They Shall Inherit the Earth

 

NIV Matthew 5:5 

 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

 

 

NIV Isaiah 29:19-21

Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down—those who with a word make someone out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court  and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.

Why is this ponderable?

When we hear the word inheritance today we think about riches from the estates of billionaires. So, taken out of context, it is easy to imagine ourselves possessing the symbols of wealth. But, that is not what Jesus or Isaiah had in mind when they proclaimed this message. 

Photo by Nate Johnston on Unsplash

 

 When we look at the earth as it is, we see humanity immersed in disease, anger, greed, violence, and abject poverty. From this perspective, any meek and humble person would not want this inheritance--especially if this were to be an eternal abode. So let's read between the lines and discern what both Jesus and Isaiah have in mind. 

Remember that most proclamations from Jesus are based on Old Testament scripture. In this case, it is based on the vision of a "new earth" presented by Isaiah. On this new earth,
the ruthless will be gone, the mockers will be gone, and all who have an eye for evil will be purged. The innocent will have justice and peace. It will be heaven on earth; quite suitable for an eternal abode. 

But, hold on!  Why is this new life limited to the meek and humble? Why won't it be available to the proud and boisterous?  

To understand the meaning of this beatitude, we need to place it in the context of the other seven beatitudes.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit,  
• Blessed are those who mourn,  
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,   
• Blessed are the merciful,  
• Blessed are the pure in heart,  
• Blessed are the peacemakers,
• Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness

 Now, imagine a world in which every living person exhibited these qualities and none of those that tend to make our life a hell on earth. That is the vision that Jesus holds out for those who believe in him.

    

Peter's Mother-in-Law

 

NLT Luke 4:38-39

³⁸ After leaving the synagogue that day, Jesus went to Simon’s home, where he found Simon’s mother-in-law very sick with a high fever. “Please heal her,” everyone begged. ³⁹ Standing at her bedside, he rebuked the fever, and it left her. And she got up at once and prepared a meal for them.

Why is this ponderable?

The Bible provides few insights about the families of Jesus' disciples. Yet, this single reference to the home life of Peter gives us much to ponder. 

• If Peter had a mother-in-law living in his home, was his wife still alive?
• Was this Peter's house or was he a guest in her home?
• Was this house the home base of Jesus and his 12 disciples whenever they returned from preaching?
• Who were the ones begging Jesus to heal her, and why were they so concerned about her health? Were they stragglers who had followed Jesus to the house seeking a free meal or were they members of Peter's extended family who were normally fed by the ailing mother-in-law? 
• What about Peter’s wife? She is nowhere mentioned. Leaving her out of the story is strange. It is not the way a writer would be expected to handle the incident, since a daughter usually is the one most frantic about a mother’s condition. 

To figure this out, we need to keep in mind why both Luke and Matthew have included it in their Gospel accounts. 

The authors of these two Gospels had a common purpose. They wanted to proclaim the Good News of salvation that comes from faith in Jesus Christ. In order to get this message across to people who never heard Jesus speak in person nor witness his miracles, they had to capture their attention. Citing dogma and theological dissertations would have been akin to a football coach merely exhorting his team to get a good night's sleep the night before the big game. 

So they often led the News with Human Interest stories that their readers could quickly grasp. What married man of that era did not have a mother-in-law? Many were recent widows who were taken in by sons because women did not inherit property and the concept of a Welfare State was unknown. Usually these widows reciprocated by taking on cooking and child care tasks. This "extended family" model survived well into the 20th Century, so these insights of everyday life in the time of Jesus  remained an attention grabber in our times. 

 

Clean and Unclean Food

 

NIV Leviticus 11:46-47

These are the regulations concerning animals, birds, every living thing that moves about in the water and every creature that moves along the ground. You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.’”

Photo by Gor Davtyan on Unsplash

 

 Why is this passage ponderable?

Depending on how you interpret Old Testament scripture,  you may come away from this passage wondering what God knew about human nutrition that He did not disclose to Moses and Aaron when he dictated the dietary laws in Leviticus 11. This is especially ponderable because these laws are very specific. To people living in food rich countries like the USA, these laws are mostly inconvenient. But to people living in drought stricken countries, any food that can sustain life for another day is fair game. So we can only imagine what those Israelites who had wandered in the desert might have been thinking when Moses and Aaron delivered these directives to them. 

 

Perhaps a recent finding by Duke University gut-brain neuroscientist Diego Bohórquez, provides some clues.  He found that some enteroendocrine cells also make physical contact with the enteric nervous system, forming synapses with nerves. This revelation opens the door to rethinking how we might affect these signals — and might someday change how we treat conditions as varied as obesity, anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, autism and PTSD.

 

If you were asked where the human body’s nervous system is located, you’d probably answer “the brain” or “the spinal cord.” But besides the central nervous system, which consists of those two organs, our bodies also contain the enteric nervous system, a two-layer lining with more than 100 million nerve cells that spans our guts from the esophagus to the rectum. The enteric nervous system has been called “the second brain,” and it’s in constant contact with the one in our skull. That’s why just thinking about food can lead your stomach to start secreting enzymes, or why giving a speech can lead to your feeling queasy. 

A number of diseases — autism, obesity, anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, PTSD and chronic stress — share a symptom known as altered visceral sensing, or a hyper- or hyposensitivity to gut stimuli. “For instance, clinical observations have suggested that some children with anorexia may be hyper-aware of the food they ingest from an early age,” says Bohórquez. “Under normal circumstances, this process happens without detailed spatial and temporal awareness, but those children can feel what’s going on in there, which triggers anxious feelings.” With this knowledge, scientists may better understand other disorders that have been thought to be solely psychological.

Everybody eats. Eating options inherently vary by culture, religion, region, and personal tastes. With such varied options, many people can be bombarded and end up making poor and costly decisions. 

Food-related diseases are rampant in America. Thirty million people suffer from diabetes, while 40% of the adult population struggles with obesity. Choosing the right food and diet can help combat these diseases.

 Perhaps that is what could not be disclosed by Moses in Leviticus 11? Even as they were leading the Israelites to the Land of Milk and Honey, Moses and Aaron often met with dissension. Much of it was over the quality and variety of the food they had left behind in Egypt when they elected to journey to the Promised Land. Trying to explain to this hard-headed bunch the specific reasons why certain foods promoted wellness and fervor while others might diminish their ability to fight off disease and their enemies, would have been a lost cause.