Power Through the Lens of the Cross
Luke 23:3-4; 23-25, NRSV
1 Corinthians 1:26-31, NRSV
Reflections
When grace is pierced, it bleeds pardon. When grace is crucified, it doesn’t condemn.
Crucified grace is even cognizant of how nearly impossible it is for sinful persecutors to act otherwise. Those who seek to imitate this kind of grace will eventually be wounded themselves — they will endure a stigmata upon their soul. They will help complete what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ (see Colossians 1:24). This is what it means to be Christlike in the fullest sense. Before we are the church triumphant, we are the church stigmatized, and we are to bear our stigma with grace.For your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
— Romans 8:36-37We are “more than conquerors,” not by winning the petty games of the rat race and wearing the tin badge of “success,” but by imitating the slaughtered Lamb who sits at the right hand of God. We lessen the sin of the world by joining the Lamb of God in bearing sin and pardoning sinners.
— Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine
- Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but what about power of the cross?
- Pilate’s power
- nonchalance and cool of his power
- just want the protests to go away
- just want to maintain and keep the power he has
- We all are frantic about keeping our power/privilege too
- Jesus’ power of love
- When we consider people who change our lives
- Are they closer to Pilate, who has power to control and manipulate us
- Or are they closer to Jesus, who would forgive, love, listen to us
- What is the source of our lives?
