Meekness and Power – Original Post
What Jesus Means by Meekness in an Age of Power
Jake Owensby
The political and moral center of the world is shifting. And not in a good way. I still believe that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. But for now, the world is taking a detour through the Will to Power. We cannot predict how long this detour will last. But we can say that it is already deadly.
Nations are forsaking a geopolitical order committed to the rule of international law for one defined by a clash between great powers. The actions of those great powers are guided by the Thucydidean Principle: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
So, what does Jesus require of his followers now?
Russia invades Ukraine. The United States asserts its power beyond international norms, and some among us even speak casually of acquiring new territory. China flexes its economic muscle.
On the streets of America, masked federal agents demand identity papers from civilians. They arrest individuals without clear due process. And civilians have died in the course of these operations. I grew up hearing stories of the Nazi Brown Shirts and SS from my WWII-era immigrant grandparents. What I see from iPhone videos shared on the news is uncomfortably reminiscent of those stories.
To repeat Thucydides: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” The Will to Power strives for dominance and demands submission. It craves success, privilege, and control.
So, what does Jesus require of his followers now? He tells us to resist. To exercise power. Only, not that kind of power. Here’s how he put it in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)
Meekness is the paradoxical power that Jesus-followers exercise only by first submitting themselves to Jesus. It is neither passivity nor niceness.
Rather, to echo Augustine, to be meek begins with surrendering the illusion of our own control. Only then do we make space for Jesus to work through our hands and feet.
The core of the Will to Power is self-will. By contrast, the meek are willing, not willful. They intentionally align their desires with God’s desire. This is the essence of being a disciple. And Jesus is clear about what God desires. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
For Jesus, love is a set of practices, a way of being in this world:
Do the next right thing. Don’t make a big production of it. (Matthew 5:37)
Give to those in need, because they need. (Matthew 5:42)
Respect everybody as somebody important to God: even the ones who make your skin crawl and the ones who hate your guts. (Matthew 5:43-46)
Remember that we’re meant to love people and to use things. Not to love things and to use people to get those things. (Matthew 6:19-21)
Jesus calls us to die to self-will. To die to slavish devotion to self-assertion, self-fulfillment, and even self-preservation. To love our neighbor as ourselves even at great cost. To resist the worldly obsession with success, privilege, influence, and status.
We may do this in the voting booth and by communicating with elected officials. Some of us will walk in peaceful protest. But the core of our resistance to the world’s turn toward the Will to Power is to walk daily—one day at a time—in humility. Trusting that God will, in God’s time, work through the likes of us.
Or, as Micah summarized it centuries ago: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
Food For Thought
“The new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God.”—Rowan Williams, Being Christian
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”—Augustine, Confessions
“We don’t wake up daily and form a way of being-in-the-world from scratch, and we don’t think our way through every action of our day. We move in patterns that we have set over time, day by day. These habits and practices shape our loves, our desires, and ultimately who we are and what we worship.”—Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary
Inspiration
After the Diagnosis – Christian Wiman
No remembering now
when the apple sapling was blown
almost out of the ground.
No telling how,
with all the other trees around,
it alone was struck.
It must have been luck,
he thought for years, so close
to the house it grew.
It must have been night.
Change is a thing one sleeps through
when young, and he was young.
If there was a weakness in the earth,
a give he went down on his knees
to find and feel the limits of,
there is no longer.
If there was one random blow from above
the way he’s come to know
from years in this place,
the roots were stronger.
Whatever the case,
he has watched this tree survive
wind ripping at his roof for nights
on end, heats and blights
that left little else alive.
No remembering now…
A day’s changes mean all to him
and all days come down
to one clear pane
through which he sees
among all the other trees
this leaning, clenched, unyielding one
that seems cast
in the form of a blast
that would have killed it,
as if something at the heart of things,
and with the heart of things,
had willed it.
O God, when the world exalts power, turn our hearts toward the meekness of your Son. Free us from fear and self-will, that we may love as he loved and serve as he served; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jake Owensby describes himself in this way on his substack page, The Woodlands
I’m Jake Owensby: bishop, writer, philosopher, and fellow traveler on this path. I’m a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, Chancellor of the University of the South, and the author of seven books on faith and the art of living in a complex, restless age.
But most of all, I’m someone who believes that love is stronger than death, that grace is real, and that even now, it is possible to live a full-hearted life.
