Reappearing Themes

Like any good work of literature, the Bible (in itself a huge collection of different kinds of literature) has themes that span throughout the text. Any literature student worth their salt would tell you that a good piece of writing will have broad themes that tie all of the details together in a large story that’s worth reading. Over and over again, we’re told that…

God loves us,

God is powerful, and

despite all the failings of humanity,

God wants what’s best for us.

There are, quite frankly, more Biblical themes than I can name, so these are just a few.

Currently, we’re in the season of Advent, which has its own themes. We know that God is with us, and that God came to us in a helpless baby to display His power. While this goes against our human idea of power, last week we discussed how God can use the powerless to show just how powerful He really is. When we acknowledge that we need help, it prepares room for God to work in our lives.

So, yes, power and powerlessness are huge themes for Advent and the Christmas story. Jesus is a baby—the most vulnerable of humans—and that is a cosmic display of God’s awesome power. A bundle of rags and crying flesh in a barn, hardly able to open his eyes. So if we know that there are huge, sweeping themes in the Bible, and if we know that the Christmas story contains the theme of God using the powerless to display His power, then where else is this showing up? Where else is God coming to the vulnerable to reveal who He is?

There are so many answers to this question, and so many examples of God coming to the overlooked and powerless that if I was going to list them all I’d need a much longer blog, and I don’t want to put my editor through that (hi, Dad!). So to keep things simple, we’re going to take another pass through the stories we’ve been exploring this year.

The Woman at the Well was someone who was put on the outside of her community. As a woman, she had little to no economic or social power, and as a woman straying outside expected sexual behavior, she had to go to the well in the middle of the day rather than in morning or evening like the other women. Additionally, she was of the wrong ethnicity to speak to someone like Jesus. She was in a vulnerable position, and Jesus used her to preach and speak about him to her village. She was the preacher Jesus chose!

The Paralyzed Man was someone who could not walk, could not provide for himself, and likely would have died if it weren’t his friends bringing him to Jesus. He was physically vulnerable and overlooked by his wider community—physically powerless, he had to rely on others for his survival, and yet Jesus praised him and his friends out of the people gathered in the crowd. Healing him was a display of God’s power.

In an interesting twist, the story of the Centurion’s servant is about someone who should have a lot of power. The Centurion had military and social power. He commanded men in the army, he had power over the Jews in the town, and he had wealth to protect him. He was someone who could control the lives of others, yet when a beloved servant lay dying, there was nothing he could do but kneel before Jesus. In this way, someone powerful became powerless, and in that acknowledgement Jesus could heal and display who God is.

God using broken places and vulnerable people to display His power isn’t just for Advent or the Christmas story; it can be found all over the Bible in these stories that we’ve been exploring as a church.

If Jesus only ever ate or healed or talked with people who seem to have it all together, then that would reflect an oddly narrow understanding of humanity coming from the God who created us all.

How wonderful it is that God comes beside us in our failings and powerlessness! How wonderful that we have the opportunity to help those who need it, and be helped in return!

Something I learned while getting my bachelor’s in Literature is that oftentimes an author won’t come out and state what is important to a story directly. Rather, a reader should pay attention to what is showcased, who gets to speak, and how much time in the narrative is devoted to certain topics. In a similar way, it’s significant that this theme—God revealing His power through powerlessness—shows up all throughout Scripture, time and time again.

Join us this Sunday for our Common Table Gathering as we continue our journey through Advent, preparing room in our hearts for the helpless, wonderful gift that is the baby Jesus.

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