Without the Angel Armies--November 15, 2024

 

Without the Angel Armies--November 15, 2024

"Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword back in its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?'" [Matthew 26:50b-54]

Here's a rule of thumb I have found helpful in any attempt to say anything truthful about the Mystery we call "God": any sentence that begins with the words, "God cannot..." is automatically wrong.

No matter how it ends.

Any sentence that starts out saying God "can't..." or "isn't allowed to..." or "isn't powerful enough to..." or what have you, is wrong on its face. Unlike the ancient Greek or Roman gods of empires past, which each had spheres of influence in which they operated and areas they couldn't rule over (e.g., Poseidon ruled the sea, but wasn't lord of the air; Hades ruled the underworld, but didn't have the power over the living like Zeus, and so on), the God we meet in the Old and New Testaments does not have "turf" and therefore has no boundaries. Everything is in this God's jurisdiction. And everything is within this God's power. All the rest are pretenders.

Now, once we have gotten that out of the way--that there is nothing that the living God "cannot" do--it makes for a really important conversation about what God could do, theoretically, but chooses not to do. Because that is a rather significant list.

And similarly, because we Christians are convinced that where Jesus is, God is, it's rather telling to take a look at what things Jesus will not do--since presumably, it's not a matter that he could not or cannot.

Maybe it even seems like a strange thing to suggest that someone--human or divine--would intentionally choose not to do something that they could do, at least odd to the ears of our culture. We live in a culture and in a time, after all, where we have more and more potential of doing more and more, and that same culture seems to take it for granted that there is no good reason not to do what we have the power or technology to do. It's like the old line from Jurassic Park: "You were so obsessed with finding out if you could do it, that you never stopped to ask if you should." But we're not just talking science fiction about cloning dinosaurs--we live in an age where technology allows me to order goods from around the world (goods increasingly manufactured by robots) and have them shipped right to my door (maybe even by a robot drone in the near future!), an age where many of us live with enough material abundance and supply of fast food chains that you could eat every meal of your week at a different fast food chain and start all over again next week, an age where we can kill people from oceans away with remotely controlled weaponry without having to think about or see their faces, an age where we can edit and manipulate the genes of things from crops to critters, and an age in which you can have an "artificial intelligence" write your term paper, craft a poem, or even write a love letter for you--all without you having to use an ounce of your own humanity to do it. And for whatever ostensibly "good" things are in all that technological potential, there are also about a million open questions about when and where and whether there are bigger costs that come with each of them. But in a technological age, it is easy to forget (or ignore) asking the "should we do this?" question and instead just doing whatever we have the power to do.

So, like I say, it is telling, I think, that Jesus the incarnate Son of God has the power to do certain things or make certain things happen... and yet chooses not to. It says something about who he is and how God reigns that Jesus doesn't, for example, shoot lightning bolts at those who doubt him... or desert him... or even those who declared him guilty and worthy of death. It says something about what kind of victory needed to be won that Jesus knows he "could" summon forth angel armies to fight back when the lynch mob came for him... and yet he didn't.

Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in. Jesus knows full well that he has the whole divine arsenal at his disposal. It is his "right" to bear angelic arms, if he chooses. It is his prerogative as the Son of God to protect himself, to use angels as his shield and his sword and to wipe out anybody who threatened his safety. He CAN stop the mob from coming for him, and he COULD launch an all-out assault on the religious establishment, on the puppet-king Herod, and on the Romans themselves for that matter, if he chose. It is not a lack of firepower or ability or authority.

And yet Jesus chooses not to call on the angel armies to defend himself. He chooses not to even let one of his followers pull out a weapon in self-defense, either. "Those who live by the sword die by the sword," Jesus says unapologetically. "Nope--we just don't do that in my movement," he seems to say.

In fact you, won't find a "Don't Tread On Me" flag anywhere near Jesus here--not just in the Garden, but in Jesus' whole way of living and dying... and rising. There is no defiant attitude of "I have the power to stop you, so look out, I'm coming for you." Jesus can, and Jesus could, but Jesus doesn't.

That is radical.

That is the essence of Jesus' kind of victory. If Jesus calls in the angel armies, he is trading self-preservation for self-giving. If he gets the heavenly host to go on the offense to smite his would-be attackers, there is no way of the cross, only the way of convenience. If Jesus lets his followers start pulling out weapons in the name of "protecting me and mine from someone threatening us," the old order of returning evil for evil stays in place. And Jesus has come, not simply to replace one sword-wielding empire for another, but to undo the whole system, the whole structure. Jesus says "no" to calling on the angels to fight back in order that he can say "yes" to... you. And to me. Jesus' No to self-defense and self-preservation and the whole don't-tread-on-me mindset is what makes possible Jesus' Yes to pouring out his life for the redemption of the world.

What Jesus chooses not to do (even though he "could") speaks volumes. In fact, the whole of the Gospel hangs on the amazing news of a God who could call in the angel armies but does not, a God who instead stretches out divine arms in love to be nailed between thieves.

This is our victory.

Lord Jesus, thank you for saying "No" to the angel armies and fighting for yourself, so that you could choose to say "Yes" to us as your people, and "Yes" to the cross, by which you redeemed us. Thank you for your victory over self-preservation, in order to love us.