Just Power, Kingdom Love (Prop 12 B 2012)
Watching “Twelfth Night” the other day, I was reminded of a
quote: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon ‘em!”[1]
As human beings we are all drawn to greatness of some sort. It’s
natural. It is what we do with it that
matters most. Do we grasp or do we hold
power lightly?
In this story, David grasps at power and what he desires and
it crumbles in his hands, becomes death.
Jesus avoids the power roles the world would thrust upon him
and is able to provide life and life-giving bread, for all.
I think the texts today say a lot about power and how we are
willing to work with it in our lives. Even though as Christians we believe that
things should be different; a kingdom order, we nonetheless still end up either
being in power or having someone in power over us.
Think about your life.
Do you think you are powerful, or powerless? Chances are you have more power over some and
are more beholden to others than you think.
It is one of those facts of human existence that we relate to each other
in this way. But the beauty is, once we
are aware of our desire for greatness, we can use it for good.
So, back to the story.
David, seeing Bathsheba from the roof (she is not bathing on the roof as
some have said)[2],
desires her. He’s supposed to be out
fighting, but he is letting others fight for him, and to complete his
unrighteous king role, he claims the wife of one of his best fighters. He is the epitome here of how not to use
power. Because he may succeed in having
his way for a moment, but soon he will hear it from God and lose his first son
by Bathsheba. The way of grasping leads
to death. Or to put it another way,
Walter Brueggeman says: “David and the other actors in this narrative have
enormous power and freedom to act, but they are not free to act as though
Yahweh were not there.”[3]
In the same way, we human beings love to have our power but
we cannot act as though God is not there. This translates not just to the
things that we do wrong, but the things that we fail to do right.
Which is quite a thing to think on, really. Because when we recognize our agency in some
of the wrongs of the world—whether it be active agency or just letting things
happen that shouldn’t, we realize that we will have God to answer to if we do
not strive to right what we can. If we do not do what is in our power.
The World AIDS conference this past week reminded us of the
fact that this pandemic still wages destruction. What have I done about this lately?
Some of us saw a homeless family around town this week. Surely families should not have to be
homeless in our world!
These questions can be overwhelming though, when you think
about them too hard. What can we
do? How can we act open-hearted and not
just get fearful and worried that we couldn’t change a thing? I think we can look at Paul’s prayer for the
Ephesians in today’s readings to see how we are supposed to live as Christians.
He prays for them, asking for four specific things: inner
strength, that they would have Christ in their hearts, an understanding of the
extent of God’s work, and know the heart of Christ. These are, each of them, the works of a
lifetime. But I think if we look at how
David and Jesus acted in 2nd Samuel and John today, we will gain
some guidance for how to follow Jesus’ path.
So let’s look at inner strength versus outer strength: Jesus
sees that they want to make him king, but he does not go for that role. He relies on inner strength to do his work
and feed and heal. David, however, not
only uses on all his own outer strength to get his way, but he literally uses
his outermost strength—the people he has power over—to help him get his way, by
asking others to send for Bathsheba, and by asking others to send Uriah into
battle and leave him vulnerable to being killed. If we follow his outer strength all the way
out, we see how cowardly it is. But
Jesus’ inner strength is courageous and gentle.
It even treasures the little crumbs left over. Nothing is too small or weak to be important.
To have the heart of Christ is to be generous like we see Jesus
here—not concerned about our own needs and desires. David shows us the destruction that simply
acting on desires not based in love can bring about. David eats up people as bread. But he does learn from this and change his
life. He later takes on the love of God,
or shall we say the love of Christ, becoming a man after God’s own heart. This is the good news for those of us who are
a bit like David. We can change our
lives, too. In the walking on water
story, Jesus shows that if we have Christ in our hearts, we can resist
fear. We can all have life abundant,
spilling over, with fragments for many more meals. We can see him walk on water and trust that
we can do the same if it is needful for the kingdom.
Christ sees power and control and refuses to wield it in
human ways, but follows his heart and serves others, not only acknowledging and
embodying God’s reality in the world, but reversing the death and
starvation-dealing ways of the world. So
I pray that we may have the heart of Christ, and Christ in our hearts, and that
we may be strengthened internally, so that we can understand the full extent of
God’s work in the world.
May this understanding help us to discern meaningful
ministries in the world, bringing about a reign of just power and kingdom love,
here on earth.
And glory be to God whose power, working through us, can do
infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to him from generation to generation in the church and in Christ
Jesus forever! Amen.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment