Rethinking Strength During the Season of Lent

When I was in elementary school, my class did an egg drop experiment. Our teacher tasked each of us with designing something using ordinary household items to protect our eggs and keep them from breaking when we dropped them out of the highest window of our school building. Our building was something like 2 ½ stories tall, which felt like a skyscraper to us rural, elementary school kids. I remember brainstorming and creating a box-like container for my egg. I thought the best way to keep the egg protected was to make something sturdy, durable, and tough.

On the day of the egg drop, our class made our way up the winding staircase, and we took turns dropping our contraptions out the window. I had designed a square-shaped container with various layers of paper and cotton balls to serve as insulation. I reasoned that if I made the walls of my container thick enough, my egg would be spared. I was wrong. The vessels that provided the most protection for the eggs did not look strong from the outside. They relied on suspension or a way to slow down the drop speed to soften the impact. These vessels were created with lightweight items like drinking straws and rubber bands. When these containers hit the ground, the protective contraptions would bounce or move, which allowed the eggs to be spared the brunt of the impact. From the outside, these creations seemed skeletal and weak, but they were the most effective in the end.

Throughout this season of Lent, I have been reflecting on strength and what makes a person strong. As children, we learn what strength looks like from observing others. We notice the behaviors that help people get ahead, and we notice what traits are rewarded. As a child, I believed strength’s characteristics were external. People with loud, confident voices seemed strong to me. People in charge of their businesses and had people working under them appeared strong. Bullies at school, who could make other kids do whatever they wanted, were strong. People who dressed with confidence were strong. That last one is probably why, as a young child, I saw Mr. T on TV and asked my mom, “Is that Jesus?”

The disciples believed in external strength, too. The Roman empire conquered territory and maintained control by force. Movements to oppose the empire were movements of force. In Adam Hamilton’s book 24 Hours that Changed the World, he wrote that between Jesus’s birth and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, “at least eight people, and perhaps as many as thirteen” who claimed to be the messiah used force to try and overthrow Rome. This was what people observed and expected from a messiah. This was what looked like strength to them.

In Matthew 20, the mother of James and John asked a favor of Jesus. She knew that Jesus talked about ushering in a new kingdom, and she believed that the only way a new kingdom could overthrow Rome was through violence, through external displays of strength. She wanted to make sure the sacrifices her sons were making would be worth it, and so she asked Jesus to give them positions of authority and honor in his kingdom. She wanted them to be protected and powerful. She asked Him to make her sons strong.

Jesus’s response redefines strength: “‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:25-28).” The kingdom of God would not be initiated through violence and external strength, but by something stronger and longer lasting: love.

We demonstrate strength not by projecting confidence or asserting dominance, but by cultivating our hearts to love and serve others. As Jesus defined strength to the mother of James and John, to His disciples, and to us, He turned the popular definition of strength on its head. This was something He did, not just through words, but ultimately by willingly laying down His life for the life of the world.

The season of Lent is an opportunity to follow in Jesus’s footsteps, to allow our concepts and definitions of strength to fall away and be replaced by true markers of strength. This is difficult work. It contradicts what we see in the media. It flies in the face of what we observed as we grew up. It pushes against what we have come to believe will keep us safe and make us secure. This work may be difficult, but it will also be good.

May we find the courage to let go of our desire for power, control, and external strength. As we allow ourselves to be molded and shaped after the example of Jesus, may we find our hearts growing more compassionate, more caring, and more loving. We may not look strong in the eyes of the world, but we will have discovered the kind of strength that lasts. We will have discovered the kind of strength that makes transformation possible. We will have discovered what it means to be part of God’s reign breaking into this world.

References:

Adam Hamilton, 24 Hours that Changed the World, Abingdon Press, expanded paperback edition (2016).