"Winning"

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:55-57

Well, I can't avoid it. I'm an American male born in the 1980s. I liked Transformers, Voltron, Thundercats, Indiana Jones, the A-Team, and just about any other TV program that involved either beating up bad guys or explosions--preferably both. I waged more than one pitched battle with squirt guns. I played Ninja Turtles with my friends, which did involve some hitting each other with sticks. I grew up thinking Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star was just about the crowning achievement of cinema for all time. Even as a young adult who by that point was a committed pacifist,I afforded nearly equal status to Neo's triumphal entry into the secure office building in the first Matrix film.This is where I'm coming from.

But I'm also a Christian--you know, one of those weird people who believe you should love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, meet violence with nonviolence, vengeance with forgiveness, hate with love. I believe we are called to "stand our ground" in a completely different and antithetical way to the way our culture--and apparently, Florida law--would have us do.

And then, we have Easter. From the New Testament itself, to theological interpretations through the ages, to hymnody, even to the way we celebrate--with loud blasting trumpets and marching processions--the language and imagery of military victory is thick and heavy. I saw a very relevant blog post on this topic, pointed out by a good friend. The language is there, staring us in the face. Even in the "peaceful" New Testament, one dominant metaphor for the cross and resurrection is one of military victory. Even the Greek word euangelion, often translated as "Gospel" or "Good News," was at first a military term for the announcement of a favorable result in battle: that "our team won."

And as you go on in Christian history, and begin to study other interpretations of the cross--most notably the satisfaction theory of atonement--the idea of the cross as a victory over death and evil actually starts to look pretty good. I'd much rather have a Jesus who is one with God, prevailing over death, than a Jesus who is at cross purposes with an angry God, prevailing over God's better judgment!

So there's this tension. The metaphor--Let me repeat this a couple of times to be clear, the metaphor, the metaphor, the metaphor--of military victory, not over any human army or ruler, but over sin and death, is a huge one in the New Testament, and throughout church history. But at the same time, the very way that victory was won--meeting the worst brutality human beings can offer with courage, love, forgiveness, and a stubborn refusal to play the game by death's violent rules--is what sets the cross apart from any other victory.

I think there are three ways to resolve this tension. First, just barrel through it. Claim these military metaphors as our own, and hope for the best. Buy our kids the "full armor of God" play set, dress them up in fatigues as "metaphorical" soldiers for Christ, encourage their addiction to violent video games, TV and movies without offering any outlet for reflection on how to resolve conflicts in real life, and maybe even train them in some combat and small arms fire, on the off chance they get "left behind" in the rapture and have to face off with all manner of demons and antichrists and whatnot. I can't even begin to describe the problems with this approach, but I will tell you this: It's been tried. It didn't work.

Second, we can censor the heck out of ourselves. We can sick special teams of well-meaning theologians on every hymn, every Bible verse, every sermon historic or contemporary, every anthem, every piece of liturgy that might find its way to the ears of the faithful. We can purge, we can spin, we can convince ourselves that this was simply never the way that Christians talked or thought or believed, because it can't be, considering they were so very enlightened and politically and socially advanced, just like us modern-day Christians *rolls eyes*. I guess this could work, provided that mainline Christians continue to pursue our current trend of almost never reading our Bibles at home, or talking about our faith with people outside our congregations or even inside them. If we did that, censorship would work fine.

The third option, which my rhetorical sensibilities drew me to put last, is the one I'd recommend. Let's open up some of the riches of the Bible and the Christian tradition, and recognize that military victory is just one color in a whole rainbow of metaphor used by the first Christians to try to understand what happened around Jesus' death. A few of my favorites are of a hen gathering her brood, one grain of wheat bearing a great harvest, and a mother giving birth to her child. These, too, are in the New Testament. These, too, are very effective conceptual tools to explore what happened on the cross: which, of course, is and will ultimately remain a mystery. So rather than taking one color paint out of our palette, why not challenge ourselves to paint with all the colors we've been given, and maybe even use our God-given imaginations to come up with contemporary images that might work?

I think I'm just going to have to live with the tension of being a red-blooded American sci-fi/fantasy action fan, who confesses as my Lord one who, rather than lift a sword or even a hand, was crucified to defeat evil and death. I think I can hold in my head and heart the real-live action heroes of our faith, who went to their deaths in Jesus' name, asking forgiveness for those who killed them, while still watching the ridiculous movie-poster heroes that keep us eating popcorn and nachos. The trick is to talk about it, reflect on it together, especially with our kids, and to always hold before our eyes the cross: the sign of what "winning" really looks like.