Power and Feeling Powerless

We like the feeling that our God is a powerful God.  The God who thunders at Job:  “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?… On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone….?” is a creator God who controls thunder and lightning and storms, and who is in complete contrast to the puny power of human beings:  “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?… Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?”  For all of his pride in wanting to contend with God out of a sense of his own righteousness, Job must feel pretty insignificant and powerless when railed at like this.

Yes, we do like to raise our voices in hymns like “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” and “God the Omnipotent!”.  Yet, there are problems with this approach.  You know the famous conundrum:  “If God is all-powerful, could God make a mountain that God couldn’t lift?”  The usual answer offered to this question is that God wouldn’t want to, but that isn’t very satisfactory and really kind of begs the question.  Moreover, there is ambivalence in our appreciation of the power of God when we think about Jesus in relation to God and sing hymns like “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild” or think about Jesus’ powerlessness in front of Pilate and especially on the cross.  Where was the power of God on Calvary?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of the “powerlessness of God”, as reflected mainly in the crucifixion – the actual inability of God to deal with the world on its own power terms but rather to let powerlessness be its own authenticating force within the world.  For Bonhoeffer Jesus lived out this powerlessness consistently, from an incredibly humble birth through crucifixion and even resurrection – which is not the end result of a power play but simply a sign that the powerlessness of God has more ultimate authority than the power of humans like a Roman army.

Part of our need to believe in a powerful God is our own sense of powerlessness in the face of so much that society has to throw at us.  Yet, even here there is ambiguity.  We are a part of the most powerful nation that has ever existed on earth.  We stand in awe of forms of human power:  government, the military-industrial complex, the media.  Even you and I, relative to many others, have power to affect many lives in our jobs, our families, our communities.  But we are also frustrated by an increasing sense of powerlessness – especially in the face of this economic recession when, it seems, impersonal forces buffet us from all sides, or when terrorism strikes seemingly from nowhere.  Someone has estimated that the average person spends 80-90% of his or her time responding to demands from others, rather than living out of consciously chosen personal alternatives.  We are being stripped of social power and power over control of ourselves precisely at a time when power forces in the larger society are increasing.  And so our frustration levels grow and grow.

In the fourth chapter of Mark Jesus has been teaching both the disciples and the crowd through parables.  He’s told the parable of the sower, the parable of the growing seed, the parable of the mustard seed – tiny, insignificant things that nevertheless have the power of faith behind them — and he even becomes frustrated enough about their lack of understanding that he instructs them in the purpose and use of the parables.  But now enough teaching.  It’s late in the day, and so he tells the disciples to leave the crowd, get in a boat, and row to the other side of the lake.  (As a sidebar, Mark adds strange little details:  “Other boats were with him.”  So?  I suppose this is meant to indicate that some of the crowd decided to go along with them, and thus they were there to witness what Jesus could do.  Or again:  “they [the disciples] took him with them in the boat, just as he was.”  What can Mark mean?  Was Jesus extra tired?  As Kate Layzer says, “This sentence makes Jesus the mighty healer, the rebuker of demons and hypocrites, seem suddenly vulnerable, especially when he then falls asleep, exhausted, in the stern of the boat.  I picture him crumpled there, his head on his arms, rocked by the waves, with no one but the disciples around him for protection.  I’m anything but reassured.”)

Because, of course, the power of the elements is about to exert itself in the form of a great windstorm.  But Jesus, evidently tired out from the strenuous teaching of the day, is quietly asleep, even though his disciples are scared to death.  It seems to them that he doesn’t care for them or their predicament.  When he does awaken, he is able to exert his power over the storm, saying, “Peace!  Be still!”  And the wind ceases.

That’s a strange thing to say to a storm.  But it gets stranger still.  In a sermon on this passage Anne Le Bas, a priest in the Church of England, says this:

I wondered what Jesus actually meant by those words “Peace, be still” which he addressed to the storm.  And when I looked up the Greek, I discovered that he didn’t actually say “Peace, be still” at all. The Greek is “Siopa, pefimoso.” …. [Siopa] means “shh — be quiet.”  And pefimoso comes from the word for “muzzle” — it means to “shut the mouth.”  So what Jesus actually says to the storm is “Shh — put a sock in it.”  He is literally telling it to be quiet — to stop shouting. It isn’t the storm that is the main problem. It is what the storm is saying to the disciples — the message it is giving them — and what they are understanding through it.

What they are understanding is that it is their fear that is driving them.  Fear has given the storm power over them.  And so Jesus is saying, “You don’t have to be afraid.  No matter what this storm may do, ultimately it has no power to harm you.”  Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf puts it this way:  “Jesus quiets the voice of the storm — the voice of fear, the voice of inadequacy, or guilt or abandonment — so that the disciples can hear his voice, reminding them of what has been true all along:  they are not alone; they have been and will forever be held in the loving hand of God — a God who sometimes calms the storms and sometimes gives us strength to grow through the storms.”

I don’t know if any of you have been caught in a small boat when a storm comes up and you start to believe that you really could capsize.  Just hearing it described, though, makes you feel the kind of panic that must have been welling up within the disciples.  Here’s a similar kind of experience that may be a bit more familiar:  many if not most of us have probably had an incident of falling asleep behind the wheel and waking up with a jolt of panic as you see the car about to drift across two lanes.  Or, how about being caught in a blackout (like Ann and I were back in New York in 1977) when without electricity and the normal traffic lights to help you get to your destination you truly feel what it means to be without power – both literally and in terms of your own ability to control things.

Such experiences make us realize our fragility and a true sense of powerlessness.  No wonder we want the calming voice of Jesus over the storm, the sense that God does care and has the power to affect change in our lives.

However, as Candace Chellew-Hodge notes:  “Humans have distorted the meaning of power, believing it to be power over others through use of force.  We believe we are powerful when we dominate others.  We believe we are powerful when others are cowering at our feet, or at least acquiescing to our wishes.  God’s definition of power is very different. It is power with – a cooperative power that does no harm to anyone, but brings peace to all who experience it.  God’s power does not dominate, but invites us into community – to be part of God’s kingdom.

“We, like the disciples, are hampered by fear that keeps us from fully taking part in that kingdom.  Our fear keeps us from fully appreciating the cooperative power that God calls us to embody in the world.  We often feel like the disciples, afraid of the storms of life.  We look around and we feel like Jesus must be asleep at the wheel as problems of life buffet us from all sides – war, famine, genocide, personal financial ruin, broken relationships, and shattered dreams.  Who can blame us for feeling afraid that our lives will be snuffed out at any moment?”

I really like that idea that God’s power is a “power with” – “a cooperative power…[that] invites us into community.”  That’s a wholly different way to think about what it means for God to be all-powerful – it is the kind of power that overcomes all that the world has to throw at us – even crucifixion – because we are in community one with another and all of us with God.  It is the kind of power that leads to love.  This is why John can say – with all of the images of a powerful God around him – that “God is love”.

Rollo May, in his book Power and Innocence, says, “That power and love are interrelated is proved most of all by the fact that one must have power within oneself to be able to love in the first place.”  The kind of “power within” that Rollo May is talking about is the power of self-esteem and self-affirmation.  These are what Jesus had by being so calm as to fall asleep while a storm was raging.  It is what Jesus wishes for his disciples by telling the storm to “shut up” because it was giving them a wrong message.  It is what happens to us when we truly accept Jesus’ admonition to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves”.  We are not to be just innocents abroad in the world, but rather we need to know in our core being the realities of a world that throws all kinds of storms at us – what Paul refers to later on in the Bible as “principalities and powers”.  We can stand in the face of everything – even death, as did Jesus – when we know the God who is love, the God who is power.

Jewish philosopher Martin Buber poetically demonstrates the kind of paradoxical tension that exists between love and power when he says:

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.

Storms are buffeting us today – our individual storms, storms in the church and in our denomination, economic storms, storms in the world at large.  The power of these storms can seem enormous.  But what this story in the Gospel of Mark (and, by the way, it was considered important enough that it is included in all four of the gospels) is telling us is at the heart of the Good News for us today:  “Do not be afraid.”  This is the first and the last word of the gospel.  It is the word the angels speak to the terrified shepherds and the word spoken at the tomb when the women discover it empty.  “Do not be afraid.”  Not because there are not fearsome things on the sea of our days, not because there are no storms, fierce winds, or waves, but rather, because God is with us – a God of love and of power. We are not alone in the boat.

Since God loves us we, too, can continue to “love powerfully” – “mighty in contradiction” though that may be.  May our powerlessness – our ability to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” – call upon the power of Jesus as he stills the storm and give us faith to know that this power at the heart of the universe, at the heart of all reality, vibrates with love and goodness, and, in the end, will allow all things to unfold in justice and peace, making all things right, including our immeasurably precious lives.

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

Power and Feeling Powerless (Job 38:1-7, Job 38:16-18, Mark 4:35-41)

Job 38:1-7

38:1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (ESV)

Job 38:16-18

16 “Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this. (ESV)

Mark 4:35-41

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (ESV)

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