Exhausting Their Ammunition

Exhausting Their Ammunition--July 11, 2018

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from [Christ's] glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light." [Colossians 1:11-12]

Let's skip right to the bottom line: the power of love--which is the power of Jesus--is the power to endure.

At first, that might not sound like much of a power.  Praising "the power to endure" could sound like signing up for being a punching bag and taking a lot of hits in the ring.  The power to endure sounds like it might involve a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and a lot of waiting.  And yes, all of that is correct.

But in a very important sense, it is what makes love powerful, and it is what makes love… love. 

After all, you can try to use your power, your influence, your intimidating personality, or the force of threats or rewards, to make people fall in line and do what you want... but the moment you relent just the tiniest little bit or turn your head just for a second, the jig is up, and the curtain is pulled back.  You can try and spend all your energy trying to threaten your way into getting what you want, but fear just doesn't get as good mileage as genuine love, and eventually intimidation sputters out.  Eventually fear and coercion and hatred turn on themselves and eat themselves alive like the old mythical ouroboros, the snake that consumes its own tail.  

But the power of Christ is the strength to endure, as the letter to the Colossians says, and that is an entirely different kind of power.  The power to endure--in particular, the power of love to endure--makes the unconditional promise: "No matter what you do, I will not give up on you.  No matter what other threats or dangers there are to be faced, I will not bail out.  No matter what harm or fear or risk or suffering, I will not let you go."  That is how Christ wins, in the end--that is the nature of Jesus' power: he outlasts all the angry, hateful outbursts of the crowd that shouts, "Crucify!", all the ruthlessly efficient imperial violence of Pilate and Caesar, and even all the empty void of death itself.  He outlasts it all.  And when the angry lynch-mob, and the Respectable Religious Crowd, and the idolatrous Empire have all done their worst, Jesus still remains. The hilarity of the Gospel is Jesus' rope-a-dope strategy over against the lesser powers of fear, of hatred, of avarice, and even of death. Love's power to endure looks like--resurrection.

I am reminded of a line from the latest Star Wars, which is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.  Near the climactic showdown at the end, my new favorite character Rose Tico crashes her vehicle to save her friend Finn, and she utters a word of Gospel: "That's how we're going to win--not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love."  It is love's power to endure that makes it ultimately victorious.  Jesus' power is his willing ability to exhaust all the ammunition that death and hatred and evil have to fire, to absorb it into himself, and then to come through out the other side of death, alive, scarred, and triumphant.

And this is the power that the New Testament invokes over us as well.  Pay close attention there, dear ones: when the writer of Colossians describes the kind of strength that comes from God, it is clearly and unequivocally the power to endure with patience whatever else life throws at us.  It is decidedly not the power to force people to do what we wish.  It is emphatically not the power to get rid of people who are different and who make us uncomfortably by their difference.  It is most certainly not the power to protect ourselves from danger or risk or harm, or to avoid suffering--even suffering at the hands of others.  Jesus' kind of power is not about giving ourselves a special status, or keeping others down, or hoarding more good things for ourselves, or keeping ourselves comfortably insulated from trouble.  It is, like Ali against Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, about letting the powers of the day exhaust themselves while they do their worst, while we endure.

Today, our power will not come from returning mean and crude words back at the folks who have used mean and nasty words first.  It is to endure and let them tire themselves out while we return blessing for curse.

Today, our power will not seek to put our own interests first, but to put ourselves between the danger and the lives of others--even if it means we put ourselves at risk of pain in the process. 

Today, our power will not try to frighten or intimidate or cajole or bluster at others in order to get our way.  

Our power--the power of the living God bestowed up on us--is the power to endure.  And when the dust settles, love will remain, scarred but standing.  

Love already bears scars for us today.

Lord Jesus, give us your strength to endure--the strength that bears a cross without hatred, and the breaks free from the tomb without fear.