What does power look
like? It’s a fair question, given the fact that this is Christ the King Sunday.
You talk about kings, you naturally start thinking about power. So what does
power look like?
If you’re a political
animal, you have seen lots of symbols of power, from the marksman with the
rocket-propelled grenade launcher atop the White House protecting the president
and his staff, to the flurry of aides who surround congressional leaders and
feed them papers with bullet points on all manner of topics, to the
sleek lobbyists who wear two thousand dollar suits and wine and dine other
powerful people to persuade them to support their issue.
If you’re in the
money business, symbols of power might be the ability to move markets by directing brokers to push a
particular stock, or it might take a different form; you might be head of the
Federal Reserve and control interest rates.
If you’re in the military,
power is related to rank, to the role you fulfill in the hierarchy. If you’re a
general, people snap to attention when you enter a room. You might have a
driver, you might command thousands of troops, you might influence the President
to follow a particular path in a military conflict.
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| General MacArthur in Manila |
Our children even
understand power in the schools. When the teacher says you have to do
something, you had better do it, or there will be consequences. If the bully on
the schoolyard demands your lunch money, you had best hand it over. If one of
the mean girls in middle school decides you are a nerd, she can marshal her
cohorts to tease you mercilessly.
Power. We hear the
word, and a plethora of images like these pop up in our minds. I’d note that many
of these are not positive, because most of us fear power. Power has been used
against us in the past, and we worry that we will be its victim again.
If you’re a fan of
the television program “Scandal,” you can see the misuse of power at the
highest levels every week, and you can cheer on the beautiful but stressed-out
Olivia Pope as she battles against the powerful forces who block her
relationship with President Grant. Granted, it is an illicit relationship, but
powerful people get to have what they want, so what’s a little marriage,
particularly to an unpleasant woman like Mellie Grant, to get in the way of
true love between the beautiful and the powerful?
Power can be
political, financial, defined by social class, enforced by physical strength or
strength of office. It can be coercive in nature or can simply be influence. It
can be directly used, or it can be delegated. Just think of the phrase “Wait
till you father gets home…” Now that’s power.
But let’s be clear
on one thing: when you think of kings, you cannot help but think of power.
In the Old Testament
reading from Jeremiah this morning, we hear about power, don’t we? Jeremiah
describes a fierce king out of the line of David who will reclaim all that
which is his, all of the scattered flock of the nation of Israel. He is the
Lord, a king of righteousness.
What does the
picture look like? A tall, muscular, avenging king – maybe you’d cast Matthew
McConaughey if it were a movie – maybe riding on a white stallion – no wait,
there weren’t stallions back then in the desert – no, how about a camel? – not regal
enough…carried on a litter – no, makes him look weak…
No, this King is
striding in long, strong strides across the hot desert, not even sweating, and
the soldiers he commands strive to keep up his fierce pace. Yes, now we’re
talking about a King! Now we’re talking about power. And this was precisely the
kind of king that the people of Israel had been praying for when Jesus came on
the scene. A king of righteousness who actually looked the part.
But looks aren’t
everything, as our grandmothers said. And powerful people don’t always look so
impressive. Think of short little Napoleon Bonaparte. Think of dweeby Mark Zuckerberg,
the founder of FaceBook. Think of Senator Mitch McConnell. Think of Janet
Yellen, who is about to replace Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve.
She looks like your grandma, only without the kitchen apron.
And then we have
Jesus.
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| Warner Sallman's "The Head of Christ" 1941 |
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| Archeologists rendering of what Jesus probably looked like. |
A country boy, out
of the Galilee, so he speaks with that Galilean accent, just like our folks
from the hills and the hollers. Despite all the images of him we’ve seen
painted and sculpted by artists, he’s probably about average height for those
people in that time, maybe 5 foot 5 or so. He’s probably got fairly dark skin
and curly hair. So much for the famous glamor shot portrait of Jesus with
sandy hair and blue eyes by Warner Sallman in the 1940s, which looks remarkably
like Matthew McConaughey. In the Gospel of Matthew, when the soldiers come for
Jesus, they have to ask which one he is, because he looks pretty much the same
as all his disciples. An average looking guy.
Not Matthew
McConaughey. Sorry, Matthew McConaughey fans out there.
Well, okay. He doesn’t
look powerful. But he must convey his power in some way, because he’s a king
and kings are powerful. Jeremiah has described him as righteous and fearful,
able to turn the tide of history.
Well, Jeremiah has
one vision, and the gospel writer Luke has something very different. Dead man
walking, or at least a soon to be dead man hanging on a cross. Beaten,
bleeding, gasping a bit for breath, since when one is crucified, one dies by
asphyxiation. The arms are extended and are supporting the body’s weight and
thus one cannot take a deep breath. When you no longer have the strength to
lift yourself up so you can take a breath, you die. And it takes a while. And
it is considered the death sentence of the ignominious, not the powerful. A
king would not be crucified.
But this king was.
He was hanging
there, alongside of a couple of petty thieves. Having a brief, gasping
conversation.
Not much power in
that image, eh? And yet… What does Jesus say? “Today you will be with me in
paradise.” Not the sort of promise a failed leader would make. Not the sort of
promise that someone who was powerless could make. No, it is the certain
statement of one who has the power to make it happen. A king. The king.
There’s power there,
in an improbable king, one who looks nothing like Matthew McConaughey. One who
looks more like an amateur who went five rounds in the ring with Muhammed Ali.
One who is on the verge of death.
And yet, a king. And
the key is power. Not the power of the world, of generals and lobbyists and
schoolyard bullies. A different kind of power.
If we think of it in
terms of directions, this is not the kind of power where you look up to see it,
turning your face toward the majesty of the king on the throne high above you. No,
for this kind of power you look down to someone who is beneath you, or so you
think. Someone who is, as Isaiah said, despised, rejected. Someone who seems as
unkingly as you can possibly imagined.
And yet there is
something in this man that causes you to think, “Here is righteousness. Here is
kingship. Here is power.”
It is the power of
those who pursue that which is right, that which is of God, regardless of what
the world thinks of them. It is the power that is not a result of lineage or
election or money or fame, but of a pure heart and of love. It is the power
that was invested in leaders like Nelson Mandela, like Dorothy Day, like
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is the power of the weak made strong through God
working within them. It is the reign of Christ lived out once again in ordinary
people, seemingly without any power as the world would judge them, who worked against entrenched systems of
worldly power with no weapon except the virtues, the moral values that they
learned from Christ.
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| Christ Pantokrator from the Hagia Sofia |
Christ is King. He
is a powerful mighty King. But he redefines power in his reign not for personal
gain but for the common good. He asks us to use his lessons of power to
continue to seek the common good. Take on his power, the power of love, the
power of justice, the power of mercy, and bring his reign to fruition in this
time and this place, in ways both dramatic and ordinary, every day. Use his
power as it was meant to be used, not in aspiring to earthly glory but to bring
heavenly glory to the earth. Celebrate his kingship by living as he asked us to
live, using his power to help the powerless.
Amen.
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