An Unexpected Strength--December 14, 2023

An Unexpected Strength--December 14, 2023

"See, the Lord GOD comes with might,

    and his arm rules for him;

 his reward is with him,

    and his recompense before him.

 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

    he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

    and gently lead the mother sheep." [Isaiah 40:10-11]

This is another of God's great reversals: we expect the fearsome fighter, and we get the sheltering shepherd.  We expect the conquering king, and God comes as the tender caretaker.  We look for punitive power, and God gathers us gently like we are slow sheep.

That notion takes our usual expectations about what "power" and "strength" and "might" really mean and turns them on their head.  And yet, throughout the Scriptures, God keeps doing this same reversal and running the same play that it shouldn't surprise us.  We keep expecting that God's awesomeness requires God to zap our enemies (note how often we assume that God will target "our" enemies), and instead the prophets keep saying, "Get ready for God's power not to be what you think it is--God comes as a shepherd leading the mama sheep and carrying the lambs in his arms."  The God for whom we wait is strong, but that strength isn't use to coerce or cajole--but rather to carry the weak, the slow, and the vulnerable. This is our God's upside-down (but really right-side-up) use of power.  And it is so completely the opposite of our typical assumptions that we generally reject this thinking out of hand, or completely ignore it.

But honestly, once we recognize that this is one of the great central recurring themes of the whole story of God and the world in the Bible, we recognize just how frequently it turns up and how everything in the Scriptures really hangs on that overturning of expectations.  God, as God is revealed in the story of Israel and the story of Jesus, is always seeking out the weak, the endangered, and the vulnerable and protecting them, rather than endorsing the powerful in their conquest of everybody else.  God is always resistant to letting us just call on the divine for firepower to zap our enemies or execute our agendas, and instead, chooses to come in gentleness for the sake of those most in trouble (apart from questions of "worthiness" or "merit").  God is always critical of those who use their strength and position to dominate or bully others, and God is always modeling an alternative use of power--to serve, to heal, to mend, to nurture.  That's God's unexpected strength: the sort that shows up in gentleness.

And so even though the story of the Messiah in a manger has the feel of the unexpected to it, in a sense, it is exactly the sort of thing we should expect from a God whose "coming with might" looks like a shepherd carrying the lambs in his arms, rather than marching troops in to overpower enemies.  Taking that seriously will change a great deal about how we engage with the world, too. We still live in a world where conventional wisdom says the way to get things done is to blow up your enemies, to devastate and demolish them, and to show them who's boss with overwhelming shock and awe... and the living God (especially as we see God in Jesus!) says otherwise.  Instead, if the coming of Jesus means anything, it says that the God who has infinite options and choice for how to engage with the world chose to come in the vulnerability of a human being--and from infancy, mind you, not even just materializing as a full-grown man who could defend himself.  God's choice, ultimately, is vulnerability. God's power, in the end, comes through gentleness.  God's strength is the strength to carry, not the capacity to conquer.  And if that is how God deals with the evil, rottenness, and suffering of the world (rather than laser-beams unleashed at all the unworthy ones or the threat of weapons to wipe out any resisters), perhaps we are called to approach the world with the same kind of unexpected strength-through-gentleness, too.

Honestly, I don't think anybody has ever been bullied into showing love, or threatened into goodness.  Coercion might make us rein in our worst impulses from time to time, but it also makes us bristle with defiance and wait for our moment to do what we've been forbidden to do at an opportune time.  But gentleness has a way of getting past our defenses.  And a child in a manger has a way of slipping right under the radar of the bloated and power-hungry empire. 

What would it look like for us to dare to practice such gentle strength in our lives today?

That's the challenge today--that's the invitation for all whose hope is centered on Jesus.

Lord God, come in your own surprising ways, beyond our expectations of domination and conquest, in the fragility of our own flesh.