And when everything has fallen apart, our powerlessness is all that remains.
Peter, a natural at taking charge and leading, tries to hold onto some kind of power. He pulls his sword, slashing into the shadows with a roar of anger, ready to take on the soldiers or even the whole army if necessary.
But all he manages to do is cut off one servant’s ear. The soldiers don’t even react. Peter’s no more a threat or a hindrance to their plans than the breeze blowing through the cool morning air. Their inaction underscores his impotence. Jesus even walks over to heal the man he’s harmed, undoing what he has done, as if it never happened.
And, so the story continues. There’s a show trial. Jesus is convicted, and he is brought before Pilate, the governor of the region whose power is as much a lie as Peter’s. Don’t you know, he tells Jesus in the way of all impotent men, that I have your life in my hands? No, Jesus says, you don’t. You don’t have that kind of power. You have no power at all.
The crowd threatens to report Pilate to his boss. And, proving Jesus right, washes his hands of the whole thing. He couldn’t stop this.
This leaves us with the most difficult image in Christianity. Jesus, the One who is God, stripped, beaten, tied and nailed to the wood of a cross, dying painfully, slowly. He is exposed and vulnerable. He is completely and totally at the mercy of the Roman soldiers who mock him, comfortable in the illusion of power they hold at that moment.
This is our God. And it is exactly the One I want and need.
That response surprises me. I have spent much of my walk with Jesus being angry at him for not being the God I want. He refuses to wield his tongue as a sword and set all to right. He refuses, as Lucy says to Aslan, to come roaring in and chase away all the bad things. I have yelled at him for this. I have been angry and hated him for it.
And now, in the midst of so much suffering, so much pain and death I find that this God, this dying and weak figure is exactly what my heart desires right now.
It is not that I do not want healing. My heart aches at the numbers I see each morning. I pray every day for those working hour upon hour to soothe the suffering, heal the sick, give peace to the dying. I long for a miracle to take this plague from us.
But that miracle doesn’t take the form of a warrior on a white horse with a sword, ready to put all things forcibly under his rule. Because, I’m beginning to see that’s not power. Not the power I need.
What I need looks like weakness; because, love is that strong.