2024-04-20 A Meditation on Strongmen
“15 We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. 3 For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. 5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (Rom 15:1-7 ESV)
The strongman is a theme in our culture, and as Christians it is a strongman who bends over backwards to help the little person. No longer vainly chasing, not tormented by, lifestyles too rich for our blood, we as the strongman descend to the realm of the other people, littler people, the person struggling under doubt or trials; the Christian facing persecutions; the work-a-day person in a societal role hazarded by its invitation of scorn and oppression.
Go broad, not high, may be our response to those rich lifestyles that mock our own thin blood, but in our circulatory system is a wealth of plain oxygen, blood rich in a different kind of manner, a reminder it is Christ’s own blood we set our famished eyes upon: what can this admitted strongman, what can He in fact do for me? Die for me? Feed me? Put pause on all fairness, and shoulder the blame, take in His body the oppression, take in His poor soul the human need to bludgeon and descend upon and beat a bit even the friend. At times. In certain pathetic examples of friendship falling by the wayside. We bludgeon. We critique and gossip. We hunger after the degradation or pleasant apparition of weakness in another.
If ever you have met a strongman or strongwoman, you may know how suddenly we chirp up with confession and with things too difficult, harbored pain and hardship rarely talked about. To their own admission: these are for real difficult! I can’t be your solution!
The soldier of the Cross is a strongman who has leaned over backwards to lift up the despicable and hated weaker fashion of man or woman. In this pro-life determination—not life in the womb, per customary usage, but all life—we see it string eternal; we see it beckon us to indulge, to gladhappily feast, on the metaphorical “blood” of our Lord: He has beckoned us and sat us and uncovered for us the wedding banquet so appeasing to famished souls.
For, we tried to fast: in anticipation of this banquet, yet perhaps did not quite have that sense of propriety or dutiful fasting, try as we might; it is precisely this ongoing need for forgiveness that motivates us to proclaim the day of the Lord’s favor: no matter, young person, if you kept holy fast, today is the victory celebration of the Lord.
And no longer under the illusion: we are like a small sideshow to the main gig of those of richer lifestyle, but so be it, life miraculously shows us relevant and useful, in our calling and in our purpose met: we are after all the gregarious outgoing cut of the cloth. We are rich in blessings, and richer in stories perhaps mostly best kept quiet about. Who are we, after all? Are we the dutiful son or daughter murmuring an eternal thank you to parents? Are we the familiar brother or sister murmuring an eternal peace accord with siblings? Or are we belonging to a different cut of cloth, friends that parent and kin would dismiss with a gesture, yet who are for us the sum and substance of life in community? In these things, too, we dwell composed and attributed to be strongmen and strongwomen. We hate not our own meager offering at table, but listen and bless and know, there are times for silence. There are times for strange hidden alliances, known as “recognition”, known as “affinity”, known as “commiseration”, that form; closer we are than we might think.