Blessed are the Meek

Jesus had a calling, a vocation, which preceded his conception in Mary's womb.  In many ways his vocation determined who were to be his parents, what ethnicity and gender he would be, when and where he would live in the course of human events.  The Magi, following their vocation, being attentive to the Holy Spirit who is at work in foreign lands,  could discern something of this infant's vocation before Jesus himself could perceive it.   The same Holy Spirit that had brought  Jesus into this world leads each of us if we are attentive to fulfill our vocation.  Sins against the Holy Spirit, to say the least, present the only real problem for the individual and his community. "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod," he tells his disciples as they sin against the Holy Spirit.


Scripture tells us that Jesus was like us in all things except sin (Heb 4:15). We all, like Jesus,  have a vocation given by God before we were conceived in our mother's womb. We all have a role to play in bringing about the Kingdom-  a calling which determines when and where and to whom we are born, and whom in the course of our lives we come to interact.  This is true whether we are born to Jewish parents, Muslim parents, Catholic parents or to confirmed atheists the purpose of our vocation is the same as Jesus' -- the coming of the Kingdom of God. 


The beatitudes which Matthew records in the Sermon on the Mount describes the coming of the Kingdom of God. They  describe essential attributes that bring about different facets of the Kingdom,  attributes that belong to the Messiah, attributes of  Jesus -- as he reflects the attributes of God.  "For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth," he told Pilate. " Every one who is of the truth hears my voice (John 18:37)."

In Mark Chapter 7 (our reading for this week) we see Jesus living out this calling  of bearing witness to the truth,  the same truth rendered in Matthew's the Sermon of the Mount.   First he responds to the inquiry from the Pharisees and scribes as to why some of the disciples did not keep the tradition of the elders but ate with unwashed hands.  This was for these inquiring Pharisees and the scribes  a spiritual problem. Jesus identifies for them the real spiritual problem-- what is in their hearts.  Jesus enlists the prophet Isaiah's witness  to their inquiry.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus simply said, "Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God."  Here in Luke we can see Jesus defining for the Pharisees and scribes, and later for a crowd generally, and still later  to his own particular disciples --the truth behind this beatitude.  The beatitudes are facts-- true, whether we know them or believe them  -- true  before Jesus identifies them as the way to the Kingdom and bears personal witness to them in his life and death.   Jesus teaches them both forthrightly and in parables because a genuine appreciation of the truth behind the beatitudes fosters that metanoia essential to the coming of the Kingdom in our personal lives and in those we encounter through the working of the Holy Spirit. 


Which brings us to the woman "Syrophoenician by birth" who implores Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. Jesus addresses her inferior status as a gentile. The woman is not put off, or accuse him of bigotry but rather pursues that good for which the Holy Spirit directed her there in the first place.  Jesus comes to realize in that moment what   his vocation calls him to do for her, what the coming of coming of God's Kingdom requires.  It is the faith in her heart rather than the circumstances of her birth that matters to the coming of the Kingdom. Unlike the faith of the Jewish woman who stole a miracle without asking,  by touching the hem of his garment, this foreigner woman's persistence in beseeching Jesus makes concrete her faith and advances the Kingdom. Both women are meek but in very different ways.  The first doesn't seek to push her request of Jesus above all the others who are pressing in on him.  This woman foreigner takes no umbrage at Jesus recognition of her interior birth but presses on with what the Holy Spirit has led her there to do.  It is her vocation.   And by being "Syrophoenician by birth" Jesus is able to reveal something about the coming of the Kingdom that could not have been revealed if she were Jewish.  She has a different vocation from the meek Jewish woman but to the same end.  Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth through the grace of God.


The beatitudes are interrelated since they express different facets of the same Kingdom.  You can see the relationship between the purity of heart missing in the Pharisees and scribes and meekness of the Syrophoenician woman.  The Pharisees and scribes are ostensibly descendants of Abraham, they know God's will through the testimony of the prophets and pray they psalms, and wash their hands before eating yet they are farther from being agents of the coming Kingdom than the Syrophoenician woman who follows her vocation and beseeches God's Messiah.