“. . . we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Romans 8:37
Growing up in Southern California meant that I was exposed early to the great rivalry between USC and UCLA. A member of my father’s Lion’s Club who was a USC alumnus would organize a bus trip annually to take club members and their families down to LA to attend the USC Homecoming game. We would board the bus that morning and an hour later were on the USC campus for the pre-game picnic. Then a little after noon we would walk over to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to watch the game.
Thinking back on those times and the impression those games made on me, it is rather surprising that I ended up attending and graduating from UCLA. I have to say my nine year old soul was stirred by both the athletic prowess of OJ Simpson and the majestic entrances of Tommy Trojan riding into the Coliseum atop his white Andalusian horse Traveler. As the USC band masterfully played Alfred Newman’s composition “Conquest”, horse and rider would emerge from the tunnel and majestically prance around the track to that place in front of the SC cheering section. At just the right moment the music would hit its crescendo, Tommy would lift his sword, Traveler would rear up and the crowd would roar. UCLA’s guy in the bear suit clumsily dancing with the cheerleaders couldn’t hold a candle to this.
The emotions that this spectacle aroused are still accessible to me. Everything about that moment said one thing: “We are winners and we don’t settle for anything less than winning.” And to feel like you are a part of that victory, that you are on the side that has won and is going to keep on winning, is a heady thing.
What is interesting about Tommy Trojan is that the more appropriate name for him might be Ricky Roman. The accoutrements of the SC mascot are drawn not from ancient Troy, but ancient Rome. If Rome was anything it was an empire that knew itself to be the winners and they also knew how boast in and give witness to their achievement. They had pretty much conquered the world that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea, and they were moving out from there. They were Conquerors, they were the Champions, and woe to anyone who failed to apprehend and stand in awe of this fact.
This was the empire into which Jesus was born and the power that perfected the execution technique by which he died. This was the world in which the Apostle Paul gave witness to Jesus. This is where Paul preached the seemingly absurd Gospel that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, and that the Roman conquest pales into insignificance when exposed to the inextinguishable light of Christ. And this is why Paul makes the conclusion he does in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans that in Christ Jesus we are “more than conquerors.”
It’s tempting to hear in that phrase the message: You will one day put your foot on the neck of Rome. Or: One day you will be the winners and they’ll all be hanging on crosses. If we hear the phrase “more than conquerors” in this way we hear the proclamation that we are “uber-conquerors.” We’ll have more power than the most powerful example of power. But I think Paul is actually saying something quite different. As he concludes this great treatise on the meaning of the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus he is not saying get ready to gloat in your victory over Rome. Rather he is saying, get ready for the revelation of the truth that God’s power is based on and exercised in a way that is entirely different from expressions of human power. God’s power rests entirely on the foundation of eternal, steadfast and indomitable Love. What sang you into existence is what will preserve you for eternity and Jesus is the embodiment of that Love.
It's great to feel like winners. But at its core the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives witness to the idea that winning, as we have come to know it, is not God’s goal. God’s goal is wrapped up in words like relationship, redemption and reconciliation. And those things do not happen because someone overpowers another. Those things happen because of empathy, sacrifice and an extension of oneself in love.
Every knee will bend, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord not because he won, but because he chose to give up his rightful power and divine prerogative to pursue us in love and invite us to extend ourselves toward others in the same way. So, to be the recipient of this love and to share this love with others is indeed a matter of being much more than a conqueror. It is to be wrapped in the arms of our Creator and to rest in the truth that nothing has the power to shake us loose from this embrace.
David Rohrer
Ash Wednesday
2/22/2023