Stewards Of Power
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Stewards Of Power
Most days, the news carries stories that, in some way or other, involve the abuse of power. In recent years it has included financial abuses committed by top executives of major companies and abuse of Iraq detainees by U.S. prison guards, but there's almost always some sort of power abuse in the news.
So here's a question for each of you: Do you think of yourself as a powerful person?
Before you answer, let me be clear that I am not necessarily talking about having power on the scale of corporate CEOs or prison guards, nor am I referring to physical strength, or anything related to athletic ability. Rather, I am talking about any ability you have to influence someone else to do your will.
When I define it like that, some of you will have no problem answering, "Yes." After all, if you are a parent of small children, although you may not consider yourself powerful in the larger scheme of things, you certainly have the ability to force your children to do most things your way. Our second son, for example, was the most stubborn child I have ever known, and as a little boy, he had great determination to do things his way regardless of our wishes. But when he refused to go where we wanted him to go -- such as to bed for the night -- I at least could physically pick him up and make him go there. So in that sense I was powerful.
Others of you might also be able to answer yes if you think about the question for a while. If you are married, you have a certain amount of power over your spouse. Often in relationships, one partner with the more dominant personality may cause the less dominant partner to comply with his or her wishes without even consciously insisting on it. But in such cases, even the less dominant partner is not powerless. Often, that partner has little ways of getting his or her wishes fulfilled by the other as well.
But even outside of marriage and family situations, most of us have some power over somebody. For example, if your friend shares with you something personal about herself, something perhaps even embarrassing, and asks you not to repeat it, you suddenly have some power over that person, because you could always choose to reveal her secret and thus expose her to embarrassment.
And are you familiar with the term "passive-aggressive"? It refers to a form of behavior in which someone in a seemingly underling situation appears to comply with demands upon him or herself, but which the person actually resists by such means as procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, or inefficiency. Passive-aggression is a form of power wielded by the seemingly powerless.
Power plays are so much a part of human dynamics that they even happen among schoolchildren. Bullying is one nasty form they take, but there are also milder versions. For example, among children playing together, you'll sometimes hear one say something like, "If we don't play this way, I won't like you anymore." In a life stage where being liked and accepted is important, such a threat is often effective.
In fact, in any situation involving two or more people, a certain amount of power is present in the dynamics between them.
The Ten Commandments illustrate this matter of power. We usually say that the first four commandments refer to our responsibilities toward God and the last six to our responsibilities toward one another. So look at those six with power in mind:
¥
"Honor your father and your mother." This commandment is usually taken to refer to adult children treating their parents respectfully. In a stage of life when some seniors face diminishing personal abilities, their grown offspring sometimes have to step in and help their parents, and suddenly, those adult children have some power over their parents' lives, power that can be used respectfully of the parent, or abusively.
¥
"You shall not murder." Obviously if you are in a position to take someone's life you have power over that person.
¥
"You shall not commit adultery." This implies that in breaking this commandment, you are abusing the power you have in being trusted by your partner.
¥
"You shall not steal." If you are in a position where you could steal what belongs to someone else, then you have the power to affect that person's life.
¥
"You shall not bear false witness." Imagine how you exert power over someone's life when you lie about that person.
¥
"You shall not covet ... anything that belongs to your neighbor." You may not have power to make everything you covet come your way, but insofar as you do, coveting is a doorway to the abuse of power.
What I am getting at is that almost every temptation that comes our way involves the opportunity to abuse power. Consider the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). If you read that account, which is found in three of the gospels, you may wonder how it applies to us. After all, two of the things Jesus was tempted to do wouldn't be possible for us. He was tempted to turn stones into bread and to leap from the pinnacle of the temple without injury to dazzle the crowds. We couldn't do those things. But those things were within Jesus' abilities, and he was being tempted to abuse power he actually had.
But let me turn to examples that human beings are capable of. Our reading from Esther today involves a man who was in a position of power, which he planned to use for his own ends. As it turns out, he was foiled. Here's the story:
In 586 B.C., the people of Judah were conquered by the Babylonians, and many of the people were marched off to exile in Babylon. More than half a century later, the Persians conquered Babylon and allowed the exiled Jews to return home. Many did, but by then, many others, especially those born in Babylon, felt at home there, and chose to remain -- living in what was then the Persian Empire.
In 486, a king named Ahasuerus1 comes to the Persian throne, and eventually, he marries a beautiful young woman named Esther, without realizing that she is Jewish.
Esther had been raised by an older cousin, Mordecai, and after Esther becomes queen, Mordecai happens to overhear a plot to kill the king. He passes the information to Esther, who, in the name of Mordecai, warns the king. He has the schemers executed, and he naturally feels grateful toward Mordecai.
Among the king's inner circle is a man of substantial wealth and power named Haman. This man hates Mordecai, apparently because Mordecai will not bow down to him. So Haman, who also does not know Esther is Jewish and does not know of her kinship to Mordecai, persuades the king to have all the Jews living in the empire killed. Because of his hatred for the Jewish Mordecai, he wants to eliminate the whole nation to which Mordecai belongs.
To make a longer story short, Esther intervenes with the king, revealing her Jewish identity at a banquet at which Haman is also present. And in the end, the Jewish people are saved and Haman is hanged on the gallows he had planned to use to execute Mordecai.
The Feast of Purim, an event Jews celebrate yet today, commemorates this incident.
For another example, consider the story Jesus told we commonly call the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23-34). A servant owed a king 10,000 talents, which was a tremendous sum of money. When he could not pay, the king ordered him, along with all that he had, sold to pay the debt. But the servant pleaded for mercy and for an extension of time. The king took pity on him and forgave the debt outright. Then this servant went out and found a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii, a very small sum. This fellow servant was unable to pay, so the first servant had him thrown in prison. When the king heard of this, he was so incensed that he reinstated the huge debt and had the ungrateful servant imprisoned.
We notice that despite all his power, the king had been graciously willing to forgive the huge debt owed to him, whereas the servant abused the slight power he had over his fellow servant.
In both of these cases, the power abuser got what was coming to him, but that is not always the case.
According to those who have studied the dynamics of power, there are six bases from which power can arise.2 You have power over someone when you:
1.
have information needed by the other person (informational power).
2.
can punish the other person if he or she does not respond positively (coercion).
3.
can provide rewards when a person does respond as you want (reward).
4.
have the right to demand a positive response (authority).
5.
are able to move others by your personality force or by psychological manipulation (charisma).
6.
can expose the other person to embarrassment or other social costs (blackmail).
It should be instructive to us about how many temptations are ultimately about the misuse of power.
One of the religious thinkers who has written helpfully about power is Reinhold Niebuhr, an American pastor who lived from 1892-1971. Niebuhr talked extensively about human nature, responding to moral issues raised by World War II and the Cold War. One of his key conclusions is that there are times, both as a nation and as individuals, when we must exercise power -- times when it is the only right thing to do -- but we should do so being aware that the use of power is inevitably corrupting. In other words, every act of power, no matter how much good it may do, causes some injury to others and to the one exercising it. He said that people must act nonetheless, but should also seek forgiveness for the harm that they do in the service of good.3
Whether you agree with that viewpoint or not, Niebuhr's conclusion does remind us of the complexity of human interactions and ought to make us cautious about how we wield whatever power we hold.
It should also be instructive to us that the central symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a symbol both of powerlessness and of power. As an instrument of execution, the place where Jesus himself accepted death, it symbolizes his powerlessness. But as an empty cross, one that could not keep Christ dead, it also reminds us of his power.
You see, we are not called to pretend we have no power, but to consider carefully how and when we use it.
In one of the apocryphal books of the Bible, the Wisdom of Solomon, are a few lines addressed to kings. The passage begins:
Listen then, kings ... you who have thousands under your rule, who boast of hordes of subjects. For power is a gift to you from the Lord ... He himself will probe your acts and scrutinize your intentions.
-- Wisdom of Solomon 6:1-4 (Jerusalem Bible)
Yes, those words are addressed to people in high places, but the reality behind them, that power is a gift from the Lord, applies to us all. Since all of us have power over somebody, power is best viewed as a trust from God. We need to be good stewards of power and use it wisely.
Part of what happened during the time of Jesus' temptations was that he took the time to decide how he was going to deal with people. He possessed great power, but he refused the temptation to misuse it.
We also need to be aware of the temptations to misuse the power we possess. The idea is not to pretend we don't have power, but use it compassionately, and let the way we use it reflect our commitment to Jesus Christ.
____________
1.ÊUsually identified with either Xerxes I, 486-465 B.C., or Artaxerxes II, 405-359 B.C.
2.ÊFrom "Power," Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), p. 932.
3.ÊSee David Brooks, "Man on a Gray Horse," The Atlantic Monthly, September 2002, pp. 24-25.
Most days, the news carries stories that, in some way or other, involve the abuse of power. In recent years it has included financial abuses committed by top executives of major companies and abuse of Iraq detainees by U.S. prison guards, but there's almost always some sort of power abuse in the news.
So here's a question for each of you: Do you think of yourself as a powerful person?
Before you answer, let me be clear that I am not necessarily talking about having power on the scale of corporate CEOs or prison guards, nor am I referring to physical strength, or anything related to athletic ability. Rather, I am talking about any ability you have to influence someone else to do your will.
When I define it like that, some of you will have no problem answering, "Yes." After all, if you are a parent of small children, although you may not consider yourself powerful in the larger scheme of things, you certainly have the ability to force your children to do most things your way. Our second son, for example, was the most stubborn child I have ever known, and as a little boy, he had great determination to do things his way regardless of our wishes. But when he refused to go where we wanted him to go -- such as to bed for the night -- I at least could physically pick him up and make him go there. So in that sense I was powerful.
Others of you might also be able to answer yes if you think about the question for a while. If you are married, you have a certain amount of power over your spouse. Often in relationships, one partner with the more dominant personality may cause the less dominant partner to comply with his or her wishes without even consciously insisting on it. But in such cases, even the less dominant partner is not powerless. Often, that partner has little ways of getting his or her wishes fulfilled by the other as well.
But even outside of marriage and family situations, most of us have some power over somebody. For example, if your friend shares with you something personal about herself, something perhaps even embarrassing, and asks you not to repeat it, you suddenly have some power over that person, because you could always choose to reveal her secret and thus expose her to embarrassment.
And are you familiar with the term "passive-aggressive"? It refers to a form of behavior in which someone in a seemingly underling situation appears to comply with demands upon him or herself, but which the person actually resists by such means as procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, or inefficiency. Passive-aggression is a form of power wielded by the seemingly powerless.
Power plays are so much a part of human dynamics that they even happen among schoolchildren. Bullying is one nasty form they take, but there are also milder versions. For example, among children playing together, you'll sometimes hear one say something like, "If we don't play this way, I won't like you anymore." In a life stage where being liked and accepted is important, such a threat is often effective.
In fact, in any situation involving two or more people, a certain amount of power is present in the dynamics between them.
The Ten Commandments illustrate this matter of power. We usually say that the first four commandments refer to our responsibilities toward God and the last six to our responsibilities toward one another. So look at those six with power in mind:
¥
"Honor your father and your mother." This commandment is usually taken to refer to adult children treating their parents respectfully. In a stage of life when some seniors face diminishing personal abilities, their grown offspring sometimes have to step in and help their parents, and suddenly, those adult children have some power over their parents' lives, power that can be used respectfully of the parent, or abusively.
¥
"You shall not murder." Obviously if you are in a position to take someone's life you have power over that person.
¥
"You shall not commit adultery." This implies that in breaking this commandment, you are abusing the power you have in being trusted by your partner.
¥
"You shall not steal." If you are in a position where you could steal what belongs to someone else, then you have the power to affect that person's life.
¥
"You shall not bear false witness." Imagine how you exert power over someone's life when you lie about that person.
¥
"You shall not covet ... anything that belongs to your neighbor." You may not have power to make everything you covet come your way, but insofar as you do, coveting is a doorway to the abuse of power.
What I am getting at is that almost every temptation that comes our way involves the opportunity to abuse power. Consider the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). If you read that account, which is found in three of the gospels, you may wonder how it applies to us. After all, two of the things Jesus was tempted to do wouldn't be possible for us. He was tempted to turn stones into bread and to leap from the pinnacle of the temple without injury to dazzle the crowds. We couldn't do those things. But those things were within Jesus' abilities, and he was being tempted to abuse power he actually had.
But let me turn to examples that human beings are capable of. Our reading from Esther today involves a man who was in a position of power, which he planned to use for his own ends. As it turns out, he was foiled. Here's the story:
In 586 B.C., the people of Judah were conquered by the Babylonians, and many of the people were marched off to exile in Babylon. More than half a century later, the Persians conquered Babylon and allowed the exiled Jews to return home. Many did, but by then, many others, especially those born in Babylon, felt at home there, and chose to remain -- living in what was then the Persian Empire.
In 486, a king named Ahasuerus1 comes to the Persian throne, and eventually, he marries a beautiful young woman named Esther, without realizing that she is Jewish.
Esther had been raised by an older cousin, Mordecai, and after Esther becomes queen, Mordecai happens to overhear a plot to kill the king. He passes the information to Esther, who, in the name of Mordecai, warns the king. He has the schemers executed, and he naturally feels grateful toward Mordecai.
Among the king's inner circle is a man of substantial wealth and power named Haman. This man hates Mordecai, apparently because Mordecai will not bow down to him. So Haman, who also does not know Esther is Jewish and does not know of her kinship to Mordecai, persuades the king to have all the Jews living in the empire killed. Because of his hatred for the Jewish Mordecai, he wants to eliminate the whole nation to which Mordecai belongs.
To make a longer story short, Esther intervenes with the king, revealing her Jewish identity at a banquet at which Haman is also present. And in the end, the Jewish people are saved and Haman is hanged on the gallows he had planned to use to execute Mordecai.
The Feast of Purim, an event Jews celebrate yet today, commemorates this incident.
For another example, consider the story Jesus told we commonly call the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23-34). A servant owed a king 10,000 talents, which was a tremendous sum of money. When he could not pay, the king ordered him, along with all that he had, sold to pay the debt. But the servant pleaded for mercy and for an extension of time. The king took pity on him and forgave the debt outright. Then this servant went out and found a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii, a very small sum. This fellow servant was unable to pay, so the first servant had him thrown in prison. When the king heard of this, he was so incensed that he reinstated the huge debt and had the ungrateful servant imprisoned.
We notice that despite all his power, the king had been graciously willing to forgive the huge debt owed to him, whereas the servant abused the slight power he had over his fellow servant.
In both of these cases, the power abuser got what was coming to him, but that is not always the case.
According to those who have studied the dynamics of power, there are six bases from which power can arise.2 You have power over someone when you:
1.
have information needed by the other person (informational power).
2.
can punish the other person if he or she does not respond positively (coercion).
3.
can provide rewards when a person does respond as you want (reward).
4.
have the right to demand a positive response (authority).
5.
are able to move others by your personality force or by psychological manipulation (charisma).
6.
can expose the other person to embarrassment or other social costs (blackmail).
It should be instructive to us about how many temptations are ultimately about the misuse of power.
One of the religious thinkers who has written helpfully about power is Reinhold Niebuhr, an American pastor who lived from 1892-1971. Niebuhr talked extensively about human nature, responding to moral issues raised by World War II and the Cold War. One of his key conclusions is that there are times, both as a nation and as individuals, when we must exercise power -- times when it is the only right thing to do -- but we should do so being aware that the use of power is inevitably corrupting. In other words, every act of power, no matter how much good it may do, causes some injury to others and to the one exercising it. He said that people must act nonetheless, but should also seek forgiveness for the harm that they do in the service of good.3
Whether you agree with that viewpoint or not, Niebuhr's conclusion does remind us of the complexity of human interactions and ought to make us cautious about how we wield whatever power we hold.
It should also be instructive to us that the central symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a symbol both of powerlessness and of power. As an instrument of execution, the place where Jesus himself accepted death, it symbolizes his powerlessness. But as an empty cross, one that could not keep Christ dead, it also reminds us of his power.
You see, we are not called to pretend we have no power, but to consider carefully how and when we use it.
In one of the apocryphal books of the Bible, the Wisdom of Solomon, are a few lines addressed to kings. The passage begins:
Listen then, kings ... you who have thousands under your rule, who boast of hordes of subjects. For power is a gift to you from the Lord ... He himself will probe your acts and scrutinize your intentions.
-- Wisdom of Solomon 6:1-4 (Jerusalem Bible)
Yes, those words are addressed to people in high places, but the reality behind them, that power is a gift from the Lord, applies to us all. Since all of us have power over somebody, power is best viewed as a trust from God. We need to be good stewards of power and use it wisely.
Part of what happened during the time of Jesus' temptations was that he took the time to decide how he was going to deal with people. He possessed great power, but he refused the temptation to misuse it.
We also need to be aware of the temptations to misuse the power we possess. The idea is not to pretend we don't have power, but use it compassionately, and let the way we use it reflect our commitment to Jesus Christ.
____________
1.ÊUsually identified with either Xerxes I, 486-465 B.C., or Artaxerxes II, 405-359 B.C.
2.ÊFrom "Power," Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), p. 932.
3.ÊSee David Brooks, "Man on a Gray Horse," The Atlantic Monthly, September 2002, pp. 24-25.
