Empowered
Jesus doesn’t save anyone passively, in spite of themselves, beyond their willingness to actively engage a way of experiencing transformed life he calls Kingdom. If we’re waiting for a savior, no one is coming. If we’re waiting for anything, we’re not in Kingdom. Waiting is passive, not yet; Kingdom is always in motion, herenow. Jesus saves by empowering us to act in ways we may have thought not possible or not allowed. He shows us the process of fundamental change, challenging us to make the small choices we can make now to start dominos falling toward radical transformation not yet.
The good news of the gospels is that God is all poured out.
Everything God is and has to offer is already herenow. Nothing withheld…Kingdom within, in our midst. Jesus’ message tells us that we are empowered to accept the everything of God any time and always, and his Way is the unavoidable process of realizing our empowerment, only and always experiential—the choice by increasingly audacious choice of trust.
Tragically, we’ve been taught a disempowering God who mirrors human leaders to whom we must appeal, who keep us waiting for what we need. If we’re waiting, we’re not empowered, not in Kingdom, and such a God is anathema to Jesus. Yet we’ve also been taught that God is disempowered himself and only half of the cosmic equation. The other half, Satan, God’s arch enemy and opponent, has the power to lead us into temptation. We imagine ourselves pawns in this cosmic battle, victims, collateral damage in a scorched earth.
That is anathema to the Jews who wrote the scriptures from which we extract such a creature as Satan. For Jews, God is unopposable, the One without opposite. No battle is possible, and ha-satan, the adversary, is God’s agent—whether a person, spiritual being, or our own inclination to evil—providing us with the alternate choices that make free will real. But the choice is always ours, and ha-satan has no power over us that we don’t give.
Jesus is telling us we are not victims. Everything we need is right here. The choice is always ours to break through any resistance that would tell us otherwise. Empowered.
