The Weakness of God: Advent (3)
The Weakness of God
Advent Reflection - Part three
The Weakness of God… Part Three. Super hero movies are the rage. Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther. People love them. They fulfill our fantasy of being weak yet having the power to overcome obstacles.
I mention this because this month I’m writing about the opposite of power. I’m writing about weakness, specifically: the weakness of God.
God Reveals Himself in Weakness
That’s not something we typically like to talk about. We like to talk about overcoming weakness. We turn to God because we’re weak and he’s strong. (Our Rock, Our Fortress, etc.) But oddly, God often reveals himself to us in weakness.
The best example is what we celebrate at Christmas: Jesus coming into the world as a baby. But not just a baby: a baby born into poverty to a young girl in a stable.
Who comes to visit him but shepherds? The lowest class people.
That might all seem quaint to us today. We like manger scenes and grade school programs with Mary and baby Jesus. We like to sing carols about the silent night and the three wise men.
But in the eyes of the world at the time, the scene must have been fairly pathetic. I mean, are you kidding? What kind of god would enter the world this way? Come on…go get a better story!
So I have to think that, if God chose to enter the world in weakness then there must be more to weakness than we realize. There must be something that is even good about weakness if we are open to it.
Don’t Miss What God Is Doing in Weakness
You see, the reason this is so important is that God continues to show up in weakness today. If we aren’t careful, we’ll miss it. We’ll leave the scene before “the stone is rolled away.”
Strength comforts us. Weakness scares us. We don’t know what to do with weakness. We don’t know what category to put it in. But what I want you to see is that God is not only in strength, God’s in weakness too. Just because we don’t see him in weakness, doesn’t mean that he’s not there.
The Weakness of Jesus’ Family
This is illustrated in the opening words of Matthew’s account of Jesus. Matthew starts his account by relating Jesus’ lineage. Surprisingly, Matthew mentions the name of four women: Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, and Bathsheba.
Why would Matthew mention these women? Women in ancient times were seen as weak. In some cases it was worse than that. Women were seen as worthless. Baby girls were often left on the road to die. And women were seen as property, like a slave.
The women listed took weakness to a new low. Each one had an issue:
Tamar: She tricked her father-in-law into having sex with him so she could have a child.
Ruth: was from Moab, a nation that came from Moab who was the product of incest.
Rahab: was a Canaanite prostitute.
Bathsheba: committed adultery with King David.
Most people would try to hide these relatives… these skeletons in the closet. It’s embarassing. But Jesus wasn’t afraid to claim the dark side of his family tree. He wore these weak links like a badge of honor…not because of the sin involved in each story but because of what God did through these women in spite of their sin.
Jesus Isn’t Embarrassed By Your Weakness
Jesus looks at you the same way. There’s nothing you’ve done, or that’s been done to you, that will make Jesus turn his back on you. What you call weakness, Jesus calls opportunity.
Jesus redefines weakness. In Christ there is no weakness. That’s a social construct that we’ve created. That’s a term, or a concept, that we’ve coined based on comparing ourselves to others. For God… weakness is a stage for him to reveal his greatness. It’s a launching pad for God to do something special.
The weakness of God doesn’t mean that God is inept: unable to accomplish something. The weakness of God means that God comes in unexpected ways…in ways that humans often call weak. That’s why we have to be so careful to see what God is doing and not discount the weak thing.
If you’ve given up on yourself because of a perceived weakness, maybe this is an opportunity for God to reveal himself in you and do something special.
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