Real Power

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 53:4-12 and Mark 10:35-45.

Today it's popular to deconstruct superheroes. The TV series The Boys, the cartoon series Invincible and the horror film Brightburn all question whether people with that much power would be good guys or would their powers tempt them to do very bad things. But legendary comic book writer Alan Moore asked this back in 1986 with a book called Watchmen. The title comes from a quote by the Roman satirist Juvenal, which asks “Who will watch the watchmen?” In other words, who will keep an eye on those who are supposed to keep an eye on us? In the comic book, we meet a group of heroes who often use their power not to make the world better but to maintain the status quo. One superhero, the smartest man in the world, does try to head off World War 3 by creating a disaster that appears to be the work of an alien race, causing the US and the Soviet Union to join forces against a threat to our planet. The fact that to pull this off meant killing half the population of New York City doesn't seem to bother this superhero. For him, the ends justify the means. Which makes him a supervillain.

We all like to think that if given superpowers or magical powers we would still be good, like Superman or Harry Potter, but that's fantasy. If you had the power to force people to do things or even the power to kill them and you were too powerful to be stopped or punished, how long would you resist that temptation? Maybe you'd justify it by only doing that to really bad people. But who would decide which people are bad enough to deserve it? What if they tried to take away your power? Would that justify killing them?

Objectively, it's a good thing that superpowered humans don't exist. Look at what happens to people who are simply given positions of earthly power. As Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That's a major reason why those who wrote our constitution created 3 branches of government to keep any of them from having too much power. They didn't want a king or a dictator.

So it's weird that there are Americans who are open to the idea of a dictatorship. Because even the best kings, emperors and supposedly benign dictators have done some awful things with that power. They usually justify what they do on the grounds that they're serving the greater good. But often they use their power to eliminate their political opposition and muzzle the media. Because they think that having absolute power over what people can do or say or even think is for the greater good.

In Jesus' day, the Roman emperor had absolute power. He could have political enemies imprisoned, exiled or killed. And he was emperor for life. So to change emperors before their natural death, the incumbent had to be killed. And 39 emperors were assassinated or executed. 6 committed suicide, usually under pressure to do so. 5 died in battle. Only 25 died of disease or natural causes, and some of those might actually have been poisoned. So why would anyone want to be emperor? Because of the power, of course.

Which is why many of the Jews of Jesus' day expected God to anoint his own king to oppose the emperor, push the Romans out of the land of Judea and set up a physical and political kingdom of God. It's true that some Jews thought the Messiah would be a prophet or a priest instead. But it's easy to see why the majority were hoping the Messiah would be a holy warrior king like David. They could only conceive of power being exercised in the way they saw it used.

That's obviously the way the disciples saw the issue. When Jesus asked who they thought he was and Peter said that Jesus was Messiah, they thought that Jesus would lead an army against their oppressors. But instead Jesus starts teaching them that “the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” (Mark 8:31) I imagine they stopped listening after he said he had to be killed because they never understood the part about him rising again. Instead they were thinking, “What good is a dead Messiah?” Peter actually scolds Jesus about saying that and Jesus rebukes him for looking at things from a human standpoint and not from God's perspective. Jesus says that anyone who wants to be his disciple must likewise give up all rights to himself, take up his own cross and follow Jesus. (Mark 8:34)

Yet just two chapters later, James and John ask to sit at the right hand and left of Jesus' throne. They are still thinking of what an earthly ruler is like. And naturally the other disciples get jealous. So Jesus sets them straight. Earthly rulers want power so they can control others and be served by them. But that is not how God's kingdom works. Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” And that principle goes all the way to the top. Jesus points out that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Jesus had the power of God and how did he use it? To heal. (Matthew 4:23) To raise the dead. (Mark 5:35-43, Luke 7:11-15; John 11) To feed the hungry. (Matthew 14:15-21, 32-38) To stop a storm from sinking the boat his disciples were in. (Mark 4:37-41) To leave a place where people who were planning to forcibly make him king. (John 6:14-19) And he refused to do miracles simply to impress others or even to save his own life. (Matthew 12:38-39; 26:53-54; Luke 23:8-9) He didn't leap tall buildings with a single bound, bend steel in his bare hands, or punch bad guys. He served others and even turned bad guys into good guys. (Mark 2:14-17; Luke 19:1-9)

Would people go to see a superhero movie if there were no violence? Would they go to see it if all the violence was done to the superhero by the bad guys and he died without fighting back? I doubt it. We like violence. The Romans had their gladiators. We have boxers and hockey players. We go to the movies to see James Bond and John Wick and Batman and the Avengers and Liam Neeson beat up and kill bad guys. We want to see a fight.

And the same thing applies to our politics. We keep electing people who are belligerent, who would rather fight than be peacemakers, who would rather say their opponents are demonic and destroying America rather than tone down the rhetoric and work out practical solutions to our mutual problems. We say we are a Christian nation but give us a fighter and we will forgive all his other sins.

But right after the gospel of John tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, it tells us, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.” (John 3:17) And how did he save the world? By fighting? By leaving his opponents lying on the ground, bleeding?

No. He saved the world by doing the opposite—by refusing to fight, by laying down his life and letting his enemies shed his blood. And this wasn't some novel twist found only in the New Testament. It was God's plan all along, as we see in our passage from Isaiah. “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” He didn't save the world by fighting violence with violence. He absorbed the violence we did to him. He took the worst the world could dish out—being whipped, being beaten, being pierced by thorns, being spit upon, being mocked and humiliated, being stripped, being skewered by nails, being hung on a cross for hours in the heat—and he died. Then he rose again. His only weapon was life-giving love.

And his followers did what he did. They taught and preached and healed. They were whipped and beaten and imprisoned and eventually they were executed. And yet their faith conquered the Roman empire, the most brutal regime at that time. Their only weapon was their trust in the love of God that they saw in Jesus.

You know John 3:16 but what about 1^st John 3:16? “We have come to know love by this: that Jesus laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for fellow Christians.” Jesus didn't die for us so we could go on living as we always have. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the Son of God became a human being so that human beings could become children of God. (John 1:14) Which means becoming like Jesus. The point of Christianity is to become like Christ. (Romans 8:29) We were created in God's image (Genesis 1:27) but we have marred that image by our sins. Jesus is the very image of God (Hebrews 1:3) and by uniting with him, that image is being restored in us. Paul says, “You were taught with reference to your former way of life to lay aside the old man who is being corrupted with deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man who has been created in God's image—in righteousness and holiness that comes from truth.” (Ephesians 4:22-24, NET)

The New Testament is full of admonitions to be Christlike, not just in some inward invisible way but in how we live. 1^st John says, “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (1 John 2:6) Again in Ephesians Paul says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2) In Galatians, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatian 2:20) This is what Paul means when he says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) When we trust in Jesus, we become part of the body of Christ, the priesthood of all believers, and we are given the mission to spread the good news of love, forgiveness and new life in Christ.

We don't do it by trying to gain power over others. On the night before he died Jesus said, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you.” (John 13:13-15) Like Jesus, we are not called to be served but to serve. We spread the good news about Jesus by behaving like Jesus.

As a psychiatric nurse, I dealt with patients who thought they were God or Jesus. And their behavior was not that of humility and service, but of acting grandiose and expecting worship. Now they were delusional. But we see this behavior in certain powerful people who supposedly understand reality and can operate in the real world. We see it in cult leaders. And in certain church leaders. And in certain politicians. Whether they say they are Christ or speak for Christ or are anointed by Christ, they like the part about being powerful and everyone listening to them and serving them. But we don't see in them Christlike humility and service to others. We don't see in them self-sacrificial love for others. We don't see in them the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) We humans want to emulate God's power but not his loving, just, holy and merciful nature.

Indeed the first temptation was to become like God but without having to obey God. (Genesis 3:5) We took our position as rulers of creation to mean we had authority to do whatever we wanted rather than to preserve and serve God's creation. (Genesis 2:15) Which has led to our ruining God's good earth and filling it with violence. (Genesis 6:11) Because if everyone wants to be in control, they are going to clash with one another. I am listening to one of the Great Courses called “War and World History.” And indeed you can tell practically the whole history of mankind by simply recounting the history of warfare. An awful lot of the innovations we have come up with were the results of or side effects of war. For instance, we have a Congress that makes laws and decides how to spend the nation's money. That comes from the English Parliament, which began because kings wanted to wage wars and had to get the money from their barons to do so. In return the barons (and eventually free men and then all citizens) wanted a say in how the nation was governed. All because English kings wanted to conquer the lands of the Welsh and the Scots and the Irish and parts of France.

Is fighting what God wants? In Isaiah we see God's vision of the future. “He will judge disputes between nations; he will settle cases for many people. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will no longer train for war.” (Isaiah 2:4)

Of course, everyone says they want peace. But we rarely try to resolve disputes beforehand. We do that only after we have killed so many people and done so much damage that one or both sides decide to sit down and finally talk. And rarely do the nations or peoples in conflict trust anybody else to be an objective judge in such matters. So there are at present over 110 armed conflicts going on right now, according to the Geneva Academy: more than 45 in the Middle East and North Africa, more than 35 in Africa, 21 in Asia, 7 in Europe, and 6 in Latin America. Why? As James tells us, “You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you fight and make war.” (James 4:2) We still act like toddlers, who see something they want, try to grab it and then strike out at whoever tries to stop them from taking it. And then when we've wrested the toy from the hands of the other toddler, we walk away admiring our prize, while ignoring the other's cries of pain and outrage.

So of course we can only conceive of conflicts being resolved by someone stronger defeating someone weaker. And that's where Jesus flips the script. He did not come to solve our problems by force but by love. He in fact absorbed the violence we invariably inflict on those who do what we don't want them to do or say what we do not want them to say. He took the brunt of our sins, the consequences of our arrogance and lust for power and rage and all the other things that motivate us to harm others, ourselves and our relationship with God. He took them on—and more. He took on our ultimate enemy. Isaiah foresaw it: “...he will swallow up the shroud that is over all the peoples, the woven covering that is over all the nations; he will swallow up death permanently. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from every face, and remove his people's disgrace from all the earth. Indeed, the Lord has announced it!” (Isaiah 25:7-8) Death and the fear of it motivates us to distract ourselves with toys and pursuits. The inexorable approach of death causes us to be impatient with how long it takes us to do things properly and peacefully. Death is the thing which we can't control no matter how strong we are, and death will inevitably take all our possessions from us and render every one of us, rich or poor, strong or weak, utterly powerless.

While we squabble over things that will not last—earthly power, possessions, empires, nations, cultures, honors, superficial identities—we ignore the fact that Jesus has defeated death and brought to an end that which can end us. While we think we are godlike in our power to take life from others, we forget that only God has the power to give life. Jesus offers us eternal life. Once we put our trust in him and his promises, we need not fear death. We need not try to squeeze as much happiness as we can from temporary things. We need not try to grab up as much as we can because time is running out. We can forego the things of this life that everyone else is scrabbling for and quarreling over. Jesus said that whatever we give up for him and the sake of the gospel we will receive back a hundredfold. (Matthew 19:28-30) But more importantly, we will receive ourselves, our true selves, the image of God that we have lost. We will be like Jesus and we will be with him, the God who is love and the source of all goodness, forever.