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Those who mourn are the poor in spirit who weep for the violence and suffering and sinfulness of this world, as well as for one's own sinfulness.

In early Christianity there were some who possessed the "gift of tears," that is, they would continually be crying for their own past and present sins, as well as for the world's. Surely, there is an unending supply. These were real fools.

Bishop Kallistos Ware related the story of how Symeon the New Theologian, an abbot of a Constantinople monastery around 1000 A.D., would not admit to communion anyone who did not have this gift of tears. An untearful, unmournful monk would not be repentant enough to approach the Lord's Table. It wasn't long before Symeon was dismissed as abbot by the bishop in response to the complaints of his monks. Ware stopped at this point to comment that not many English men would cry publicly today. When he was sent off to private boarding school at the age at the age of eight, Kallistos remembered there were times when he wanted to cry, but made sure he was in private. Are we better off not mourning?

"O the Bliss of the man whose heart is broken for the world's suffering and for his own sin, for out of his sorrow he will find the joy of God!"

Now those meek fools of Christendom on whom everyone tramples. The word translated "meek" here is translated elsewhere in the Gospels as "gentle," "humble," in reference to Jesus.

Aristotle, Barclay points out, uses the word as the golden mean between excessive, too much anger and excessive angerlessness, too little anger. Blessed is the one who always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time. We are only fools when are not angry when the Mark Twains want us to be angry.

Another connotation of meekness is that it is used for an animal that is domesticated, that has learned to control its instincts and passions. We, however, are not totally self-controlled, but God-controlled.

Meekness finally carries this sense of humility in which one knows that he does not know everything. That is real wisdom.

"O the Bliss of the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control, because he himself is God-controlled, who has the humility to realize his own ignorance and his own weakness, for such a man is a king among men!"

I would rather be a meek fool who lives this way than the greatest of the wise, powerful men and women of our generation. Who would be a fool to live otherwise?
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan