Power and Glory

sometimes I want the kingdom to look more flashy than it does

Photo by Kamran Abdullayev on Unsplash

I recently read David Brook’s sardonic essay on our use of the phrase, “I am so humbled…” Within minutes, as I perused Instagram, a post appeared of a pastor promoting his current book release, sharing reviews that were coming in (all positive and glowing) and a caption that read something to the effect of: I am so humbled by all these rave reviews.

In contrast, our book club met last night to discuss Graham Greene’s, The Power and the Glory. The novel centers around a “whisky priest,” who knows himself to be an utter moral failure (not the least because of his addiction to drink) but is gripped somehow by his calling to administer the sacraments, and in a deeper sense, to love people made in the image of God.

The priest’s journey is one that echoes the road to Calvary, but although he is a sort of Christ-figure in the story, he is far from exalted— the story is one that points to above all, the need for grace.

One of the participants in our book discussion pointed to a scene where the reader is hoping for a Big Redemptive Moment. The priest himself seems poised to see God do something miraculous, and for a suffering person to see God’s work in the world. But instead, life happens. The normal result of illness brings about the expected result of death, and a mother is bereaved of her child.

What our discussion pointed out however, was the small and seemingly humble act of the priest in staying with the mother and her child, even without the hoped-for miracle. Later in the story, you see hints that perhaps this is where grace was administered, that these humble encounters counted more than the priest realized.

I confessed to the group that this is an appealing idea to me, perhaps because I experience more of the Instead, Life Happens moments than the Big Redemption ones we look and long for.

But I confess, I would still be quick to do what David Brook’s calls out in his article (though of course, now I’ll be hyper aware of not doing it) because if my kids get into a good college, or if I ever get anything published, I can see myself trying to appear humble, while also wanting to shout my worth to the world. See, I AM doing something of value, and it is paying off.

What I want however, is not to need the humble brag, or the pseudo-affirmation that comes from it. Greene’s whisky priest is a helpful exploration of humility in the Christian life, and enlarges my imagination of what God’s kingdom in the here and now might look like. The title, The Power and the Glory comes from the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus ends with:

for Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory forever, amen.

Green’s novel explores where that power and glory show up in the world, and I am sure I am not alone in wanting the kingdom to manifest more power and more glory than I typically see. Is the temptation to exalt ourselves and our successes an inverted attempt to see the kingdom come? Like an impatient Saul who grows tired of waiting for the prophet Samuel to arrive, and rushes ahead with his own display of power and leadership. Sometimes it’s hard to sit in the Life Happens reality, and know that God is present and working there.

And yet, that is the sanctified work of the everyday saints, the ones who live in a weary world, but follow a King who has infiltrated it: to hope and pray for the kingdom, to put our hand to the plow, to not give up, or grow disheartened. To trust that our small acts matter to God, and that his grace is given in the cracks of life.

I leave you with this passage from a most excellent book that also imagines just what a subversive kingdom might look like…

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You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve… Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all support and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs— to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish… He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand… Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Uncle Screwtape; C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters