The Power That Brings Victory
Sermon
Hope For The Weary Heart
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
There are no exceptions: Every single person in Jonesboro, Arkansas -- and maybe every single person in this nation -- would like to grip as tightly as possible the minute hand on the clock, holding it at 12:34 p.m., on March 24, 1998. This is because at 12:35 p.m. a horror of destruction and violence was unleashed that changed lives forever. 12:35 p.m. was the moment when the hand of eleven-year-old Andrew Golden pulled the fire alarm at Westside Elementary School, putting into motion fifteen minutes of terror which left five lives ended forever, blotting out what was good and filled with hope, leaving an aftermath of incredible pain and all kinds of unanswered questions.
It is not my intention today to answer them. None of us have any certainty about why children become killers. Oh, sure, I have a lot of feeling about this and some ideas about the cause; like the availability of weapons in this country, like the constant bombardment of media violence, like the cheapening of human life, and so on. Nonetheless, the complete and absolute truth about this tragic episode will remain elusive for us.
No, my intention is not to speculate about that which remains elusive; it is, rather, to focus heart and mind on that which is not speculative, nor elusive, but is the bedrock truth, a truth every single one of us here and everywhere else needs to know and understand. This is the truth: one, the less we know victory in living, the more we search for the power that will bring it. Two, the more we lodge power in violence and control over others, the more destructive our lives become, and the more elusive the victory is. And three, God has shown us where authentic power really lies, how victory can be ours, and how both the power and the victory can transform not only our lives, but this world in which we live.
The events in Jonesboro, Arkansas, may appear farther removed from us than just by the physical distance, but they are in fact connected to us just as closely as the violence you saw on last night's local news broadcast or read about in this morning's newspaper. It doesn't matter if it's eleven-year-old or thirteen-year-old children shooting twelve-year-old children, or terrorists blowing up buses in Israel, or someone being mugged on any street in any city in this nation. All acts of violence are tied together with one thread, and we need to understand this if we are to survive and our children are to survive. The thread is this: a lack of victory in living will inevitably generate a drive to gain power, so the victory can be achieved. It can be the sense of failure and impotence, a lack of self-esteem that pushes a child to say, "I'll show them!" It can be the trauma of losing one's own country through the decision of a world body one cannot control, coupled with fifty years of fanatical paranoia and oppression, as we witness in Palestine. It can be the hopelessness of poverty that issues in a drive toward power and the oppression of the oppressor. It can be any of these, and more, but it's all the same: we live in a world where few know any victory in living.
Wait! That's too broad. We live in a community, in a neighborhood, where few know any victory; we go to school and work where few know victory. Oh, it might not look like it; we look around us where we live, go to school and work, and it looks like lots of people know victory: after all, for the most part they are not in poverty, they are not oppressed, they are not powerless victims. But looks can be deceiving, can't they? Looks reveal only the obvious, only what's on the outside. When we penetrate appearance and even our own desperate denial, the truth is there in all of its stark reality: few of us know victory in living. I mean real victory: a sense of self-worth, that we count, that we are loved and esteemed; I mean a life that has some meaning and direction and satisfaction to it; I mean having a reason to live at all, and to celebrate the gift of life with joy.
The fact is, it's not there for huge numbers of us; it may not be there for you. And if it isn't, you and I will strive for it; we will search for the power that will bring victory to us, and we will keep searching until we find it.
Tragically, if we find the power in violence, or in control over and manipulation of others, it will prove to be destructive to our lives, and the victory and authentic power we seek will become all the more elusive. Just ask Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden if and when they emerge from the criminal justice system. If their act of violence was to win esteem and love and honor from their classmates, it didn't work out this way. If the destruction of five lives was to give them some sense of power and victory, it ended up destroying them. And so it will with us. Violence has rooted within it the seeds of self destruction. We know this is true; we've seen it again and again. When urban riots swept this nation, whose neighborhoods were left looking like a war zone? When violence, and control over others, and brutality claim a community, who are the victims? You see, we forget this. When we are powerless and know only defeat, we wrongly think that if we seize the power -- and do to them what they did to us -- we will find the victory. We will not! The victory will remain elusive, and the destructiveness will destroy us.
This is not only worth knowing socially; it is also worth knowing personally. If you -- personally -- are longing for victory and power in your life (and most of us are!), you're not going to find it by manipulating others, controlling others, lording it over them, or climbing to the top by using everyone around you as ladders. That kind of living destroys relationships, and it will ultimately destroy you, too. This is because love cannot live in the midst of violence and control. Fear? Yes, it can live. Hatred? Sure! Hatred cannot only live in the midst of violence, it thrives on it! But love? Never! And it is love -- given and received -- that makes relationships possible, is the victory, and releases authentic power. Violence and destruction, manipulation and control don't; they lead only to defeat and ultimately death.
This, in its stark simplicity, is not only what the fifteen minutes of horror beginning at 12:35 p.m. on March 24, 1998, teach us; it is what God has been trying to teach us for almost 2,000 years. It is a lesson about what looked like victory, but wasn't; what looked like defeat, but wasn't; what real victory -- and the power that really brings it -- really was and is. You see, in Christ God has made a statement about what real power is and how it is unleashed. All evidence to the contrary, it is love that overcomes violence and destruction, and brings the victory.
This was the lesson God was teaching through those events of so long ago, which we now call "Holy Week." Those present when Jesus made his entrance into Jerusalem didn't quite get it. They thought this was the victory! They thought that God was finally going to straighten things out, throw off the hated oppressors from Rome, and bring back the glory days of what used to be. They were dead wrong. This was not the victory, because the victory isn't won riding on a donkey; it isn't won with shouts of praise ringing in your ears; this is not how power is unleashed.
If we follow the Gospel's chronology literally, those who witnessed a few days later on Good Friday what was good and filled with hope blotted out thought they got it. They thought the victory belonged to violence and brutality. They thought that power was being in control over a simple carpenter, and all the power belonged to the mighty and strong. They were dead wrong, too. It was only those touched and claimed by the power unleashed on the Cross and confirmed three days later that really got it.
Paul was one of those, and few have expressed the truth God taught on the Cross more powerfully than did Paul in the lesson we read from Philippians. If we are going to get it, we need to hear him with clarity. Paul says that authentic victory comes in emptying yourself of self, and living a life of radical obedience to God. Paul says that this is what Jesus did, that he was faithful to God's way of self-giving love to the very end of his life. In doing so, the most amazing thing happened: what looked like defeat was transformed into victory; those who appeared to have power were left impotent; death itself was found as powerless as the violence that brought it; and true power -- the power that brings victory -- was unleashed forever! This is what Jesus' death on the cross meant: it is self-giving love that is the victory; victory lies nowhere else. This is what God has been trying to teach us all along.
The lesson was not easy to learn; it still isn't. Everywhere surrounding us, as it was for everyone who surrounded the Cross on Golgotha, are all kinds of reasons to believe that power is in violence, and those with the will to power will be the winners. Disgruntled, self-serving religious leaders and their rabble can blot out life -- what is good and filled with hope -- as easily as can a thirteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old child. There are few exceptions to those who think violence and self-assertion are the power that brings victory.
Yes, but those who shout a resounding "No!" in the face of violence and self-centeredness; those who dare to have, in the words of Paul, "the mind of Christ," emptying themselves, pouring out life and investing love, they know different! They have learned the hard lesson that it is love given away that unleashes the power that brings victory; there is no other way! Dear friends, if we are to know victory -- in our lives, in this church, in this world where God has placed us an instruments of love, there is no other way! For this, and for us, there are no exceptions.
It is not my intention today to answer them. None of us have any certainty about why children become killers. Oh, sure, I have a lot of feeling about this and some ideas about the cause; like the availability of weapons in this country, like the constant bombardment of media violence, like the cheapening of human life, and so on. Nonetheless, the complete and absolute truth about this tragic episode will remain elusive for us.
No, my intention is not to speculate about that which remains elusive; it is, rather, to focus heart and mind on that which is not speculative, nor elusive, but is the bedrock truth, a truth every single one of us here and everywhere else needs to know and understand. This is the truth: one, the less we know victory in living, the more we search for the power that will bring it. Two, the more we lodge power in violence and control over others, the more destructive our lives become, and the more elusive the victory is. And three, God has shown us where authentic power really lies, how victory can be ours, and how both the power and the victory can transform not only our lives, but this world in which we live.
The events in Jonesboro, Arkansas, may appear farther removed from us than just by the physical distance, but they are in fact connected to us just as closely as the violence you saw on last night's local news broadcast or read about in this morning's newspaper. It doesn't matter if it's eleven-year-old or thirteen-year-old children shooting twelve-year-old children, or terrorists blowing up buses in Israel, or someone being mugged on any street in any city in this nation. All acts of violence are tied together with one thread, and we need to understand this if we are to survive and our children are to survive. The thread is this: a lack of victory in living will inevitably generate a drive to gain power, so the victory can be achieved. It can be the sense of failure and impotence, a lack of self-esteem that pushes a child to say, "I'll show them!" It can be the trauma of losing one's own country through the decision of a world body one cannot control, coupled with fifty years of fanatical paranoia and oppression, as we witness in Palestine. It can be the hopelessness of poverty that issues in a drive toward power and the oppression of the oppressor. It can be any of these, and more, but it's all the same: we live in a world where few know any victory in living.
Wait! That's too broad. We live in a community, in a neighborhood, where few know any victory; we go to school and work where few know victory. Oh, it might not look like it; we look around us where we live, go to school and work, and it looks like lots of people know victory: after all, for the most part they are not in poverty, they are not oppressed, they are not powerless victims. But looks can be deceiving, can't they? Looks reveal only the obvious, only what's on the outside. When we penetrate appearance and even our own desperate denial, the truth is there in all of its stark reality: few of us know victory in living. I mean real victory: a sense of self-worth, that we count, that we are loved and esteemed; I mean a life that has some meaning and direction and satisfaction to it; I mean having a reason to live at all, and to celebrate the gift of life with joy.
The fact is, it's not there for huge numbers of us; it may not be there for you. And if it isn't, you and I will strive for it; we will search for the power that will bring victory to us, and we will keep searching until we find it.
Tragically, if we find the power in violence, or in control over and manipulation of others, it will prove to be destructive to our lives, and the victory and authentic power we seek will become all the more elusive. Just ask Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden if and when they emerge from the criminal justice system. If their act of violence was to win esteem and love and honor from their classmates, it didn't work out this way. If the destruction of five lives was to give them some sense of power and victory, it ended up destroying them. And so it will with us. Violence has rooted within it the seeds of self destruction. We know this is true; we've seen it again and again. When urban riots swept this nation, whose neighborhoods were left looking like a war zone? When violence, and control over others, and brutality claim a community, who are the victims? You see, we forget this. When we are powerless and know only defeat, we wrongly think that if we seize the power -- and do to them what they did to us -- we will find the victory. We will not! The victory will remain elusive, and the destructiveness will destroy us.
This is not only worth knowing socially; it is also worth knowing personally. If you -- personally -- are longing for victory and power in your life (and most of us are!), you're not going to find it by manipulating others, controlling others, lording it over them, or climbing to the top by using everyone around you as ladders. That kind of living destroys relationships, and it will ultimately destroy you, too. This is because love cannot live in the midst of violence and control. Fear? Yes, it can live. Hatred? Sure! Hatred cannot only live in the midst of violence, it thrives on it! But love? Never! And it is love -- given and received -- that makes relationships possible, is the victory, and releases authentic power. Violence and destruction, manipulation and control don't; they lead only to defeat and ultimately death.
This, in its stark simplicity, is not only what the fifteen minutes of horror beginning at 12:35 p.m. on March 24, 1998, teach us; it is what God has been trying to teach us for almost 2,000 years. It is a lesson about what looked like victory, but wasn't; what looked like defeat, but wasn't; what real victory -- and the power that really brings it -- really was and is. You see, in Christ God has made a statement about what real power is and how it is unleashed. All evidence to the contrary, it is love that overcomes violence and destruction, and brings the victory.
This was the lesson God was teaching through those events of so long ago, which we now call "Holy Week." Those present when Jesus made his entrance into Jerusalem didn't quite get it. They thought this was the victory! They thought that God was finally going to straighten things out, throw off the hated oppressors from Rome, and bring back the glory days of what used to be. They were dead wrong. This was not the victory, because the victory isn't won riding on a donkey; it isn't won with shouts of praise ringing in your ears; this is not how power is unleashed.
If we follow the Gospel's chronology literally, those who witnessed a few days later on Good Friday what was good and filled with hope blotted out thought they got it. They thought the victory belonged to violence and brutality. They thought that power was being in control over a simple carpenter, and all the power belonged to the mighty and strong. They were dead wrong, too. It was only those touched and claimed by the power unleashed on the Cross and confirmed three days later that really got it.
Paul was one of those, and few have expressed the truth God taught on the Cross more powerfully than did Paul in the lesson we read from Philippians. If we are going to get it, we need to hear him with clarity. Paul says that authentic victory comes in emptying yourself of self, and living a life of radical obedience to God. Paul says that this is what Jesus did, that he was faithful to God's way of self-giving love to the very end of his life. In doing so, the most amazing thing happened: what looked like defeat was transformed into victory; those who appeared to have power were left impotent; death itself was found as powerless as the violence that brought it; and true power -- the power that brings victory -- was unleashed forever! This is what Jesus' death on the cross meant: it is self-giving love that is the victory; victory lies nowhere else. This is what God has been trying to teach us all along.
The lesson was not easy to learn; it still isn't. Everywhere surrounding us, as it was for everyone who surrounded the Cross on Golgotha, are all kinds of reasons to believe that power is in violence, and those with the will to power will be the winners. Disgruntled, self-serving religious leaders and their rabble can blot out life -- what is good and filled with hope -- as easily as can a thirteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old child. There are few exceptions to those who think violence and self-assertion are the power that brings victory.
Yes, but those who shout a resounding "No!" in the face of violence and self-centeredness; those who dare to have, in the words of Paul, "the mind of Christ," emptying themselves, pouring out life and investing love, they know different! They have learned the hard lesson that it is love given away that unleashes the power that brings victory; there is no other way! Dear friends, if we are to know victory -- in our lives, in this church, in this world where God has placed us an instruments of love, there is no other way! For this, and for us, there are no exceptions.
