POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Scriptures: Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45
Mark really seems to have this thing about clout and control, doesn’t he, in these passages we’ve been reading. Last week in chapter nine the issue was which of the disciples would be the greatest, and Jesus gently admonishes them by lifting up a little child and saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” – thereby pointing out to them that greatness is only to be found with God. Now, in the very next chapter here come two of his favorite disciples with this puffed up request – let us sit on your right and left hand when you come into your glory. It’s a bit like imagining a heavenly banquet with an all-powerful host whose decision about who will be on his right hand and on his left will give them all kinds of cachet and prominence and…..power.
Ah, power. To hold sway and authority over others. It’s a real aphrodisiac, isn’t it, this sense that I can control what happens to others. Nearly every one of us feels this impulse at one time or another – from the desire to have the strength to beat up the schoolyard bully, to the hope that I can rise to a position of influence in my company, to the itch to run for public office, to wanting to have the ability just to lord it over another who is making my life miserable.
We all know the old cliché “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. But there is truth here. Just last night Ann and I rented the old Broderick Crawford version of “All the King’s Men”, where Willy Stark derives his power from the people but then turns it into what is almost an absolute evil when he becomes governor.
So, it doesn’t surprise us very much when James and John approach Jesus with this rather insidious request. If we want to get a full mental picture of the situation, perhaps we can see the brothers as waiting, biding their time to ask Jesus this question. They are really wrapped up in what they want to get Jesus to do for them, and they put it to him about as bluntly as you can -- so interested in what they want to ask of Jesus that they have failed to listen to what he’s been saying. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you . . . Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory”.
What they had in mind, I suppose, was some earthly or heavenly palace, a throne, a couple of extra scepters – but most importantly what they wanted was a great deal of authority where they would rule as benevolent yet firm co-leaders with their Lord. Well, after all, who wouldn’t want to be co-leader with the Christ as he comes into his heavenly realm?
But Jesus, of course, as he usually does, turns the tables on James and John and their request. Remember that all of this is happening in the context of Jesus thinking about what lies ahead and the death he will have to suffer. So, while James and John are thinking of the glory that comes along with sitting on the right and left hand of Jesus, he is thinking about the two that will be on his right and left on that lonely hill of Golgotha. That’s not the kind of glory James and John were thinking of when they asked Jesus for a favor. Jesus asked them if they could drink that cup, meaning the cup of suffering; they said of course they could drink that cup, meaning the cup of glory. You get the feeling, don’t you, that it’s three people talking right past one another.
As some of you know, I grew up as a Methodist in Southern Indiana. One of the great Methodist hymns that we used to sing in youth camp all the time, and that was quite a favorite of mine, was “Are Ye Able” – and it’s still in the most recent edition of the United Methodist Hymnal. “’Are ye able,’ said the Master, ‘to be crucified with me?’ ‘Yea,’ the sturdy dreamers answer, ‘to the death we follow thee.’” And then in the chorus it’s us – you and me – who are responding: “Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee divine.” It sounds so easy when it’s put to that kind of lilting tune, when the disciples are referred to as “sturdy dreamers”, and when we’re giving our spirits to the Lord like that in order to be remolded. But in the context of this encounter between Jesus and the two disciples, the prospect of going with Jesus all the way to the cross is quite a bit more daunting. When we ask Jesus to come and fill our cups, as sung so beautifully by Gina and the choir just now, we may be asking for our spiritual thirst to be quenched, but we also need to be aware how much of what Jesus is offering us is the cup of suffering.
Throughout his time on earth Jesus dealt with the issue of power and, correspondingly, the impact of powerlessness. Christianity has continued to be perplexed by this paradox in all the centuries since. We sing of “the almighty power of God”, while yet another hymn speaks of “Gentle Jesus meek and mild”. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written about the “powerlessness of God”, which Bonhoeffer finds to be present in the crucifixion – demonstrating how God does not deal with the world on its own power terms but rather lets powerlessness be its own authenticating force in the world. Another way of saying “powerlessness” is “servanthood”, and Jesus lived out this powerlessness – this sense of being a servant -- consistently – from his extremely humble birth, to all that he did for others, through crucifixion, and even by his resurrection, which is not the end result of a power play but simply (yet profoundly) a sign that the powerlessness of God has more ultimate authority than the power of human beings. On the other hand, we have the theological realities of creation and redemption, which testify to the power of God over the physical world and the lives of individual human beings. So, we are faced with the ambiguity – even the paradox – of power and powerlessness, even within the very nature of God.
And so the church has reflected this paradox. Ever since Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Holy Roman Empire early in the 4th century, the church has had to deal with what it means to be part of the power structure. In France, for example, it was considered one of the three estates that made up the body politic. In our own time in America we have seen the Christian church, as expressed in mainstream Protestant denominations primarily, go from a place of power and prestige in the Eisenhower 50’s to a period of decline throughout the last half of the 20th century to a problematic position in terms of its place in society as we move into the 21st century. In many ways it is better for the health of the church not to be seen as having power and authority in terms of being a more authentic witness within the world.
Individuals in the church – especially clergy – have not been immune from the seduction of power. Going back well before the time of Christ there has been the power of the priesthood, as clergy have been heralded as authority figures and have often wielded their authority sometimes in unsavory ways – such as Father Coughlin back in the 1930’s or the more recent sexual abuse scandals. At a personal level I can remember being stopped by a policeman when driving too fast, and upon telling him that I was a minister being let off with a warning (I’m not sure such a tactic would work that well today!). Having that kind of influence really does get to be a heady experience, and so it’s not surprising that so many ministers and priests and rabbis and imams get their egos inflated all out of proportion to what’s appropriate.
Jesus knew quite well what that feeling of influence was like. The temptation stories are all about what it would be like to wield power over people and over nature. The author of the book of Hebrews imagines Jesus as a high priest, “according to the order of Melchizedek”, who is in charge “of things pertaining to God”. Yet, such authority must be handled with gentleness and sacrifice and be exercised only when called by God. As the author of Hebrews puts it: “So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son…..’”
When God calls us as sons and daughters it is to carry out that paradoxical charge to be “wise as serpents but harmless as doves”. That means being aware of when and how power must be exercised and the right ways to do so, but also to recognize that innocence -- God’s powerlessness – must also be a part of our dealings with the world.
Do you remember the Herman Melville novella Billy Budd? Billy is presented by Melville as a true innocent and a peacemaker among rough sailors. However, he has a stuttering problem that sometimes causes him to freeze up when trying to speak. Aboard His Majesty’s Ship the Indomitable, Billy incurs the wrath of master-at-arms John Claggart, who cannot stand Billy’s innocence and who thus accuses him of mutiny. Billy’s speech impediment won’t let him defend himself and in his frustration he lashes out a single blow that kills Claggart. Captain Vere, though completely sympathetic to Billy and believing him innocent of mutiny, convinces a drumhead court that allegiance to the Articles of War regulations is a higher duty than sympathy for the motivation behind Billy’s act. So Billy is hung from the yardarm; his final words are, “God bless Captain Vere!”.
Billy Budd is about as clear a depiction as we have in literature of innocence and powerlessness. John Claggart is a clear representation of evil and the tyrannizing effects of too much power. And so we – you and I -- don’t really identify with either of them. We do identify with Captain Vere, though, who must struggle with conflicting views of where justice lies and with what is the truly moral step to take in this situation. I think that Billy’s line, “God bless Captain Vere!”, is not just a sentimentalized form of “Father forgive them…”, but rather a recognition – maybe for the first time in Billy’s young life – of the true complexities and paradoxes involved in making decisions in the face of power and powerlessness.
We, too, are aware of those complexities and paradoxes. We belong to the most powerful nation that has ever existed on earth. We are constantly made to feel the power of government or of the media or of our boss or of family members who have some hold over us. Even you and I, relative to others, have power to affect many lives in our jobs, our families, our communities, our church. And yet increasingly we are frustrated by our awareness of powerlessness – in the face of a never-ending war in Iraq, in our inability to change obviously unjust situations, in our feelings toward our children as they begin to rebel, in our capability to make fundamental changes in ourselves – even in such simple matters as diet and exercise.
So, socially, personally, and religiously we live within the paradoxical tension of power and powerlessness. How can we turn this into a creative tension?
First, by authentic communication – what Martin Buber calls “genuine dialogue”. Psychologist Rollo May puts it this way: “When an age is in the throes of profound transition, the first thing to disintegrate is the language. This…leads directly to the upsurge of violence….. Violence and communication are mutually exclusive. Put simply, you cannot talk with someone as long as he is your enemy, and if you can talk with him he ceases to be your enemy.” Billy Budd’s inability to talk and thus his lashing out with violence illustrates May’s point in the most dramatic way possible.
At another level of how authentic communication works in human relationships, recall Henry Higgins’ words about Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”: “What could matter more than to take a human being and change her into a completely different human being simply by changing the way she speaks.” Authentic communication changes the power structures and the forms of human interrelationships. It means more authentic listening as we hear more of what others truly want to tell us about themselves. Such listening and communicating give a truer meaning to that old phrase from the 60s “power to the people”, for in this kind of relatedness we discover our power to be people – the kind of people God wants for us to be. And this then becomes what Christian community is all about, for community becomes defined as a place where free – that is, authentic – communication takes place.
It is possible to have authentic power. There is the power of self-assertion and self-affirmation. It is also possible to have authentic power societally when we make real an ideal such as “all persons are created equal”. But it is equally important to recognize authentic powerlessness by building upon that paradoxical Biblical command to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves”. This is what Jesus meant by telling James and John, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…..” And by accepting both power and powerlessness – that is, servanthood -- into our lives, we begin to live into love.
Rollo May, once again, has said, “That power and love are interrelated is proved most of all by the fact the one must have power within oneself to be able to love in the first place.” And Martin Buber, poetically, moves us toward the dialectical tension between power and love:
We cannot avoid
Using power.
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world.
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.
Power – the power to be, the power to communicate as equals – this is our birthright. Authentic power is necessary for love. But so is authentic powerlessness. Christ on the cross is a symbol of genuine powerlessness, as captured in James Russell Lowell’s line “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne”. The real love communicated by Billy Budd’s “God bless Captain Vere!” comes out of this ultimate divesting of power. Authentic powerlessness is necessary for love.
So, let us continue to seek to “love powerfully” – “mighty in contradiction” though that may be – as we continue to make our way among the powerful…and the powerless…of our own worlds.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
October 22, 2006