Powerful People

This morning at our men’s Bible study we talked about power. (Hey, it is a men’s Bible study. What else are we going to talk about?) At first glance, compared to Rome, Jesus looks pretty powerless. Sure, he turned over a few money changers’ tables in the temple and drove out some animals, but when Jesus came head-to-head with the enemy (i.e. Rome), he got taken out. Instead of death by crucifixion being a badge of courage, people in the first century would have viewed it as a sign of defeat, pure and simple.

Was Jesus powerless? When I posed that question to our men this morning, the room was quiet for quite a long time. We were thinking of “power” in a narrow way, the kind of power Caesar exerted over the Jews and over Jesus. Then we recalled how Jesus had power to heal the blind, the deaf, the crippled and the paralyzed, and to caste out demons. While Rome had the power to kill people, only Jesus had power to raise the dead. He calmed the wind and waves and fed thousands with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. He forgave people. His powers of communication captivated audiences for hours and even days on end. By his merely saying the words, “Follow me,” fishermen abandoned their nets and tax collectors walked away from the most lucrative of professions. All Jesus had to do was invite himself over for lunch, and one tax collector immediately announced that he was going to give half his wealth to the poor and pay back anyone he had cheated four times over. Ultimately it became clear that Rome would never have been able to kill Jesus unless he let them kill him.

What about us? What kind of power do we have, and how do we use it?

When I raised that question this morning, it wasn’t long before we realized that each of us has a lot more power than we thought. We have the power to use our minds and decide what we’re going to feed them. There is all the power we exercise around “words” — the power to decide what we’re going to say (or refrain from saying), the power our words have on others, and our power to discern what God may be saying to us through the words other people speak or write. We have the power to forgive when other people thwart our power. We have the power to respond rather than react. Even if we say nothing, just our presence has the power to affect the atmosphere in a room or the mood of a group. We have power every second of every day to decide what we are going to do with our time, our thoughts, our talents, our weaknesses, our successes, our sins, our possessions and our prisons, i.e. those circumstances that we can’t control or change.

The fact that some of us feel powerless is based on a lie.

Especially since Pentecost.

Because of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, we not only have authority, we have God’s grace to help us exercise it. The Holy Spirit shows us how to use it in ways that are life affirming, loving and for the common good. God is all around us and within us, providing outer hints and inner nudges, recollection of ancient Scriptures as well as fresh inspiration, that will help us exercise our power responsibly and well. Jesus acknowledged his own reliance on the Holy Spirit to exercise his authority — the same Spirit that is in each of us. Jesus knew the reason he had this authority: it was to serve rather than to be served; it was authority to lay down his life and take it up again.

Each of us has been given an enormous amount of power and authority. God gave Adam and Eve, our ancestors, this authority when he told them to “rule” over the earth. You have God’s Power living in you, Jesus’ own Spirit, to help you. My fellow-servants, let’s use our power well today, in ways that would please our King.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

Explore posts in the same categories: Holy Spirit, Jesus, Power, Servanthood, Weakness