If you had a super power what would it be? When I presented this question to my students I received a laundry list of intriguing powers such as invisibility, super strength, and x-ray vision, but none of them said they would feed the poor, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, or visit the prisoner. We adults might be more nuanced in our answers, but I suspect they would continue to reflect love of self rather than love of neighbor. We continue to reenact Adam and Eve’s Garden power play and super-size our human happy meal to divine portions, but instead end up as fat super villains. Why is it when we are offered super powers we turn inward and deify ourselves? Instead of rejecting the power of the world, we embrace it and take a page out of the Tony Stark playbook and create an even bigger mess.
Jesus had all the superpowers one could ask for and yet he made himself a suffering servant. Instead of saving the world through displays of flight and might, He embraced the Roman kryptonite. The choices of our Savior may be out of place in a Marvel comic book, but unlike our superhero friends who never seem to completely defeat evil, Jesus conquered it once for all. Jesus emptied Himself in the incarnational phone booth and emerged a mild mannered lamb that quietly took away the sins of the world. While Rome looked on and laughed at the foolishness of God’s power hanging on a tree, His followers found the strength to change the world. Sadly, we continue to carve our initials on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to let others know that we have tasted the “God” life, when ironically the greatest manifestation of divine power is right next to us nailed to its trunk.