July 12, 2009
The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A MATTER OF POWER
Mark 6:14-29

Making It is the title of a book, written about 40 years ago, by Norman Podhoretz. In the preface to his book, Podhoretz writes:

Let me introduce myself. I am a man who, at the precocious age of 35 experienced an astonishing revelation: it is better to be a success than a failure! Having been penetrated by this great truth, my mind was now open for the first time to a series of corollary perceptions: Money (I now saw) was important (no one, of course, had seen this before). Power was desirable. It was better to give orders than to take them. Fame (how courageous of me not to flinch) was unqualifiedly delicious!

Podhoretz goes on to say that it took him until he was 35 to make these discoveries because he was caught, as many of us may be, in the contradiction between the American Gospel of success and the biblical Gospel of service. He resolved the contradiction, obviously, by coming out four-square for success -- unashamed, unapologetic, unexamined success. His book, as one reviewer put it, is a “witty if not always wise hymn to naked ambition.”

Norman Podhoretz came to discover that he loved power, and that he wanted as much as he could get.

From a Christian point of view, we might say that power gives us a sense of control, and even a sense of what it might be like to be God. After all, don’t most people tend to describe God in terms of omnipotence, absolute power? In this view, to be God means to be able to do anything you want. How typical of us to define divinity in terms of power – the ability to do anything we want!

Of course, we are reminded every day in many ways that we are not all-powerful. The Bible says that we can’t, by our own power, add an inch to our stature. Paul famously complained that “the good I want to do, I don’t.” Exacerbating all this is the fact that we are post-modern people, inheritors of a world and a culture that has come into being, for the most part, through power. Through science, technology, mass production, and progressive enlightenment we have incredible power over the world and our lives. Potency is the great promise of the modern world. So, the promise of the serpent to Adam and Eve in the garden is fulfilled in the modern world – you will be like God!

I’m thinking about power today because our Gospel lesson speaks of two different and opposing forms of power, embodied in two biblical characters – John the Baptist and Herod Antipas. All of the Gospels begin with John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, the prophetic figure who preaches in the wilderness, preparing the way for the advent of the Messiah. John baptized Jesus, and Jesus’ ministry began. Even after his brutal execution by Herod at the behest of a dancing girl, John’s influence continued to be powerful. Even well into the period of the early church, he continued to have followers who revered him more than they revered Jesus.

But his powerful voice is silenced by the political power of a ruler. John’s execution is only one way that we discover how Herod used power. He wanted his brother’s wife, and so he had an affair with her. He did it because he could, and John called him to account for it. It took a lot of courage for John to call this powerful, adulterous politician to account – it cost him his head. John the Baptist, a man driven by the power of the Word of God, is silenced by Herod Antipas, a man who wields the power of the sovereign Roman State.

Obviously, we are looking at two very different forms of power, and at two different ways of exercising power. Exercising power is something we all do. We choose which form or forms we will use, whether in the family, at work, at play, and at church.

So, let’s admit it, one of the things we come to church seeking is power. Some of us exercise a great deal of power in our daily lives -- in our work, in our marriages and families -- and we exercise it in the church, too. The question is, how do we exercise it, and to what purpose? What kind of stewards are we of the power we have, and of the power we seek?

Will our power be used for dominating others, fighting for our point of view, seeking to get the upper hand, to win at all costs? Sad to say, that is the kind of power some people come to church seeking to exercise. It may be because that is the way they exercise power in other areas of their lives. Or it may be that they have very little power elsewhere, so they are driven to exercise it in the church. No matter what the case, there are people who assume that the church is pretty much like the world-at-large, and that everybody, like Norman Podhoretz, is out to get everything they can get. Other people, thank God, have found ways to use power more constructively, seeking to cooperate, to facilitate, to seek the mind of Christ with others.

Remember when Jesus was in the wilderness after his baptism, when he went through that tremendous struggle with the temptations urged on him by the devil? Those were all temptations to use power in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons.

The devil said, “The people expect that when the Messiah comes, there will be no more hunger. Use your power to turn these stones into bread, and prove yourself to them.” The devil said, “The people expect that when the Messiah comes, he will be a great king who will conquer all the nations of the world. I can help you get that power.” The devil said, “If you are the Messiah, jump off the top of the Temple, and let the people see how God will send angels to save you.”

But Jesus’ whole ministry was a repudiation of these uses of power. His was the power of a true Son of God, and, in dying and rising again, in sending us his Spirit, he makes his kind of power available to us. It is the power to be – to be alive, open, loving, accepting, honest and free, both in sadness and in joy. It is the power to do -- to accomplish things with and for others we might otherwise have thought impossible. It is the power to become – to become truly human, the people God has always intended us to be. It is the power to come outside ourselves, to see the needs, pains, hopes, and dreams of others, and to be the agents of God’s healing, reconciling love.

Jesus says to us, “The values embodied in my life, death, and resurrection are the real values of this creation. If you are interested in ultimate power, then you must come to understand it not in terms of domination, manipulation, and control, in being Number One. Ultimately, that kind of power will be exposed for what it is -- the same thing that was offered to me in the wilderness by the devil. But will you join with me in lifting the burdens of the world by embodying in yourselves the powers of love and justice, gentleness and kindness, joy and peace, compassion and hope? Will you learn that refusal to use power as the world uses it is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of the greatest strength? Will you come to me, and accept the power which I alone can give?”