We almost always expect our fathers to be strong. The biological strength of men has recently resurfaced as something so obvious that we had forgotten it but are once again remembering the difference strength makes. Our fathers can throw us in the air and catch us, they carry us on their shoulders, shove their way through crowds, move, lift, shift heavy things and, of course, they open all the jam jar lids.
One of the reasons we worship God is because He is strong. We turn to God when we need this strength. The many prayers for a miracle are prayers to a God that we hope to discover is strong: really strong. We hope that God, and I believe He is, is strong enough to do what is impossible for us. As King David encouraged us to do, we “seek the LORD and His strength.” 1
God is mighty but not just mighty but the Almighty, the strongest of the strong. Our Heavenly Father is no weakling. So far, so Nietzsche.
My father is so weak at the moment that he barely has the strength to breathe. It is hard to imagine how he could possibly be any weaker. Breathing takes most of us so little effort that we can do it without thinking about it. Yet the ability to breathe is quite literally the ability that separates the living from the dead. Lose the strength to breathe and you will very quickly shift your status from one to the other. So it is hard to fathom how my dad could be so weak as to barely be able to breathe.
What is more staggering still is that this also happened to Jesus. There’s a line in the song, “From the squalor of a borrowed stable” by Stuart Townend that says, “he fights for breath, he fights for me” and the mystery is that the Son of God had to lose the first fight in order to win the second. Jesus became so weak that he could no longer breathe. The same one who breathed life into Adam and made dust come alive became so short of air that he started his journey to dust.
And right here, in the weakness, the desperate weakness, we say goodbye to Nietzsche. For what good, to anyone, is a God so weak he cannot breathe?
As it turns out, a lot. We who are weak now know that God knows. God has chosen, through Christ, to identify with us in our weakness. He has not despised us because we are weak.
Perhaps Paul spoke truer then he knew when he wrote, “to the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” 2 The writer of Hebrews gets to the same place when he says, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…” Jesus became weak, that he might save some weak ones & those he saved might share in his blessings.
The writers of the New Testament came to see a truth that had previously been hidden, deeper magic if you will, that was is sown in weakness will be raised in power.
One of the many things the cross shows us is what we really are: mortal, weak, subject to death. And it is all those things that will need transforming. God in His wisdom chose to reveal a path that leads to an imperishable life that combined breath-less weakness and then and only then, mighty power. Death has been swallowed up, its sting pulled because it is now not an enemy but the soil in which we are planted. Jesus didn’t finish that journey to dust and ashes because the grip of death was rudely interrupted.
Learning to be weak is an essential part of the Christian life. We need to embrace it. Here I am Lord, mortal, weak, dying but I know that your grace is sufficient and the third day shows me that power can be made perfect in weakness.
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