The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It

by Jamin Goggin

The centrality of the public reading of Scripture, and possibly the reason for its absence in so many churches, is that the scriptures read aloud cannot be controlled or filtered to our liking. In the public reading of Scripture, we hear the raw proclamation of God through his Word and must receive it, in the Spirit, as a Word for us. A public proclamation of Scripture helps to keep the preacher accountable to the Word that was read. But while the public reading of Scripture is straightforward, preaching is less so.

The image we get in this passage is not of the church triumphing, but of one who has been triumphed over. The image of triumph had a cultural correspondence for the Corinthians of Paul’s day. Triumphing was an allusion to the Roman processionals following a victory in war.6 As New Testament scholar Paul Barnett states, “The verb was not used to describe victorious troops but defeated prisoners who had been brought to Rome to be paraded as the spoils of war.”7 What the apostle Paul is telling us here is that in Christ God has triumphed over us, and in him we are now paraded before a watching world. We are caught in the victory parade of Christ, celebrating his defeat of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The image is not of our power, but God’s. We are viewed in a position of weakness. And yet, as the church embraces the role of Christ’s captive, we make Christ’s way known in the world.

In ancient churches, and some modern ones, stained-glass windows catch your attention quickly when you enter the building. Unlike paintings, the windows were always to be understood as windows—things you look through, not things you simply look at. You look “through” a stained-glass window by seeing the outside world as defined by the true depiction of reality in the window. The windows are supposed to be portals into reality. Similarly, the movement of our church services as a re-narration of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt should tune our hearts to the way of God in the world—so that when we leave, our hearts are still tuned that way.

Generosity is a form of resistance. A heart that is formed by greed, pride, self-centeredness, and anger will very quickly adopt forms of living that affirm the power structures of the world, the flesh, and the devil (even within the church). But people formed for the kingdom, formed by generosity of spirit, are those who unmask demonic initiatives and bear witness to a different way.

Whereas control leads to unity by demolishing diversity, reconciliation leads to unity within diversity—which requires us to lay down our own control. To accept the call of reconciliation is to reject power for control. It entails standing against the powers and principalities that seek division and segregation.

to seek reconciliation and love with generosity of heart, the church must refuse to be divisive.