…The Meek…

Common Grace, an organisation that describes itself as a “movement of Christians passionate about Jesus and justice”, have kindly invited me to be part of their upcoming series of videos organised round the Beatitudes as laid out in the Gospel of Matthew.

In this context, I have been invited to speak on the Beatitude that in jokes are mostly associated to my place in the universe…the geek. Though the biblical text reads: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

There was a temptation to link up the biblical motif of the meek with the more contemporary alternative of the geek…then I realised after living in a number of places that many geeks are anything but meek. So that plan was quickly abandoned.

In the course of  preparing for this video, however, I came across a striking quote from Simon Tugwell, the Dominican theologian based in Blackfriars in Oxford. In his The Beatitudes, Tugwell had this line on the Beatitude of meekness:

If it is the meek…who will inherit the earth, this is perhaps because the earth, God’s earth, the real earth, can be had on no other terms. It is a gift. Or, in the words of the beatitude, it is an inheritance.

There will be some metaphysics thrown in, and more will follow once the video is developed. In the meantime, have a look at the contribution on the Lord’s prayer by my friend Ben Myers, who many would already know from his popular Faith and Theology that he will soon be heading up the Millis Institute at Christian Heritage College in Brisbane.