TRINITY PRESBYTERIAN

Trinity Presbyterian Church

2200 North Bell Avenue # 2200 North Bell Avenue

Rev. Craig Hunter

April 5, 2009

Soft Power

Scriptures: Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 11:1-11

Last year, my friend Derek came to visit me for several days before attending a nearby conference in the metroplex. As we are wont to do when we get together, we played several games together. We played Caesar and Cleopatra three times, Labyrinth, a German maze game once, several hands of double solitaire, two long war games recreating World War II in Europe, and two games of Axis and Allies, a complicated game also involving World War II, this time around the world. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time playing games.

Unfortunately for Derek, I won every single game we played. Part of that was no doubt due to luck. But, as I know even Derek would admit, much of my success could be attributed to the intensity with which I play. I think most of those who have attended one of my Games Nights here could attest to that. I make a point of knowing the rules, of plotting out my strategy. My mathematical background comes out as I carefully calculate the risks, maximize my resources, consolidate my power, and wait for the right moment to strike. When I play games, even complicated ones, I rarely make mistakes. I hate making mistakes. When others make mistakes during the course of the game, if they overextend themselves, or leave part of their forces exposed, I do not hesitate to crush them. Some might think that I should occasionally let my opponent win, at least so that they won’t tire of playing me – you know, throw them a bone every now and then. But no, not me. I’m not sure I would know how to do that, even if I wanted to. As I’ve said to my opponents before while playing games, if you want mercy, go to church, you aren’t getting it here.

In other words, when I play games, I play to win. It feels good, it feeds my ego, I’m addicted to winning, I suppose.

I would like to think that this almost ruthless desire to win is something that I could turn on and off before and after I play games. I would like to think that I could compartmentalize it, that it exists on the surface of my personality but doesn’t come from someplace deeper down. I would like to think that I am in control of my desire to win.

But the truth is otherwise. The truth is, I live much of my life the way that I play games. Rather than controlling my desire to win, my desire to win controls me. I live to win, to be successful. This desire was the driving engine behind my academic success over the years. This desire still drives me today. I carefully calculate the risks in my life, I maximize my resources, I feed my ego with success. The converse of that is that I hate making mistakes. I don’t cope well with situations of powerlessness – when I was struggling with my knee problems for example, when I feel trapped by life’s possibilities, or when I have to be patient. And in my desire to win, sometimes I inflict violence on myself and others. During discussions and arguments with other people, for example, I am sometimes so focused on winning the argument that I lose something more important, I damage the relationship. It is as though sometimes I can’t see clearly, as though my desire to win somehow skews my perspective. It is no accident that at the end of my six months as a part-time

chaplain, when I was being evaluated by my peers, one of the two things I remember that they said that I should work on, was that I should work on my desire to win.

The other thing that they said is that they thought I had some unresolved pain from my past that I needed to work through. Of course, they were right. And the two are related. You see, I want so desperately to be a winner, because I’ve known what it’s like to be a loser, I’ve known what it’s like to be on the outside, to have my ego crushed, to be in pain. Indeed, from time to time I know it still. And I don’t want to be a loser, I don’t want to know that pain, again. Therefore I long for a god to take away my pain, to make me a winner, and to give me the strength to overcome my weaknesses.

Don’t you? I tell so much of my story because I think it is to some extent the story of all of us. Maybe you don’t share my intensity to the same degree, maybe you do, but on some level haven’t you also known the pain of being a loser, don’t you also long for much the same thing as I, to have the pain go away, to be a winner, and to overcome your weaknesses? Surely you aren’t entirely immune to winning, to the way it makes you feel good, the way it feeds your ego? Isn’t there a part of you longs that for, perhaps even implicitly worships, a god of power that will make you strong?

Just as we desire to win in our own individual lives, this desire is also reflected in the lives of our communities. Consider the nations of our world. Reading the newspapers today, I cannot help but think that the nations of our world often act as though they are players in one of my war games. They consolidate their power, they maximize their resources, they carefully consider the risks, and wait for the right moment to act. Sometimes they act with violence towards themselves and others. They are willing to kill for what they believe in. The goal of this game of world politics is of course to win, to be strong and to increase in power. Weakness is unacceptable and failure unforgivable. Rarely does a nation admit that it makes mistakes, or if it does, then the mistakes are dismissed as a surface problem, rather than confessed as indicative of something more profoundly wrong. All too often, it seems, this pursuit of power is in control of the communities rather than they being in control of it. Winning is seen as a goal in and of itself, it feeds the ego of the nation’s citizens. We are so caught up in the game that we even forget to ask why we are playing. The winner changes over time, of course, but the pursuit of power, the game itself, goes on and on. Like us as individuals, all too often, we as nations worship a god of power.

Unfortunately, all too often our addictions as individuals and as communities to winning, to being strong and victorious, and to overcoming our weaknesses, are blessed and endorsed by the church. All too often, the god that is preached in the church is a god whose primary attribute is some form of objective power, a god that almost magically makes our pain go away, a god that makes us strong and successful. All too often, we seek to re-make ourselves in the image of that god. We speak about what it cost God to give us grace, but ignore what it costs us to receive it. We rush through the crucifixion to get to the resurrection, and as a result the grace that we witness to is a cheap grace, a grace that doesn’t do justice to the name.

If we today often long for a god of power, then today’s biblical texts suggest that that is not something new. I think the people on that Palm Sunday so long ago must have shared much of our desire to win, to be strong and victorious. After all, they were living under foreign occupation – their rulers were under the thumb of the Romans. Except for those who had good connections with the Romans, such as the priests, the lives of many of the people were characterized by hardship. They longed for deliverance, for a better life, for a change to the corrupt and oppressive system that exploited them. They longed to have someone take away their pain, to make them winners, and to give them strength.

Hearing the news of Jesus, their hopes rose. At last, someone to deliver them! At last, someone to take the place of the Romans and their lackeys! Their hope overflowed, they had a big party outside the gates of the city, people dropped what they were doing to join in the festivities. Cloaks and branches were spread, enthusiastic chants were raised. “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Finally, their expectations would be fulfilled.

But of course, Jesus did not fulfill their expectations. Jesus did indeed challenge the corrupt system and its rulers, but not as the people expected. Not with power, not by killing, not by playing the game or taking the place of the Romans. Jesus didn’t deliver them from their pain, he didn’t make them strong, he didn’t make them winners, and before the end of the week, many of these same people would be crying out for his crucifixion for letting them down.

But what Jesus did do was much more important, much more profound, and much more difficult. Jesus witnessed to a different kind of power, a soft power, a power that doesn’t fit into the game, a power that is not based on control, a power that doesn’t impose its will. It is, of course, the power of love.

The second Scripture lesson from Philippians is about this different understanding of power. Most biblical scholars agree that these verses in Philippians were not written by Paul, rather Paul is quoting a Christian hymn that was written and sung even earlier. They are therefore among the oldest verses in the New Testament.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

These verses fly in the face of our world’s understanding of power. Another translation I have seen reads that Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. Something to be grasped -- how different from us, from our grasping ways, from the ways in reach and hold on to power. In contrast, Jesus let it go. God shows God’s power in this – God is willing to let it go, for our sake, for the sake of love.

The love that Jesus embodied does not make the people winners, rather it is a power that accepts us as we are. It is a power that wants to be with us, no matter what. If part of the cost of being with us and loving us is sharing our pain, then so be it. Paul says, “we preach Christ, and Christ crucified,” which is another way of saying, that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ were not just events that happened two thousand years ago, rather those events tell us something about who God is, they reveal God’s identity. It is not just that God suffered and died in the past tense, rather that in and through Christ God knows what's it’s like to suffer and die, God knows what’s like to be a slave, as we read in Philippians, God knows what’s like to be a loser, God still knows what its like, suffering and death are in God. As one theologian wrote, “There was a cross in the heart of God long before a cross appeared on Calvary.” (C.S. Dinsmore, Atonement in Literature and Life, p. 232, as quoted in Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986, p. 140.)

Christ didn’t take away the people’s pain, he entered into it to be with them in it, and somehow, impossibly, miraculously, Christ’s presence made the pain okay. Christ’s presence made the pain okay because he witnessed to something more powerful, he knew that pain doesn’t have the last word, that there is something more real, more lasting, more true than pain -- love. The power of this love is not threatened by weakness. And unlike the power in our world, it does not come in limited quantities, one does not have it at the expense of someone else, rather it is infinite, it is a gift to everyone. Rather than being willing to kill to achieve its ends, it is willing to suffer and die. As Christians therefore, we believe that if you want to speak about God’s power, you have to speak about God’s love. You have to. God’s love is the source of the only real power that matters, the power that saves us. At the time of Christ, the world needed to learn about the power of love. We still need to learn about that same power today. The way that we learn about the power of love is not by reading about it, not even by hearing sermons about it, but by doing and being what God calls us to do and be – by having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, as the Philippians hymn states, by doing what Christ did, what Christ called the disciples to do then, and what Christ still calls us to do today – by picking up our crosses and following him, for the sake of our neighbors and even our enemies – for the sake of everyone. Not by avoiding pain and suffering, but by going deeper into it. Not by trying to make ourselves and others into winners, but by accepting people as they are. Not by trying to win the power game, but by breaking the cycle of addiction to winning, by recognizing that our worth does not come from our victories. We too need to follow God into the pain of others and witness to a presence and a power that is larger than our own.

Witnessing to the power of love will hurt. Some may even die. Christ did. But the good news that we know in Christ is that the power of love will not, it does not, it cannot, stay dead. It rises again. “Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Even as God raised Christ, the promise is that we too will know love’s resurrection power. For the resurrection means that the power of love cannot be stopped. It therefore puts all the other powers of the world to shame. It makes all other strengths look weak. It makes the power games that we play look stupid and insignificant. It breaks our cycle of addiction to winning, and frees us to stop feeding the bottomless pits of our egos. The resurrecting power of this love is not just for life after death, it is for this life, through Christ it is available to us even now. By its transforming power, we become a new creation.