Day 224 I'm Offended

In all the excitement of the Easter celebration we might be tempted to think that we are being given in some kind of new power that is different from the power displayed by Jesus on the cross. Let's be honest, we want a power that enables us to impose our will (lovingly of course), especially on the perpetrators of violence and injustice. 

And yet the risen Christ comes to us clothed in a different kind of power - the power by which he lived and died - the power of weakness (1 Cor. 1:25). The weakness of God is the gift being given in the resurrection. It is the hope of humanity to transform the world, but this gift has not been readily welcomed throughout history. And we should not be too surprised about this, after all, the weakness of God just seems so... well, weak.  

In A Gentler God, Dan Frank says, "In the most brutal episodes of human history, God has been present - not in power, the kind that we understand or reach for, but as the humble whisper of love into the hearts of both the butchers and the butchered. God does not force us to listen to this "still small voice" of love, this tender touch of love, much less to answer the call of love in our daily action. When we ignore the call of love, God does nothing at all about it - except, of course, continue to whisper, continue to call, continue to touch, continue to be present in the silence....

"There is a kind of power in God's whispers. But it is the power of powerlessness. It changes things but invisibly, unpredictably, unaccountably and from our point of view, unreliably. It is not the kind of power we imagine, or wish, God to have."

When we pray in the name of Jesus we pray to a God unlike anything or anyone we can imagine. We are praying to one whose power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). We are praying to a God who calls forth life and creation more like a vulnerable lover awakening the love of the beloved than a divine power-plant zapping things into existence. 

Maybe God is simply incapable of "making" things happen.... Maybe the omnipotent God of popular imagination is a fantasy that says more about us than God. What if God simply does not choose the kind of power we so desperately want to give him? Isn't this what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals? The weakness of God offends us, but when we are perfected in that weakness we come to know the power by which all of life happens. We come to know God.  

And so, Genesis reminds us that God hovers over the waters of chaos seducing light to shine forth and it does. God kisses the dust of humanity and we respond by becoming human beings. Each step of the way God pronounces both the wooing as well as that which is being wooed  "good... good... good... good... good... very good." And then God rests in that goodness, inviting us to do the same. 

As crazy as it sounds, God has always been coming among us in weakness, which is why it so hard to see God. This is the mystery hidden since the foundation of the world (Matt. 13:35) that Jesus reveals. Jesus comes to us in weakness and asks us to hear and heed the whisper of life - acting on it, building a more just and humane world, and trusting the whisper to transform.