The Stronger One Has Come

When Christ enters the house we have learned to guard

“But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

— Luke 11:20

There is something terrible in this Gospel.

A man who could not speak is set free.

Christ casts out the demon.

The man’s tongue is loosed.

He speaks.

And those standing nearby do not rejoice.

They explain the miracle away.

Some say that Christ is in league with the demons. Others demand another sign.

The man standing before them is the sign.

They do not need another.

This is one of the darker possibilities of the human heart: not simply that we can fail to recognize grace, but that we can become so attached to the world as we understand it that when grace actually appears, we experience it as a threat.

The Fathers knew this well.

We imagine that we want God to come.

We pray for light.

We ask for freedom.

We speak of healing.

But often what we really want is for God to leave intact the world we have constructed and make it slightly more bearable.

Christ does not come to make captivity comfortable.

He comes to break it.

And this is why His presence can be frightening.

The House We Guard

“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace.”

There is a strange kind of peace in bondage.

The passions can become familiar. Resentment can become familiar. Fear can become familiar. The need to be admired, needed, vindicated, understood—these can become so woven into our identity that we no longer experience them as chains.

We experience them as ourselves.

The strong man guards the house.

And everything seems peaceful.

This is not the peace of Christ.

It is the peace of something that has never been challenged.

The Desert Fathers went into the wilderness precisely because they wanted the false peace disturbed.

They knew that when the noise falls away, another world becomes visible within us.

Anger.

Vainglory.

Lust.

Fear.

Judgment.

Memory of injuries.

The endless construction of imaginary conversations.

The desire to control what has not yet happened.

The need to become something.

The desert did not create these things.

It revealed them.

Abba Arsenius fled, kept silence, and sought stillness not because solitude was peaceful in itself, but because he wanted nothing between himself and God.

The silence exposed the house.

And once the house is exposed, the battle begins.

One Stronger

But Christianity is not finally the story of our battle against ourselves.

That would be unbearable.

The Gospel says something far greater.

“One stronger than he assails him and overcomes him.”

Christ enters the house.

This changes everything.

We spend enormous amounts of spiritual energy imagining that the Christian life depends upon our becoming strong enough to defeat what holds us.

The Fathers discovered the opposite.

Salvation begins when we discover that we are not the stronger one.

Christ is.

St. Silouan descended into the depths of his own weakness and learned not self-mastery but dependence upon God.

St. Sophrony would speak of the soul standing at the edge of the abyss without despair because Christ has descended further still.

St. Porphyrios continually drew people away from an obsessive struggle with darkness and toward love for Christ. Do not spend your life staring at the darkness. Turn toward the light.

The stronger One has come.

This is the heart of the Gospel.

Not:

Become strong enough.

But:

Let Him enter.

He Takes Away the Armor

Christ says that the stronger man “takes away his armor in which he trusted.”

Perhaps this is where the Gospel becomes most personal.

We have armor.

Our explanations.

Our plans.

Our reputations.

Our roles.

Our certainty about who we are.

Our certainty about what others think.

Even our religious identities can become armor.

We can hide inside the very things that once helped us find God.

The Fathers feared this.

A monk could hide behind his habit.

A priest behind his ministry.

A theologian behind his knowledge.

An ascetic behind his fasting.

A person wounded by another behind his righteousness.

None of these things is necessarily false.

But anything can become armor when we begin trusting it instead of God.

And sometimes the mercy of Christ appears in our lives precisely as the removal of what once made us feel secure.

A door closes.

A relationship changes.

A vocation takes a form we never expected.

Strength leaves the body.

Plans collapse.

The future becomes impossible to see.

Something by which we knew ourselves is taken away.

We call it loss.

Perhaps sometimes it is liberation.

Because the stronger One is taking away the armor in which we trusted.

A Kingdom Divided

“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste.”

We usually hear these words as an argument Christ makes against His accusers.

But they also describe the heart.

A divided heart cannot know peace.

One part of us wants God.

Another wants control.

One part wants surrender.

Another wants guarantees.

One part says, “Thy will be done.”

Another quietly adds, “provided I know beforehand what Thy will is going to cost me.”

This division exhausts us.

The spiritual life gradually gathers the scattered heart.

This is why the Jesus Prayer is so simple.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”

Again.

Again.

Again.

The mind wanders into yesterday.

Return.

It runs toward tomorrow.

Return.

It imagines what others think.

Return.

It begins constructing the future.

Return.

Not because thinking is evil.

Because the heart belongs somewhere.

The Name gathers it.

“He who does not gather with me scatters.”

Perhaps this is one of the deepest descriptions of prayer in the Gospel.

Christ gathers.

The demons scatter.

The passions scatter.

Fear scatters.

Fantasy scatters.

Resentment scatters.

The need to control scatters.

Christ gathers the human person back into one thing.

Himself.

The Finger of God

“If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Not someday.

Not after we have arranged our lives properly.

Not after every question has been answered.

The Kingdom has come upon you.

Here.

In this room.

In this body.

In this uncertainty.

In this person standing before you.

In the prayer you can barely say.

In the life you did not plan.

We are always tempted to imagine that the Kingdom lies just beyond the resolution of our present circumstances.

When this is settled.

When that burden is removed.

When I know where I belong.

When I understand what God is doing.

Then I will give myself completely to Him.

The desert says:

No.

God is here.

The Kingdom has already come near.

No Neutral Ground

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.”

These words are severe because love is severe.

Christ does not ask for a portion of the heart.

He asks for the heart.

The Fathers understood that there comes a point when compromise becomes impossible—not because we become harsh toward others, but because we can no longer endure division within ourselves.

The question becomes very simple.

What gathers me into Christ?

What scatters me away from Him?

Not:

What preserves my image?

What protects my future?

What keeps every possibility open?

What prevents others from misunderstanding me?

But:

Where is Christ?

And then remain there.

The answer may not reveal the future.

It may only reveal the next act of faithfulness.

Stay.

Forgive.

Be silent.

Speak the truth.

Care for the person before you.

Say the Prayer.

Do not judge.

Do not run ahead of grace.

Let tomorrow remain with God.

This is enough.

The stronger One has entered the house.

We do not need to defend ourselves from Him.

We do not need another sign.

We need only open the door and allow Him to take from us whatever keeps us divided.

Even the armor we once thought we could not live without.

Especially that.

Until there is nothing left to guard.

Nothing left to prove.

Nothing left to arrange.

Only Christ.

And the heart, gathered at last into one.