When we consider the characteristic of meekness, we think of people who might be described as humble, quiet, reserved, or submissive. Historically, it was hardly considered a virtue until its use in Scripture. Moses is perhaps the most important figure of the Old Testament considering how crucial he is to Salvation History. What is most significant about Moses though is how uniquely close his relationship with God is: unlike others, Moses speaks with God directly and is given the ultimate responsibility of revealing God to His people. But what was so special about Moses compared to everyone or anyone else? “Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). We must understand that it was the meekness of Moses that allowed him to be set apart. It was his meekness that allowed him to access God in a more intimate way than anyone else.

Jesus taught that meekness was a virtue in the beatitudes by claiming that the meek will inherit the land. The “land” Jesus speaks of is how the Old Testament writers referred to the Promised Land; in Jesus’ teachings, we can understand this as the Kingdom of Heaven. If meekness allows people to encounter God in a special way and inherit His Kingdom, what is it about this virtue that we must understand? First, we must understand that meekness is not humility. Whereas humility is simplicity in how individuals see themselves, meekness is simplicity in how individuals reveal themselves to others. Meekness means understanding your place as someone subservient to God, and being willing to act with this understanding in the presence of others. As the opposite of Pride, the original and most serious sin, Meekness must be one of the greatest virtues.

Jesus asks us to approach God with meekness. The submissiveness of being meek is why Jesus said we must be like children if we wish to enter the Kingdom. It was the simplicity of the original disciples that led to Jesus choosing them. Although they may have been ignorant or even incompetent at times, Jesus recognized the potential of their meekness. When they recognized the power that God had over all creation, they performed wondrous deeds. When they forgot this, they faltered. If we want that intimate relationship with God, if we want to be chosen by Christ, or if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, this must be our primary goal - we must be meek.

Life is filled with bad days, failed efforts, missed opportunities, and suffering. It simply does not seem fair that suffering is such a regular part of our life, because it doesn’t seem like it has to be: we call God all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. He has the power to alleviate all the suffering of His beloved creation, yet He doesn’t. He even permits the innocent to suffer at the expense of the oppressors, and He insists that suffering remain a constant aspect of life here on earth. Why? The problem of evil is the single greatest question that makes it most difficult to follow God, but it is also the oldest. We have been asking ourselves this question so consistently throughout human history that there is more than enough to answer sufficiently. However, any arguments or explanations lose all of their convincing powers the moment we experience suffering again.

Suffering is a result of sin. It is a result of our sin, a consequence that we brought into the world and continue to experience because of our failure to detach ourselves from sin. In God, there is no suffering, there is no mourning, there are no bad days, no failed efforts or missed opportunities. In God, there is only rest to be found for the weary, joy for the sorrowful, and comfort for the afflicted. To rid ourselves of suffering is a choice that we first make on earth, and continue to pursue in acting virtuously. But the price of such virtuous and holy living is temporal suffering so that we can eventually have eternal rest in God. Again, this seems completely unfair, until we notice exactly how God utilizes our mistakes and transforms them into the very things that are most necessary for our salvation. There is a very strange scene from the Exodus story in which the Israelites can only be saved from the bites of venomous snakes by a fashioned serpent made of bronze. Just by looking upon it, the people will be saved. Why does God do this? Could he not just read the interior hearts of the truly penitent and heal their bites in the moment? For God, there is a lesson that He wants to bestow upon humanity through this scene: the very thing that frightens us or is the source of our suffering is the very thing we must embrace to extract the most beautiful fruits from suffering. God does not just abolish all suffering; He turns it into something that has the potential of making us greater. 

This scene in the desert, beside the very simplistic explanation of facing your fears, only makes sense in the context of the crucifixion. Crucifixion was an act of humiliation used by the very people who made the Jews so desperate for the Messiah. It was an attempted act of humiliation to crucify Jesus, but even as he went to the place of his crucifixion carrying his cross, he embraced it. It was through this physical object that the salvation of all the world could be attained. It was through this object that all suffering could be brought to an end. It was through this object that God could embrace us personally and individually, wiping away every tear from our eyes and comforting us when we needed it most. He took on the ultimate form of suffering so that we do not have to; all that is required of us is to look upon Christ on the cross just as the Israelites had to look upon the source of their suffering to be saved from it; in the cross, we will see our sins which put him there. Yet, he loved us so intensely, he transformed the worst parts about us into the one thing that will save us.

With the fall of man came an opening for danger and death. All of creation, as it seems now, lives with the constant need to stave off death and to avoid danger. This is a horrifically disordered way of living, but we need to keep ourselves safe from others, well-fed, and sheltered in order to survive on a daily basis. We can wonder how much safer we would be if we lived in a world that never fell to sin, but the state of life now is that we constantly need to avoid danger and death because of our fallen state. This constant battle for survival also leads to a more subtle form of suffering that follows us even in our safest moments: fear.

This story of the Bronze Serpent in the desert necessitates serious reflection for any Christian. It tells of the Israelites as they attempt to move from slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. But the journey through the desert, which is meant to challenge the people to trust in the Lord as He takes them to where they are meant to be, fails. The people are ungrateful for the Manna from Heaven since it was not as good as the food they ate while enslaved. They complain against God and even against their leader Moses. As a result, God sends venomous snakes to chase them through the already brutal conditions of the desert; many are bitten and die, and as a result, there develops a widespread fear of the serpents throughout the people. It is out of this fear that the people approach Moses acknowledging that it was their complaining that led to this punishment, and they ask him to seek reprieve from God. God’s solution is strange and certainly not as simple as getting rid of the snakes; God instructs Moses to create one of these serpents out of bronze and place it on a staff, so that when anyone is bitten by these serpents (which never go away), they may live. The fear of the serpents may remain, and the serpents will remain as a reminder of the Israelites’ previous errors, but death. The ultimate source of all fear, can be avoided.

What could this story mean? On a psychological level, it is well known that overcoming a fear of something starts with facing the fear itself. The Israelites are able to do this by looking upon the bronze serpent. But theologically, this story reveals a truth about salvation. The Israelites will have to struggle with the pain of being bitten by the ever-present serpents, consequences of their past failings. But the root of all fear, the permanent end of death that befell many of their fellow Israelites, is alleviated by gazing upon this symbol. Generations later, God became man and placed Himself high up on the cross for all of the world to see. By undertaking humanity’s greatest fear (death in its most blatant display), God displays himself as a symbol of erasing what we fear the most. This does not take away the consequences of our own sins or our fallen state, but it gives us the opportunity to continue on the journey towards where we are meant to go. Just as the Israelites may have continued to be bitten by the snakes, we will still experience death. But because of his transformation of death on the cross, we can have hope in our own victory over death, no longer fearing the true and everlasting consequences of death - eternal separation from God. Christ asks us to gaze upon his death on the cross so that all who may see it and believe in His sacrifice will live.