When The World Doesn't Look Different--November 6, 2024

When The World Doesn't Look Different--November 6, 2024

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his own home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have overcome the world!" [John 16:32-33]

At midnight, it is officially a new day--but it will still be dark outside at 12:01am.

On December 21, we will have reached the last of the shortening days in the northern hemisphere, but we still have all of winter to get through before it really starts to feel like the warmth of spring.

And for that matter, as I write, the votes are still in process from the 2024 election and by the time you read this, it's likely that the votes will all be cast--but the counting won't be done or confirmed.  So while a winner is, in a sense "out there," we don't know who it is, and the world is still the same anxious place it was yesterday.  

All of this is to say that we actually have a fair amount of experience with situations where something has decidedly changed but it doesn't feel different yet.  We have a way of expecting all the big events in our lives to feel like watershed moments or obvious turning points, but sometimes it takes a while for us to see or feel any difference arising from a change that has already happened.  There are a lot of times in our lives where the clock says it's 12:01 am of a new day, but the darkness outside the window sure feels like it's still the middle of the night.

I think it's important, and helpful, too, for us to remember that as we consider Jesus assurance of "victory" over the powers of evil, sin, and death in the world.  As we have seen already in this month's devotions, the Christian hope is centered on an accomplished fact--the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We are people who believe that God has won against evil and death, not merely that God "might" or "could" or "should" win.  And as we have also seen, the assurance of God's victory doesn't come from a win on a battlefield, an opinion from the judges in a court case, a hostile corporate takeover in the business world, or even from the tallying of votes.  It comes from an even that, to just about all of its firsthand observers, looked like defeat--Jesus' death on a Roman cross.  That's God's victory, breaking the power of death from the inside out.  Or, as the powerful wording of the Orthodox tradition's liturgy puts it, "Christ trampled death by death." 

And yet, without denying that we are assured of Jesus' victory as a present-tense fait accompli, Jesus himself also acknowledges that we will continue to struggle with the powers of the world. Or, as John's Gospel puts it, "in the world you face persecution" even though at the very same time the very same Jesus says, "I have overcome the world."  It's not one or the other--it's both at the same time.  Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, has overcome, outlasted, and withstood all the worst that the world (and that includes us!) could throw at him--he overcame our evil with good.  And yet at the same time, we live in that same world, which is up to its same old tricks even though it has been defeated.  That, of course, is part of what makes the rottenness and sin in "the world" ultimately so pathetic--it doesn't want to concede a loss it's already been dealt by the Risen Jesus.  So it still makes as much of a fuss, still insists on its power, and still rages against its defeat by Jesus for as long as it can.  And we still live with that immature temper tantrum from the powers of "the world" all the time--so yeah, we will still find ourselves in trouble and even, as Jesus says, "persecuted" in the world, even though it is the very same world that Jesus has overcome.

In a sense, though, it shouldn't surprise us that the followers of Jesus will be called to live out the same kind of suffering love as he lived out for us, since Jesus' WAY of "overcoming" evil in the world wasn't to zap the Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross, but praying, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing..."  And, at least as Mark's telling goes, the centurion who had just seen the way Jesus died was transformed from an enemy into someone who could cry out in faith, "Truly this man was God's Son!" Jesus' way of overcoming the world isn't to conquer and intimidate, but to endure and absorb even the worst poison the world could dish out--and still to respond with love.  So of course he will call us as his followers and witnesses to endure persecution and suffering in the world, too--that's sort of Jesus' calling card.

The bottom line, then, is that we should expect that our lives of faith will still involve tension and trouble, and we'll still find people upset at the ways we witness to Jesus.  Sometimes they'll even insist that their anger and hostility is in the name of Respectable Religion.  So following Jesus isn't some ticket to an easy or pain-free life where we ride on the coattails of Jesus' victory into some cushy positions of power or prestige. No, it's precisely because Jesus' way of overcoming the world was in the self-giving love of a cross and empty tomb that we should expect our witness to look like suffering love and "good trouble."  Yes, Jesus has overcome the world--but exactly because of the way he has overcome it (enduring and exhausting the worst that evil could do) we are called to share the same persistent love in the face of hatred. We don't get to die on a cross for the sins of the world like Jesus does, but we are called to respond to the rottenness and sin of the world with the same kind of non-retaliating love of Jesus.  Like the apostle puts it, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:21).  Where do you suppose he got such a notion but from Jesus himself?

So yeah, you and I will step out into a world that doesn't look any more "overcome" than it did before.  And sure, there are some days (maybe a lot of days) where it looks like the powers of evil, the rottenness of sin, and the grip of death still get the last word.  But we trust in Jesus' assurance that he has already overcome the world. But because Jesus' way of doing it doesn't come from a conquering army or a dictator's decreed, but rather from a cross, we still go out into that world ready to face its nastiness, cruelty, and hatred and to endure it the way we have learned from Jesus.  After all, that's how Jesus says he has overcome the world--and if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us...

Lord Jesus, enable us to live this day in the confident assurance that you have overcome the world, so that we can reflect your victorious love into the world, too, right now.