What Kind of Power?

 

II Samuel 11:1-15, John 6:1-21

July 25, 2021

 

            My first call was as an Associate Pastor in Rockville, Maryland. I started there in the summer of 1995, after I graduated from seminary. It was a whirlwind time. I graduated. Went through the process of accepting a call and being dismissed from my home presbytery. I said goodbye to friends. I found a place to live in Rockville, packed up my little campus apartment, moved and started at the church. I started sometime in July, and I was ordained in August.

            I remember vividly the first Sunday I was officially sitting at the front of the church with the head of staff, in my then new robe, and the head pastor introduced me again to the congregation and referred to me as “Pastor Busse.” For a split second I thought, “Why is he talking about my grampa? Why is he referring to Grampa Busse?”

            And then it hit me. No, I’m Pastor Busse. And I don’t know if my face reflected all of the emotions I was feeling in that moment or not, but I remember that I wanted to laugh, cry, get sick, and run away all at the same time. I remember thinking, “There’s still time to change my mind. I don’t have to do this. I’m not ordained yet.”

            That may strike you as an extreme reaction to a simple title. But the Pastor Busse that was my grampa was a complex man. Everything he did and said and preached and taught was weighted with authority. He knew, or believed he knew, who was in and who was out when it came to God. I went to one of his Bible studies when I was 15 and it terrified me. Grampa Busse, that Pastor Busse, had authority and power. I did not.

            So, to hear myself referred to as Pastor Busse came with a whole heap of associations that even three years of school and a year-long internship did not make me feel prepared for. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that mantle of authority to be placed on my shoulders. I wasn’t ready for it at all.

            You may have guessed already that I did not run away. I didn’t change my mind. I didn’t get sick while sitting in front of the congregation, and as far as I know I didn’t cry in front of them either. Although, it’s highly possible I went home and cried later. I got ordained later that summer, and in that service a stole was put around my neck, symbolizing my call to be a servant of Christ, a preacher and proclaimer of the gospel. And I have realized in the years since, that having that stole put around my neck symbolized the authority that was vested in me as that preacher and proclaimer of the gospel. Because preachers are invested with authority, whether we like it, feel it, acknowledge it or not.

            In all these years, no matter how much experience I have gained through a few successes and a lot of failures, I still struggle with that invested authority. I still struggle with the weight of that symbol. It seems to declare much more authority and knowledge than I actually feel most days. And part of the reason why I struggle with it, is because I know that with authority comes power. When I was in seminary, we were taught often about the fiduciary responsibility we owed to our parishioners.

            Fiduciary has a financial meaning to it, but in the context of ministry it also speaks to our responsibility to people’s faith. The Hippocratic Oath that doctors take is to do no harm. The vows that ordained elders, both teaching and ruling, suggest the same. To me it is about remembering that with the authority that is invested in me, whether I believe that authority to be true or not, is about having a certain amount of power, and doing my best not to abuse or misuse it.

            David did not understand that to be his charge, apparently. I often hear people try to weep this incident with Bathsheba under the rug. David is still God’s beloved, they say. It was an unfortunate incident, but that didn’t change David’s standing with God or anyone else. He was still the greatest king of Israel there ever was. But I don’t buy that, and I don’t buy it because the text does not buy it. The text does not make excuses for David. It does not let him off the hook. From the very beginning of the story, David is not where he should be. It was the springtime when kings went out to battle. But where was David? Not in battle. Not leading his troops. Not commanding his army. I’m not trying to justify war here, but if there was war, David should have been at the front, at the head, leading, doing what a king was supposed to do. Except he wasn’t. His army was in battle, and he stayed behind, and maybe had he been where he should have been, the rest of the story might not have happened. But he was not it, and it did.

            He abused his power with Bathsheba, and it was a flagrant abuse of power. David was king and would have had more power than anyone else, and Bathsheba was a woman with little or no power. Not only did he cause harm to her, he had her husband murdered to cover up his own terrible sin. David may not have killed Uriah directly, but he still had blood on his hands. As one commentator wrote, no mob boss could have done it better.

            Yet this morning we have two stories before us. The story of David is disturbing and triggering and painful. It is a cautionary tale of the corruptive influence power has. And then we have this story from John’s gospel. A story of Jesus and his power, which stands in stark relief to the power David wielded. Jesus proves his power in the feeding of thousands of people from the meager offering of one boy. He proves his power by walking on the water toward his disciples caught in a strong wind on a rough sea.

            Neither act of power was for show. They were done for the nourishment of the people, for the reassurance of his closest followers, and these acts of power was proven not by what he did, but by what he didn’t do. After the feeding, the people wanted to make him king, and he ran away from them. The people were going to take him by force if necessary and coerce him to be king, but Jesus would have none of it. He went away to a mountainside by himself to prevent the crowds from trying to take him. An earthly king was not the kind of power that Jesus was going to wield.

            So, what kind of power does Jesus have, what kind of power does Jesus use? I realize that there is debate in all four stories of Jesus feeding the crowds as to whether it is a purely supernatural event or that when people saw the baskets of food going around, that they suddenly remembered they had some bread or fruit with them as well, and they were moved to share. Jesus’ willingness to be generous, to feed so many thousands of hungry people, and people being inspired by that to do the same is certainly one kind of miracle. But Jesus supernaturally making the loaves and fishes multiply is another. I suspect that in John’s telling, it was the latter, but either way, Jesus uses his power not to coerce but to encourage, not to force but to feed.

            What kind of power does Jesus have? It seems to me that the ultimate answer to this question comes not from all of the miracles that Jesus performed or the healings that he did, but by what he didn’t do. He didn’t say “no” to the cross. He did not say “no” to the path of suffering servant. He showed his greatest power by giving up all his power.

            If Jesus could feed five thousand with a meager number of loaves and fishes, and if he could walk on water, if someone could be healed just be touching his robe, if he could bring the dead from the tomb into new life, then certainly Jesus had the power to save himself. But he didn’t. He didn’t. He refused to be a worldly king. He never veered from the path that led straight to the cross. He willingly laid down his power, and chose death, so that the world might finally understand life.

            Look, power is a tricky thing. If given the power David had, would I use it wisely or would I abuse it? I don’t know, because as a human, I fall and mess up and make mistakes and have to deal with their consequences. As do all of you. As do all of us. That’s the challenge of being human. And no matter how much authority we’re given or think we have, we still fail and fall and struggle with the temptation that power brings. And Jesus, both fully human and fully divine, faced those same struggles. He faced those same temptations. Maybe one of the reasons he withdrew from the crowds is because he knew that being a king would be too tempting, even for him. Jesus understood both the advantages and the dangers of power, and in the end, he taught the world what real power is.

            That real power is the power of sacrificial love. It is the power of compassion for people who are hungry, hungry for food and hungry for truth. It is the power of trust in God and God’s wisdom. Jesus taught us what real power is, and the power that he was privy to can be ours as well. Perhaps we cannot change a meager amount of food into a great feast, but we can come together in love. We can feed the hungry and be compassionate to those who struggle. We can forgive and ask for forgiveness in return.

So, what do we do with our power? How do we use it? How do we not? What power do we have as a congregation to help our siblings beyond these doors? What kind of power do we have, and how will we use it for the good?

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.