Victory In Loss

Scripture: Acts 26.29
I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.

Reflection: Victory In Loss
By John Tillman

Many of the elements we long for in blockbusters are present in the Gospel narrative of the New Testament—a small group of outcasts facing long odds, narrow escapes from violence, capture and imprisonment, government corruption—but the story’s parts don’t go in the order we wish them to. They all end in death. Christ and his first followers in Scripture stubbornly refuse to fulfill the types of hero-journeys that we are accustomed to.

Paul’s defense before Agrippa is a moment when the story could turn in the outcast’s favor. When Agrippa is asked to weigh in, it is a potential game-changer. Agrippa is more than simply familiar with Jewish theology, he is a believer in the prophets. From a modern perspective, without knowing the rest of the story, one would be prone to think, “Finally, someone sympathetic to our cause is on the court! Finally, our hero Paul will orate his way out of captivity and gain notoriety for the cause of Christ!”

Instead, Paul’s impassioned defense is met with accusations of mental illness, and then disbelief. Even then, Paul could have been set free except for a strategic legal error—his appeal to Caesar. Paul’s “loss” follows the model set by Christ, who also strategically lost his own trial.

The idea that it is God’s plan to give believers victories in this world, through this world’s power, has little support in the New Testament. In the trials of our lives, we are not expected to be victors in the common cultural interpretation of winning.

The victories Christ calls us to are different than common narratives. They lie in the opposite direction from religious achievement and striving. They wait on the opposite side of the valley of the shadow of death. It is there that Christ leads us, lending us his guiding hand along a path narrow, but well worn by his own travel.

Other religions seek to bend the will of godly power to mortal benefit through performance of acts of sacrifice, incantation, and supplication. In Christianity, it is God who bends willingly to us—it is our wills that are unbending and our own power that holds us back from God’s presence. In Christianity it is God who sacrifices, submitting to execution under the power of mortal legal machinery. And it is God who sings an incantation, attempting to summon us to Him, supplicating our presence along the path that leads through suffering to victory.

The Request for Presence
I put my trust in you; show me the road that I must walk, for I lift up my soul to you. — Psalm 143.8

– From 
The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Ruth 1 (Listen – 3:33)
Acts 26 (Listen – 4:40)

Christ, Our Hope – Black Lives Matter :: Readers’ Choice

Readers’ Choice (originally published April 13, 2015)


“AMEN to this reflection. I long for the day when those of us with the power give up our power. And make intentional decisions to live lives that modeled Christ’s serving those around him.” — Brian


Psalm 20.7
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Civil Rights, let-alone equality, for African Americans have been notoriously difficult for The United States to secure, structure, and maintain. Names like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and now Walter Scott, shot eight times in the back by a police officer in South Carolina last week, have become representatives of this national tragedy.

Few in our country believe governance and the mental resolve of the masses alone are sufficient to solve such an insidious problem. In this way we observe part of the words of the Psalmist: we no longer trust in chariots (governance) and horses (power). Yet few of the dominant voices in American culture would offer up “the Lord our God,” as the Psalmist does, as the solution to racism. Perhaps this is to our detriment.

History has its share of those who maligned Scripture to condone racism, slavery, and worse — but it was the words and work of Christ that ultimately crumbled the foundation slavery sat upon. 

Throughout the 1790s William Wilberforce worked tirelessly to eviscerate slavery’s justification in English jurisprudence. “Wilberforce’s embracing of the anti-slavery cause was from the direct effect of embracing the Christian worldview,” The Wilberforce School reports.

Years later, back in the United States, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life to see needed changes in governance and society. We know from his writing and teachings that King knew the catalyst for this change was Christ — the gospel was the solution.

Rev. Dr. King’s seventh “I have a dream” statement — the crescendo of his seminal I Have a Dream speech — quotes the Messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 40.3-5. King was sure to have known this is the only section of the Old Testament quoted in all four gospels — inaugurating the incarnation of Christ in each. 

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope.”

Social activism can raise awareness. Governance can eliminate impunity and protect the vulnerable. Only Christ is sufficient to change the hearts of men, bring justice to the wicked, and heal the broken.

Daily Reading
Ruth 3-4 (Listen – 6:22)
Acts 28 (Listen – 4:56)