Strength that Endures--October 30, 2023

Strength That Endures--October 30, 2023

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his 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 light." [Colossians 1:11-12]

It's not about bench-pressing or tearing phone books in half, and it never was.

Strength, that is. At least the genuine article. I think the New Testament is a lot more interested in talking about the kind of strength that makes us able to endure, like a fortress, than the kind that smashes or rips something else apart like a battering ram. Real strength is about weathering the storm to protect others, not threatening or intimidating them. And that means, too, that real strength doesn't need to rattle sabers, make threats, or use fear. Real strength doesn't need to advertise or tell the world how great and big and powerful it is--real strength can walk softly, to borrow a phrase.

This is important for us to be clear on, especially because sometimes religious folk can get confused. We end up falling for the idea that being strong is about looking tough or having the power to dominate others, rather than the ability to endure what comes against us from outside. And sometimes we end up making the nonsensical claim that following Jesus will make us more muscular, more aggressive, or more intimidating.

I can remembering hearing years ago about a traveling group of "Christian" affiliated (and I use the word loosely here) weightlifters who would go around putting on shows in church amphitheaters or the gymnasiums of "Christian" schools where they would do a whole routine, a performed show, with different feats of strength, from lifting weights to literally tearing phone books in half, to all sorts of other tricks and displays of power. And in between the circus act, there would be testimonies that would try and persuade the cheering audience that Jesus gives this kind of power--that being a good Christian would also improve your muscle mass... and, I guess, your ability to destroy things.

And, yeah, a lot of times, we religious folk would fall for it--captivated by the idea that we, too, could be tough and strong and powerful like them, if only we prayed the right prayer to let Jesus in. Never mind, of course, that there are internet videos teaching the trick of phone book ripping (Spoiler alert--it has to do with creasing the binding of the phone book before anybody is watching). And never mind that Jesus himself never falls for that toxic masculinity garbage himself, and never teaches his followers that he will grant anybody the power to intimidate, dominate, or threaten others with some kind of divine strength. Instead, Jesus constantly empowers his followers to endure, to withstand, to persevere. That's his kind of strength.  And it is always put in the service of love.

Forgive my cynicism, but I've lived through enough of seeing sports heroes get asterisks by their names and records because their great feats of strength turned out to have been accomplished with cheating through performance-enhancing steroids and other drugs. I've seen enough internet videos giving away the tricks. I've seen enough times when people confused being strong with being a bully that I'm just not interested in those kinds of shows of so-called strength anymore.

We live in times when it is easy to want to have a show of force ready to intimidate the people we don't like, or don't agree with. It is easy to take everything that doesn't go our way as a threat... and then to think you have to meet those threats with more shows of strength and power, like we are animals putting on a display in a battle for the role of Alpha male. It's easy and tempting to believe the voices that say you have to overpower your opponents, crush your enemies, and intimidate everybody else if you want to "win" in life. It's easy, too, following that train of thought, to think that caring for neighbors is weakness and being defiant must be the same as being strong.

And it is, of course, natural, then, that we would want to take that same thinking and apply it to our picture of God. We want to assume that God's defining quality is the omnipotence that means God can coerce and force and threaten to make people do what God wants. And we want to reimagine Jesus as the conquering hero, rather than as the Crucified One.

The late theologian Robert Farrar Capon once wrote that we keep trying to make Jesus into Superman--that we would rather have a bulletproof Savior who smashes his enemies than one whose power is seen supremely in suffering love; that is, what the world thinks of as losing. In his fantastic Hunting the Divine Fox, Capon writes:

“We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”

In a nutshell, I think that's our ongoing trouble with the notion of true strength. We keep thinking that having Jesus in your life will let you rip phone books in half, intimidate others into submission, and dominate your opponents. And instead, Jesus gives us a rather different kind of strength: one that looks like the capacity to endure suffering for the sake of love... even love of opponents and enemies.

The letter to the Colossians is clear on this, too, if we actually listen to what it says. For all the talk of God's "glorious power," note that these verses talk about that power and strength in terms of the capacity to endure. It's strength like an anvil is strong, or strength like a full-grown oak tree to withstand the fury of the storm. It's strength like a cleft in the rock in which you can take refuge, rather than a power you can wield to destroy somebody else.

In a time when lots of voices seem to think the way to show strength is through angry demonstrations with tiki torches, intimidating shows of weaponry (which all smack of a need to impress and overcompensate rather than real fortitude, honestly), or the tired old "Don't tread on me" motto, you and I are called to be different. No, let me correct that: we are empowered to be different. We have been given true strength--Christ's kind of strength. We are a people filled from the inside with God's strength--the strength it takes to go to a cross, not the appearance of toughness it takes to bully others. We are people given the ability to endure with love and integrity--and in a world full of hatred, indifference, and fakeness, that really is something.

The world around us may not understand it or know what to call it, but we do. It is real strength.

God give us the strength we need to face this day with love for all.