“All About Power” Mark 10:35-45 Lawrence Jackman

Jimi Hendrix sang, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” That was way back in the 60’s.

The corollary to the Hendrix proposition is this: “Within me, when the power of love outweighs the love of power, I will know peace.” I do believe the first affirmation and I am completely convinced that the second is equally true.

However, the truth is that power, true power, is not what we think it is. The power of the faith and of the faithful really turns the worldly perception of power literally up-side-down. Jesus, in Mark, argues that power isn’t the way we understand it at all.

James and John are perhaps the most aristocratic of the Disciples. I think it is worth knowing that the story we create about the poor fishermen, sad tax collectors and simple people called the Disciples were not that at all. Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were owners of boats and had prized products. The fish that Peter and the others drug in their nets were sold as far away as Rome. Matthew, the tax man, was a person of real wealth. He had accumulated enough to give away a lot of money—twice what he had defrauded of anyone. So it was with the others—these were businessmen of some means. They could simply take time off to pursue religious inquiry. They elected one to be the group’s treasurer and went off to seek their spiritual fortunes.

So James and John were part of a powerful family in the area of Galilee. They were the Sons of Zebedee (a.k.a. the Sons of Thunder). Some suggest that their momma put them up to the proposal they make to Jesus. It sounds like their thinking is still all about a very earthly Kingdom and not the Reign of God. “Lord”, they proffer, “do us a favor. Make us your two chief Lieutenants. Let my brother be Secretary of State and I will hold down the Defense Department.”

So Jesus clarifies what real power is all about. “The last will be first. The first will be last”. “We are not like the norms of this world. We are rather devoted to a completely different set of norms. If you want to be greatest, you need to become slave of all the others. Catch on guys, we are here not to be served—but rather to serve.”

Now I know that it is not going to strike us as practical anymore than it struck the Disciples as particularly practical. The person with power to them was the person in the corner office, the persons with more stripes on his sleeve, the person who said “jump” and the people without power would say “How high?”

Again, the truth seems to be that those folks, at their very best, can manage and control very superficial elements of behavior and those only for a little while. Now what of a sort of power that controls and manages outcomes for a long time?

Lots of us own dogs and/or cats. One of the primary differences in these two critters is that you can manage dog behavior and you can adjust to cat behavior. They each appeal to a sort of power definition operational in the human being. Our Golden and Border Collie mix will fall over himself to do anything that pleases Kati the granddaughter. Our junk yard cat Cirrus will sometimes grace her with his presence and even allow her to pet him.

Dwight Eisenhower, Henry III, Napoleon and others who couldn’t stand anyone who didn’t come when called or salute when commanded and they also hated cats. Mohammed, Schweitzer, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain and others who could handle life with some patience and./ or humor all loved cats.

Which list of people do you believe shaped the world more? Beneath the surface of things God knows that we are all a bunch of cats. We are not led by those who “Lord it over us” or at least not for very long. We are led, if you can call it that, by a loving and gentle hand.

Nearly all of us can make a couple of lists of people who wanted to impact us. One list would be the folk who would control from the “top down” approach. They would herd us, nip at our heels like a Border Collie working sheep, harness us in teams, structure us and always make choices for us. They include not just people close but also people in levels of leadership. They probably include some choices we could make for a pastor of this church. Those folk work themselves very hard trying to mold others.

We are a bunch of cats. We don’t herd all that well. It isn’t that we can’t be domesticated, we can. We just do it on our terms. And there is a second list of folk who have real power and lasting power over us. For me it includes folks like my Granddad, my mother and a long list of folks you don’t know. Kearney Adams, Wilbur Davis, George Edwards and so many others. Those people knew I was a cat and couldn’t be herded. They led from beneath and the irony is that they did (and do) mold me. They continue to make me into everything that I am every day of my life.

Now given that, what do you think real power is about (at least for me)?

The short term stuff of power (the worldly definition) is really about control. And control is really all about fear when it is talking about us and our worldly approach. We want to manage a child’s behavior for their own good. We may want the same for a spouse, an employee, a student, or any of a number of people. We want to control them, because we can see the long term consequences better than they can. We know what is best.

Perhaps we do, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. The question is not do we know more, but rather how can we have the best, most lasting and most positive impact with our lives. The answer is, we can practice a different sort of faith filled leadership.
Now what sort of impact will I have on other people’s lives if I can but manage to subordinate the fear in my life to the love and trust in my soul. I know me. I am not going to be able to get rid of fear. What though, if I can run my human relationships as though the rule is really love and not fear. What Hendrix didn’t really seem to understand is that the “love of power” rests in a very frightened place in the human soul. Those who “love power” are ultimately people need our compassion.

If I trust the future; if I believe that the “universe is a friendly place”; if I believe that God’s hand is really all that is needed at the helm-- then maybe I can give myself to a servant sort of leadership.

One of the things I used to do was work with kids in the foster system. Often they would live half or more of their lives in a system of control. All choices and decisions were made for these kids and very few, if any, were made by them. Where they would live tomorrow, when they would see parents, what they would study in school, and everything about their lives would be carefully and usually very lovingly managed.

Then, about the time they turned 17 and we knew that the system would simply drop them into the world in another year, we got worried. We knew in our hearts that they had been controlled and not really nurtured or served. We prayed that the love which had gone into our care would outweigh the rightful fear that they couldn’t manage. We started, with some despair, to try to make them ready for their date with the world.

We had transitional living programs as a crash course in responding to leadership. I always looked for people to work in those programs who loved a lot and trusted a lot. I looked for servant leaders and not for worldly ones. Sometimes the best people I could get were frankly not all that bright or great at living their own lives, but they ultimately trusted that life was a survivable thing. Those were the people who could mold human beings into better beings.

My sincere belief is that Jesus’ teaching about power in Mark’s Gospel is not some warm fuzzy ideal that can only happen in another realm. It is the most practical advice that you will ever get or give to another. Want to change the world? Do it from beneath and not from on top. Want to help another grow? Be a servant and not a ruler. Maybe you are really ambitious, do you want to change the whole course of history and the future of this world? Seek servant status and not a ruler’s throne.

I have an experimental observation for you to make as you go home today. First remember what the worldly powers were all about in Jesus’ day. Caesar had control of so much. The Caesars had the money, the government, the army, the ships. Rome had much of the world under their rule. They could, in the words of Jesus, “lord it over others”.

Christians had not so much worldly power. They were fed to lions, crucified, persecuted and dominated. They came from a country that was a puppet of the government in Rome. Not so much….. not so much of everything for the Church. Except they had this lesson about real power—about being servants.

On your way home today make me a count of two things. How many Roman soldiers you can see and how many crosses you can see. Who won that decisive battle of history and what was the operational definition of power?
Amen