What Is Power For?
Amos 5:21-24; 2 Chronicles 9:3-8
January 16, 2011
It’s that weekend when we roll out the dream again. That one time a year when we dust off the most famous words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and hear pundits and politicians praise him as reporters speak in hushed and reverent tones of the “slain civil rights leader,” mostly neglecting to mention that he was, first and foremost, a preacher and a man concerned about the community of faith that is the church.
I could join my voice and quote the Dream speech, and talk about living in a nation where we are judged by the content of our characters rather than the characteristics of our bodies. We could measure our distance from that more perfect union in all kinds of ways, and, indeed, we could make the measure in terms of King’s framework of racism, militarism and poverty – the three great social evils that King named as eating away at the heart of that union.
And there would be nothing wrong with any of that. I have, in fact, done pretty much precisely that on this Sunday in other years, but this morning something else concerns me, and it was a central concern of King’s as well.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about power. What it is? Who has it? What is it for? I don’t think we can live faithful lives without getting this question right. All of our lives involve relationships with power, so how can we be faithful in our use of power those relationships?
To begin with this morning, let’s step back and talk about power in general terms. When you hear the word “power” what comes to mind?
In community organizing circles, power is defined like this: organized people and organized money.
That’s a useful description, but I think there’s a more basic definition, more physical, if you will. Power is simply the ability to make something move. In reflecting on power, Dr. King said, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.” He went on to say, in the realm of human relationships, power “is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.”
It’s an interesting phenomenon in many white liberal church contexts that when the subject of conversation turns to power people begin to squirm.
So my second question this morning is this: how do you feel about power?
I believe people get uncomfortable talking about power because all of us, in every social relationship in our lives, are constantly engaged in negotiations over power. Who has it and how shall it be exercised? It’s true in offices, whether your office sits on Capitol Hill or some location far less lofty – that is to say, less powerful. It’s true in classrooms. It’s true in church. It’s true in relationships and in families.
We are almost always engaged in negotiations – often in struggles – over power.
Frederick Douglas famously remarked, “power concedes nothing without a fight; it never did and it never will.”
In political, economic and social relationships in general and in most personal relationships, as well, I would agree with Douglas, because in those contexts the struggle for power is a zero-sum game. Power comes in limited supply, so sharing it means one party’s power is going to be reduced. Think about your most recent disagreement with a loved one. Where was power at stake? It almost certainly was.
But Dr. King had some instructive words for us about power.
“What is needed,” he said, “is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
King’s words help me to answer my own title question, “what is power for?”
When the queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, she witnessed God’s answer to that question. She looked around at all that Solomon had built, she observed that state of the people, and she said, “God made you king – God gave you power – so that you can do justice.”
Using Dr. King’s standard, then, God gave the king power to correct everything in his world that stood against love.
As a church, we are right to question power because it is so often abused. However, we abdicate our own responsibilities when we pretend that we are somehow above power. When we imagine that we’ll get our hands dirty by engaging power, we are refusing to engage a fundamental question of our faith, indeed, a foundational practice of our faith.
Moreover, I’d argue that we are denying something essential about power, and about God; something essential that ought to turn our understanding of power on its head.
You see, we struggle and fight over power because we believe it is in limited supply. But the reality is, authentic power is a gift from God, and thus its supply is without end.
Let me put that just a bit differently. God gives us authentic power – that is to say, the capacity and strength to change those things in personal, social, economic and political relationships that stand against love. That is a gift from God, because God is love, and God desires transformation of all relationships that are marked and debased by impediments to God’s own self.
God gives us power that we might find our way to God in every imaginable context and relationship.
In the earliest days of the Christian experience, the church, the community of faith, was sometimes symbolized as a boat. Joan Gray, former moderator of the General Assembly, is fond of pointing out that the church at its best is a sailboat, powered by the wind of the Holy Spirit. At our most dysfunctional, we’re a rowboat, powered only by human hands, never certain of our direction. As the church, then, at our best, we open our sails to catch the power of God and move with it into the world.
We do so not for our own sakes, nor for the sake of a good show on Sunday morning. Our passage from Amos surely underscores that truth.
No, we cast off and spread our sails to move with the Holy Spirit that justice might roll down and righteousness might flow forth.
If power is about God’s purposes for justice, then your calling as a Christian comes down to this: open your life to God’s power so that you might be used, in all of your relationships, in every context, to remove everything that stands against love. Live so God can use you, anytime and anywhere. Amen.
January 16, 2011
It’s that weekend when we roll out the dream again. That one time a year when we dust off the most famous words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and hear pundits and politicians praise him as reporters speak in hushed and reverent tones of the “slain civil rights leader,” mostly neglecting to mention that he was, first and foremost, a preacher and a man concerned about the community of faith that is the church.
I could join my voice and quote the Dream speech, and talk about living in a nation where we are judged by the content of our characters rather than the characteristics of our bodies. We could measure our distance from that more perfect union in all kinds of ways, and, indeed, we could make the measure in terms of King’s framework of racism, militarism and poverty – the three great social evils that King named as eating away at the heart of that union.
And there would be nothing wrong with any of that. I have, in fact, done pretty much precisely that on this Sunday in other years, but this morning something else concerns me, and it was a central concern of King’s as well.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about power. What it is? Who has it? What is it for? I don’t think we can live faithful lives without getting this question right. All of our lives involve relationships with power, so how can we be faithful in our use of power those relationships?
To begin with this morning, let’s step back and talk about power in general terms. When you hear the word “power” what comes to mind?
In community organizing circles, power is defined like this: organized people and organized money.
That’s a useful description, but I think there’s a more basic definition, more physical, if you will. Power is simply the ability to make something move. In reflecting on power, Dr. King said, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.” He went on to say, in the realm of human relationships, power “is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.”
It’s an interesting phenomenon in many white liberal church contexts that when the subject of conversation turns to power people begin to squirm.
So my second question this morning is this: how do you feel about power?
I believe people get uncomfortable talking about power because all of us, in every social relationship in our lives, are constantly engaged in negotiations over power. Who has it and how shall it be exercised? It’s true in offices, whether your office sits on Capitol Hill or some location far less lofty – that is to say, less powerful. It’s true in classrooms. It’s true in church. It’s true in relationships and in families.
We are almost always engaged in negotiations – often in struggles – over power.
Frederick Douglas famously remarked, “power concedes nothing without a fight; it never did and it never will.”
In political, economic and social relationships in general and in most personal relationships, as well, I would agree with Douglas, because in those contexts the struggle for power is a zero-sum game. Power comes in limited supply, so sharing it means one party’s power is going to be reduced. Think about your most recent disagreement with a loved one. Where was power at stake? It almost certainly was.
But Dr. King had some instructive words for us about power.
“What is needed,” he said, “is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
King’s words help me to answer my own title question, “what is power for?”
When the queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, she witnessed God’s answer to that question. She looked around at all that Solomon had built, she observed that state of the people, and she said, “God made you king – God gave you power – so that you can do justice.”
Using Dr. King’s standard, then, God gave the king power to correct everything in his world that stood against love.
As a church, we are right to question power because it is so often abused. However, we abdicate our own responsibilities when we pretend that we are somehow above power. When we imagine that we’ll get our hands dirty by engaging power, we are refusing to engage a fundamental question of our faith, indeed, a foundational practice of our faith.
Moreover, I’d argue that we are denying something essential about power, and about God; something essential that ought to turn our understanding of power on its head.
You see, we struggle and fight over power because we believe it is in limited supply. But the reality is, authentic power is a gift from God, and thus its supply is without end.
Let me put that just a bit differently. God gives us authentic power – that is to say, the capacity and strength to change those things in personal, social, economic and political relationships that stand against love. That is a gift from God, because God is love, and God desires transformation of all relationships that are marked and debased by impediments to God’s own self.
God gives us power that we might find our way to God in every imaginable context and relationship.
In the earliest days of the Christian experience, the church, the community of faith, was sometimes symbolized as a boat. Joan Gray, former moderator of the General Assembly, is fond of pointing out that the church at its best is a sailboat, powered by the wind of the Holy Spirit. At our most dysfunctional, we’re a rowboat, powered only by human hands, never certain of our direction. As the church, then, at our best, we open our sails to catch the power of God and move with it into the world.
We do so not for our own sakes, nor for the sake of a good show on Sunday morning. Our passage from Amos surely underscores that truth.
No, we cast off and spread our sails to move with the Holy Spirit that justice might roll down and righteousness might flow forth.
If power is about God’s purposes for justice, then your calling as a Christian comes down to this: open your life to God’s power so that you might be used, in all of your relationships, in every context, to remove everything that stands against love. Live so God can use you, anytime and anywhere. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
1:33 PM
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