Doing Power Differently

As you can imagine, I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my time here in Chicago, and my time especially here at Holy Trinity as I anticipate and prepare to transition to my new call in Michigan at the end of this month. I’ve been reflecting on each one of you who have accompanied me along the way offering guidance, love, and support to Tara and I. I have also been reflecting on who I was when I first moved to Chicago and who I am today.

It might be hard to believe, but whenever I think back to who I was and what I believed back in 2010 when I began seminary in Hyde Park, you’d probably be stunned to know how much of a political and theological 180 I did. When I talk about it, my students in the campus ministry lovingly refer to who I was in 2010 as “Republican Ben” The funny part is, they’re not wrong. But it’s proof that no other time or place in my life has been as transformative as Chicago has been for me.

This place has taught me what it means to not just claim allyship with my black, indigenous, and siblings of color, but to be an accomplice in our collective liberation from racism. This place has taught me what bold and beautiful queer pride can look like when it is celebrated and not just tolerated. This place has revealed to me it’s darkest, deepest corners where our neighbors experiencing homelessness seek refuge and it has invited me into authentic relationships with the human beings I have met there.

But as I reflected on what this place has taught me with regards to today’s scripture readings, I thought about what I have learned about power here in Chicago. You see, Republican Ben thought about power as a zero-sum game where everyone had to look out for themselves and take what they could get. This understanding of power is what we will call power over. This type of power is finite and it convinces us we are in competition with each other to obtain that power so we can control ourselves and the people around us to serve our self-interest.

Then came my introduction to community organizing where I was taught a very simple, but important definition of power. They taught me that power is simply the ability to to act. They also taught me that in a hyper-capitalistic, but still somewhat democratic system like we have in the United States that power can come in two forms: organized people or organized money. Seeing as how I was still a poor seminary student when I was taught these principles about power, I wasn’t in a position to effectively organize the amount of money that would be needed to make change in this world, but what I could start doing was putting my energy into building powerful relationships with the people around me. That way when we would need to act, we could do so together as one rather than trying to change the world as divided, powerless individuals.

This understanding of power was revolutionary for me to consider. No longer did I have to think about power as some finite commodity that I had to compete with others in order to obtain, but I could instead understand that power is essentially infinite as there are always more powerful relationships I can build with others when we cooperate and build power with each other.

Talk about a mind-blowing moment! This simple but radical change from power over to power with transformed me. It transformed how I relate to others, how I relate to creation, how I relate to God, and even how I read scripture. So let’s turn to our scripture for today. We heard first from Acts where the Holy Spirit falls on all the people, both the circumcised believers and the Gentiles and they are filled with the power to speak in tongues. Peter then testifies to the fact that the power of the Holy Spirit cannot be contained or withheld, thus everyone who received the Holy Spirit was baptized.

Then our Psalm, Psalm 98 begins with the words, “Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous things, whose right hand and holy arm have won the victory.” Now that’s some powerful scripture right there, but this same Psalm also reminds us that God’s power and righteousness is not only offered to some, but it says, “The Lord will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.”

But then it’s in our second reading from First John where it starts to get a little tricky. Our power over spidey sense might start tingling when we hear lines like, “For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? “

Conquerors it says we are. We who believe that Jesus is the Son of God conquer the world. Hmm… what does it even mean though to conquer the world? Does it mean that we have power over the world to control it, colonize it, and exploit it? No!

Another word for conquering is to overcome. So instead, what if we thought of this idea of conquering this world not as dominating the world, but overcoming the ways the world has taught us to think and behave. Maybe this means overcoming our worldly desire to behold power over others and the earth, and instead share power with each other.

We are in a pandemic moment right now in this world where it is being revealed just how little power we have individually or even nationally we have over the coronavirus. Instead, we are dependent upon each other for our collective health and right now we can choose to withhold the power to access the intellectual property of the vaccines that have been developed, or we can waive the intellectual property protection so that the vaccine can be produced and distributed more widely and equitably to much of the Global South.

In her book, Holding Faith, author Cynthia Rigby says this, “What sense can we make of this moment, as a moment of discipleship? What are we being called upon to do and to be right now, today? For it is right now – today – that the Messiah asks us to join him in doing power differently, in hoping against hope, and in holding nothing back for the sake of those whom God so loves …. Will we join in what God is up to, or will we just get in the way?”

We know God is in the business of healing, so we must ask ourselves this question, will we stand in the way of this healing or will we do power differently cooperating with God and sharing power with others as opposed to holding power over others and holding back lifesaving vaccines from poorer parts of the world?

I think the answer is clear and it is supported by Jesus in our Gospel when he says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” He goes on to say, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”

Dear people Jesus is sharing power with us. No longer are we in a master/servant relationship where Jesus has power over us, but he has shared his power with us as friends. That is how Jesus loves us, by sharing his own power with us so that we can then love others as Jesus has loved us by sharing our own power with others. This sharing of power is a demonstration of love that gives us the ability to act together as one and to conquer the world wherever worldly power has distorted our relationships through racism, queerphobia, classism, or any other ism. My friends, it has been an honor to share power with you as we work in this place to overcome these isms in ourselves, our church, and our wider world. Now, let us continue sharing our power far and wide obeying God’s commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us, and together we will bear fruit that will last. A different world is possible when we do power differently. Amen.