That's okay, sometimes we need breaks. Plus, I've gone through some massive life changes over the last year. So yeah, I took some time off...
...and now, I'm a big, strong power-lifter, like this guy...
Just kidding... But in this image we see a representation of power.
Power is a strange thing. People are really drawn to it. I'd be lying if I said there's no part of me that would like to be big and buff like this guy, just to feel powerful. Then I could walk around and feel all confident in my power. And when you're powerful, often you get respect, too, which feels nice.
And so people are drawn to power in its various forms. Because the truth is, often in life we feel powerless. And that can be really frustrating. Feeling like you're powerful and in control, on the other hand, feels really good.
People are often drawn to God because they want the help of a "higher Power." We just recently celebrated Easter, which is all about the power of God raising Jesus from the dead. And the Apostle Paul calls the gospel the "power of God." He wrote in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” When I was a kid in youth group, I often heard this message as “stand up for your faith” or “don’t be embarrassed to talk about Jesus with your friends,” which is a fine encouragement for a kid.
But Paul is getting at something concerning the nature of the gospel here. When Jesus was crucified, it was in the most shame-filled, humiliating way: naked, exposed, powerless, defeated publicly. Crucifixion was invented several hundred years before Christ, and was perfected into the ultimate torture machine by the Graeco-Roman Empire, who wanted to humiliate and shame its victims, causing as much suffering as possible. The message to people who passed by the crucified victim was a power play: “This is what will happen to you if you mess with Rome. We will torture and humiliate you in the worst possible way. Stay in line.”
To which we all say, "Nice. Great contribution to our shared humanity."
A “Messiah” who suffers this fate of crucifixion is obviously, in everyone’s eyes, NOT a Messiah. Because a person who gets shamed, humiliated, and crucified is obviously powerless against Rome, and a Messiah is supposed to be a conqueror and a king. Yet Paul says that the gospel is the “power of God.” Isn’t that interesting? What we typically think of as “power” (Rome-like power that can shame, humiliate, and crucify) is not the power of God, because God’s “power” looks like weakness and defeat (something we are generally ashamed of). It’s a power that overcomes by apparent “losing,” by serving, loving, and forgiving— a chosen path that looks rather weak next to someone who can publicly shame, humiliate, torture, and kill. Yet this power is what overcomes the world.
The first Christians went around proclaiming this “obvious defeat” on the cross as God’s way of overcoming and winning. “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead,” Peter said (Acts 3:15). And having raised him from the dead, Paul tells us, God “disarmed the powers and authorities” and “made a public spectacle of them” (read “shamed them back”) by “triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15).
Just sit with that for a while. The gospel is truly an upside down reality. Yet it is in this place of weakness that the wisdom and power of God is most potent and at work—something that seems rather foolish to believe (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). There is a greater power than the kind of power we are all accustomed to trusting in. It's a power accessed through the way of the cross. C.S. Lewis referred to it as the "deeper magic."
Now if the cross, a shameful and humiliating experience that looks like losing, turns out being “the power of God,” how do you suppose God’s power is at work in your life today? In what ways might there be a death and resurrection in process?
