Be strong

Several years ago I was with a group of fellow-pastors as we read and commented on Paul Borden’s Assaulting the Gates. The book’s title uses military metaphor to describe the Church’s outward-focused mission. One pastor lamented in a rather whiney tone, “I don’t like the military language in that title because it goes against everything within me.”

Apparently Jesus didn’t have my collegue’s scruples. It did not bother him one bit to summon his young, testosterone-saturated disciples to describe an advancing kingdom that would gather the troops to assault the gates of Hades. His use of the word church was provacative because in the minds of the disciples it ignited dreams of military conquest and victory. It was also risky, because folks in Galilee, especially in the northern mountain region, dreamed of gathering enough men to storm Jerusalem and rid it of the hated Roman overlords once and for all. Every once in a while a crowd of roughians from Galilee would try it, usually at Passover, and wind up hanging on a cross for their efforts and serving as an example of what happens when you take on the Romans and lose.

The word church as Jesus used it meant sounding the war signal on the shofar and gathering all the able-bodied men together to prepare for war. The gathering and resulting shared resources and manpower meant building strength for conquest, the capacity to take on formidable strongholds and defeat them soundly. Saying that word among twenty-something men, mostly fishers and farmers steeped in a cultural yearning to take out the Romans, is like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Etched into the minds of these young men, from their childhood, is the lore of biblical literature that reinforces their dreams for military conquest. Through weekly synagogue worship they heard over and over how Joshua gathered the forces, marched around ancient Jericho, stood amazed as God demolished its defenses, and easily stormed the city for decisive victory and conquest. They heard countless other stories of outnumbered armies achieving astounding victory through the help of the Lord. There is no telling how many times they rehearsed the story of young David, single-handedly taking on Goliath, and striking terror into the hearts of formidable Philistine armies.

In fact the term salvation in the Hebrew mind means having the help of the Lord to overcome overwhelming odds and turning certain death into amazing victory. At Jericho the Lord may have destroyed the walls, but it was Joshua's men who raided the city. Salvation means adding your nearly depleted strength to the strength the Lord provides through grace. Paul reminds us to work our our own salvation with fear and trembling. And it is an ongoing thing. Again Paul writes that we are being saved.

They got the gathering part right, assembling to build strength for military conquest, but they missed the intended target. They had the wrong gates in mind. Roman-occupied Jerusalem was not the “gates of Hades” to which Jesus referred. Hades in Jewish thought meant the place of lifelessness and death, and could be easily applied to the brutality of Roman occupation. But Jesus was referring to something much deeper.

The gates of Hades to which Jesus refers are the strongholds of death erected by the forces of evil to entrap us in bondage to our sins. Our self-defeating attitudes, ideas, thoughts, ways of life, habits, actions, prejudices, and relationships that keep us from being free to worship and serve God. Our passivity and inactivity and our consumerism and our craving for self-fulfillment and entertainment. Our preoccupation with lust, greed, and bitterness that enslave us and drive us, many times against our will. Let me tell you, it takes strength to overcome these things. The insidious thing about Hades is that we can sit comfortably on our pew, every week, for years, and be completely captivated by it.

Paul the apostle knew and taught this. The weapons of our warfare, Paul writes, apparently thinking of Jericho, are not human but powerful and strong, for the pulling down of strongholds within our hearts and minds which keeps us from the knowledge of Christ. Describing the dreadful sight of a Roman soldier's uniform, Paul commands us to put on the whole armor of God that we may be able to withstand the wiles of the devil. He goes on to remind us that our fight is not with human adversaries, but with principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness. Against them we must take a stand. Peter has the same thing in mind when he says to resist the devil and he will flee from us.

The early church knew this too, and gave us baptismal examination we continue to use. “Do you renounce spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of the world, and repent of your sin?” Standing at the baptismal font we say yes, but do we really mean it? Do we resist and overcome powers of darkness?

I am noticing throughout the Scriptures the command to be strong. God told Joshua, taking command of the Israelite people and the militia, to be strong. At least three times he commanded, “Be strong.” At the same time he gave him a means acquiring that strength through constant attention to the Scriptures. Paul referred to the means of strength in terms of military armor, disciplines of life that protect us inwardly and equip us outwardly. Doctrinally we refer to these as means of grace.

Grace is that power of reinforcement, that ability to do what we cannot do for ourselves. It is the work and the evidence of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit brings strength for whatever occasion. The Holy Spirit is that which empowers the gathered militant force to move against strongholds of death, darkness, and passivity for decisive victory.