The Power and the Glory

Power? Glory? Is that what Easter’s all about? If you had been there at Calvary that Friday two thousand years ago, you’d have been saying “What power? What glory? All I see is three men dying slowly on crosses while the mob cheers.” Not a pretty sight. No power there, unless you mean the power of a cruel governor to inflict pain. No glory either, unless you mean the glory the religious leaders took in eliminating a Messiah who didn’t quite measure up to their expectations.

The world has its own ruler when it comes to measuring power and glory. You want to talk power? Let’s talk about politics, or the military, or big business. Power comes from Washington and Wall Street. Power, in the words of Chairman Mao, comes out of the barrel of a gun.

You want to talk glory? Let’s think about hitting a home run in the World Series. The Oscars. The Emmies. The Nobel Prize. Glory is fame. Glory is applause. Glory is being a celebrity.

I’m sure you have seen the commercial for Nike shoes featuring Bo Jackson. “Bo knows baseball. Bo knows football. Bo knows basketball.” Well, this world thinks it knows power and glory, and when the world looks at Easter, it doesn’t see either. When the world looks at Jesus Christ dying on a cross, what does it see? Instead of power, it sees weakness. Instead of glory, it sees shame. So who needs a Savior like that? He’s not even credible. Or is he?

Let me suggest to you a new way to think about Easter, and about what Jesus did when he died on the cross. Think of Easter as an exercise in satire. Are you familiar with satire? We engage in satire when we make fun of something that is high and mighty. We laugh at it, and suddenly it doesn’t appear so intimidating anymore.

Perhaps you’ve been reading Doonesbury lately. Gary Trudeau, the author of that satirical comic strip, makes a good living poking fun at the movers and shakers of our world. Whether his target is George Bush or Donald Trump, Doonesbury often succeeds in making them look absolutely ridiculous, and so less to be feared, less to be respected. Whether you like it or not, that’s satire.

Editorial cartoonists have been at it for years. When he was in power, Richard Nixon would break out in hives to even think about certain journalists and artists who regularly gave him the needle. Satire is a little bit like judo, where you use your opponent’s own strength and momentum to throw him down. The bigger he is, the harder he falls.

So what has that got to do with Easter? Well, doesn’t it strike you as odd that when God decided to come down here to do something about sin and death and the mess that Satan had made of His world, He came in through the back door, so to speak? If I were God, I would have kicked down the front door and walked in and taken over. But God didn’t do it that way.

Jesus, the Son of God, came as a baby. He came to one of the smallest nations he could find, and he came to one of the smallest villages in that nation. He came to a world that knew all about power and He said that love was stronger. He came to a people who thirsted for glory and said “You want to be great? Be a servant.”

And He came to do something about death - the doomsday weapon of Satan, and what did He do? HE DIED! Doesn’t this strike you as really strange?

Well, not if you understand satire. What you have in Easter is a story of how the weak bring down the strong. Jesus said to Satan “Take your best shot. Think you’re pretty powerful? I’ll show you exactly how much power you have. Zero. None. Go ahead and use your number one weapon on me. I’m going to show you and the whole world that power and glory as defined by you are nothing.

When Satan tried to smash Jesus down with the hammer of death, he only succeeded in breaking the hammer! It was only by dying and rising again that Jesus showed us that we don’t have to be afraid of death. It was only by being hated and spat upon and mocked that Jesus showed us that His love conquers all. Jesus was something like the simple little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson fable who said “Hey, the Emperor has no clothes on.” That is what the Bible means when it says

1 Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

The weak brings down the strong. That’s the essence of satire. And that is why I say very reverently that the story of Easter is divine satire.

There is power and there is glory in Easter. But they do not come from the sources that we look to for those things. That is because the cross and the resurrection speak to us of a much deeper power and a much greater glory than the ones we know. They speak of the power and the glory of God.

If you want the power and glory of God to be the reference point of your life, then you’re going to have to become a follower of the one who brought them to us. Jesus Christ. Without him, you’ll never understand what Easter is all about.