Gospel: Mark 10:35-45. Sermon by Rev Lori Walton.
Hamas attacked Israel and Israel attacked Hamas. Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine struck back. Elon Musk gave $75 million to fund a campaign, the Pope called for Roman Catholics to choose the lesser of two evils, and with a statement, Taylor Swift got over 300,000 people to register to vote. These are all examples of power, the ability to influence or control situations or people’s lives. Sometimes power is used for good like the Civil Rights or the Black Lives Matter movements. Sometimes power is used for evil like the murder of 6 million Jews, the displacement of indigenous people, or the Hutu extermination of the Tutsis in Rwanda.
Power is how the world works, and it can be intoxicating. Often, people in power are sought after, photographed, attacked, and cheered. It isn’t the actual person that is the draw, it’s the power they hold, and the influence it wields. People with power, people at the top, can make significant changes in a landscape that effects everyone downstream.
It is why elections are so important. We have a common life in Christ, and we have a common life in this country. And while there is a separation between church and state, as there should
be, in my opinion, there really is no separation between religion and politics. That would be like trying to separate the ministry of Jesus from the Roman Empire. If you take your Christianity seriously, there wouldn’t be a separation between your religion and the rest of your life. Just like the disciples, just like Jesus, our religion should inform our politics. And there are only so many head tables in this country, and we want those who use power rightly to be sitting at them. We want those who use power rightly to make good decisions for us, and hopefully, for the common good.
James and John, they are not immune from this attraction to power, they understand its impact. They see the power of Jesus in his healings. They feel the power of Jesus in his presence. They hear the power of Jesus in his teachings. They know Jesus is going places, they know he’s going to the top, whatever that means, and they want to be a part of it, they want to go with him. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. Let us sit at your right hand and on your left hand. Let us sit in the seats of power.” Who can blame them, really? At this point, they’re thinking of the glory, not the crucifixion. They’re thinking this new world with Jesus will have the same power
structures as the old world. They are thinking the bad people will be removed from the table, and the new order, Jesus and his closest followers, will take their places in the seats of power, and finally, they will be able to impact the world from the top down, change the landscape to affect everyone else downstream.
Jesus, in his infinite patience, explains to them, again, that it doesn’t work that way, explains to them that the new order, the new Kingdom, won’t be a top-down model, where the mighty sit at the head of the table and exercise their power over others, making decisions to suit their own will. Instead, this new world will be the reverse, a world where true power lies not in dominance over others, but in serving others, in empowering, lifting, and caring for others. Not a top-down model, but a bottom-up model where the strength is found in the many, not in the few.
There are many problems, many imbalances in today’s world. One of them is that power is being claimed and magnified through deception, a twisting of reality to confuse, to fool, to hoodwink those who have little power.
The bishops from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America addressed this. They issued a statement lamenting the use of deception, condemning the hateful, deceptive, violent speech that has found a place in our common lives and has negatively impacted innocent people. In part, they said, “in a perfect garden, created by God for the sake of humanity, evil entered in the form of deception and lies. Christians refer to this story in Genesis as the fall of humanity. This foray into human sin began when Adam and Eve, the first humans created in the image of God were deceived [by the serpent].”
And humans have had to contend with the powers of deception ever since, and in our national discourse, deception is at an all- time high, so high, it is difficult to tell the difference between truth and lies, between reality and artificial intelligence, between those who genuinely want to help and those who pretend to want to help, but really just want to harm.
But there is a sure-fire way to tell whether power is good or corrupt, to tell if we are looking at Gospel power given to us by Jesus or crooked power given to us by a fallen humanity. The
way to tell the difference is to ask yourself – is this power is coupled with love? Is this power coupled with love?
The theologian, Richard Rohr says that power that stands alone, divorced from love, is mere brutality. But the two necessary building blocks of God’s peaceful realm on earth are power and love, and when they are held together, there is new hope and healing for the world. This is what Jesus means when he says “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.” In other words, whoever wants power must start with love.
This is the last time I will be preaching before the election on November 5, so I want to take a moment to acknowledge the weight of our decision and the anxiety most of us are feeling about what the outcome might end up being. It has been a long year and a brutal election cycle. Power has been used in the form of propaganda, gas lighting, misinformation, and outright lies.
Power divorced from love.
And when we cast our vote, regardless of who we vote for on the entire ticket, or what measures we vote for, it is my hope and
prayer that each of us will hold Christ in our hearts and the peaceable Kingdom in our imaginations when we are making decisions about who should or should not be in power, about who should or should not have influence over our lives and the lives of the vulnerable.
But let me say this. Regardless of what our world looks like on November 6 or whenever the election is decided, there will always be two kinds of power in this world. One election does not erase one kind of power. There will be the kind that serves the few and the kind that serves the many, the kind that tears down and the kind that lifts up, and these two forces will always be at odds, will always be pushing against one another.
The kind of power we align ourselves with, I hope, is informed by the one who came not to be served, but to serve, the power that is wrapped in love for the whole human family, the power that will redeem and heal the world. That power, it is not going away, no matter what. I promise you that. That power, the power of Jesus Christ, the power of love, the power of life, the power of resurrection, that will always be, and it will always be the greater power of the two. We know this because we worship the Living
God, the one who reminds us that “he is the way, the truth, and the life” to the ends of the earth.
