Rollins Chapel
November 17, 2006
Richard R. Crocker, Ph.D., College Chaplain
"Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth."
We continue to think about Jesus' teachings on happiness. We continue to be
amazed by the reversal of categories from our conventional wisdom about
happiness to what Jesus said about it. We continue to wrestle with our
discomfort as we confront the discrepancy between what we say we believe and
how we act.
Meekness. It's a peculiar word. Meek means humble or not assertive.
"Patient and mild. Not inclined to anger or resentment. Gentle or
kind."[1] Or,
dismissively, as "too submissive; easily imposed on; spineless,
spiritless."[2] Like the other beatitudes, it's not usually a
compliment, especially in our culture, to call someone meek. We do not get to
Dartmouth, as students or staff, by being meek. We get here by being assertive,
achieving, high self-esteem people. And we think those same qualities will
enable us to own the world. But maybe we are wrong.
Our faith teaches us that we do not achieve salvation through any work of
our own. Our culture teaches us the opposite. Our faith teaches us that the
greatest among us is the servant of all. Our culture teaches us the opposite.
Our faith teaches us that the love of money is the root of all evil. Our
culture teaches us the opposite. At some point each of us must decide what we
really believe.
You know, it is hard to manufacture humility. It seems that we are either
humble, by nature, or we are not. It is difficult to try to be humble, because
the very act of trying is a self-assertive act. We can so easily wind up
pretending to be humble - an act that compounds pride with pretense. It is
especially hard for anyone to be humble who is paid to stand up and talk about
being humble - and that includes, especially, preachers. But we can cultivate
humility, if we simply look at reality. The reality is that, regardless of how
talented or intelligent or virtuous we are, there are others who are moreso.
Any person who thinks about it would realize, as my brother always use to tell
me, you have a lot to be humble about.
But most of us do not want to be humble. Most of us want power. We want the
power to control our own lives, and the power to control other people. We want
to see our ideas, our values, our preferences prevail. We want to make other
people behave as we think they should. Part of the appeal of the religious
right in our nation now is that a group of people who have considered
themselves relatively powerless have become intoxicated by inhaling the
perfumes of the powerful. It's hard to blame them. It seems that everyone else
wants to do the same thing. We all seem hungry for power.
Well, maybe not all of us. Most of the people in the world are more
concerned about survival than they are about power. Most of the people in the
world are never going to earn six figure incomes, never going to attend a
college like Dartmouth - or even a college at all. They are never going to have
to figure out how to invest their wealth. They are never going to own anything
at all.
Except, perhaps, the earth. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth." What could that mean? The meek do not have any
inheritance at all - most of them. How could they inherit the earth? Well, who
owns the earth? Not any government, not any corporation, not any individual. It
is God's earth, and those who inherit it are the children of God. As the
Psalmist says, "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world,
and those who live in it...." (Psalm 24:1)
Increasingly, we in the first world, the developed nations, the privileged
people of the developed nations, live in gated communities. Our principle
concern is keeping other people out. Take, for example, the issue of illegal
immigration. Many people in our nation are suddenly concerned about the influx
of immigrants - not from Canada, but from Mexico and Central America. There are
no plans to build a fence across the Canadian border, but there are plans to
build a fence cross the Mexican border. What's the difference? Obviously, most
Canadians don't want to move here. Many Mexicans apparently do - or at least
they want to work here. They want to make enough money to support their
families. They are, for the most part, meek people. They take, as we are
constantly told, jobs that other Americans do not want, and they accept wages
that other Americans would not accept. They own nothing here legally. But who
really owns the earth? Is it the stockholders and directors of corporations
that invest in agribusiness? Or is it the people who work the soil, till the
fields, and pick the fruit? In a legal sense, and an economic sense, it is the
stockholders; in the existential sense, it is those who care for the earth,
whose very lives and livelihood are attached to it. I do not pretend to know
how the issues of immigration should be addressed; I am not proposing a
program. I am simply saying that walls don't work. We will never preserve what
we think we own by building fences and walls and alarm systems; we will only
preserve it by envisioning, and then building, a world where every person has
the means to make a living - to provide for self and family. I do not know how
to do that. I would be comforted if I thought that people studying economics at
Dartmouth, and elsewhere, were concerned with that issue. I would be comforted
- and maybe frightened - if I thought that Christians who are in power around
the world really believed it.
Copyright©2006
Richard R. Crocker
[1] David B.
Guralnik, ed., Webster's New World Dictionary, New York:
William Collins Publishers, 1980
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