Power Used Justly - November 22, 2015

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2 Samuel 23:1-7
John 18:33-37

Today we welcome Dale Cockrum, our District Superintendent, who joins us for our Charge Conference, which we'll hold after a potluck and Pie Sunday. Charge Conference is the annual business meeting of our church. Among other items we will elect people to serve on church committees and in other positions of leadership for the next year. The Nominating Committee has been hard at work all fall recruiting people to fill these different positions. At its best this job does more than put names on a piece of paper. It helps people to discern their own gifts and graces and then matches them with opportunities to serve. Ideally, service in the church is a blessing not a burden. The blessing includes those serving as well as the church and community which we serve.

I've been thinking a lot about leadership this fall, not only because of the work of the nominating committee but also because of the local and national elections taking place. I wrote a series of devotional thoughts based on leaders in the Bible which I shared in our electronic newsletter. Those thoughts then lent themselves to a Bible study which I led on campus and in a small group. Each week we identified qualities of leadership we saw in that week's leader. Towards the end of the study we began to reflect on which of those qualities we saw in ourselves and in which qualities we felt we needed to grow.
One of the leaders we studied was King David. David is a mixed bag as a leader. On the one hand, in the Hebrew Bible he is held up as the model for the Messiah. As King he united Israel and Judah, and led them to an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. On the other hand, David failed in big ways. He was guilty of adultery and murder. His family took the fun out of dysfunctional. We noted in one study that David is not an attractive model of leadership ---- and yet in some ways he is.
Our reading today from 2 Samuel is presented as the Last Words of David. He is at the end of his life and so the end of his reign. They are not quite a death bed blessing and yet they do contain a sort of prophetic power. They convey a message from God.
David says, "The spirit of the Lord speaks through me, his word is upon my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land." (This is the point where, had I the power to do so, I would cue the sun to come out from behind a cloud to flood our sanctuary with colored light from the stained glass windows.) The just use of power, David notes, is as refreshing and life giving as the light of the sun. Sadly, David's use of power was not always just. When he did use power justly light shone on Israel.
As Christians, God's use of power is our primary model for the use of our own power, whether that is as teachers, supervisors, or parents. Today is known in the Church Calendar as The Reign of Christ Sunday, when we look to Jesus as our leader. In Jesus God emptied Godself of divinity and came to live in solidarity with us as a human being. God actually let go of power.
In our reading today from the Gospel of John, Jesus appears before Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, for a trial to determine his fate. The accusation against Jesus was murky. The religious leaders charged him with blasphemy for saying that he was the Son of God, but they lacked the power to sentence him to death. The Romans didn't worry much about blasphemy so the charge became one of treason for saying he was the king of the Jews.
In this scene Jesus seems passive and powerless. He does not try to defend himself and he certainly does not call down the wrath of God to defeat either the religious leaders or the Roman ones. He says to Pilate, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." In the end Pilate is more confused than convinced and asks, "What is truth?"
As a gift from God, power is something to be held onto lightly rather than tightly grasped. In the end, Jesus' throne was a cross and his crown was made of thorns. He did not cling to power and yet we know that Jesus' power of love overcame the cruelest hatred and even death itself.
Power comes to us from God. At his best David knew that. At his worst moments he forgot it and focused on himself. "Is not my house like this with God?" David reflected in his last words. "For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure." David was forever bound to God who had called him to leadership. His power came from God.
No one here today is a king and yet God has vested each of us with power.
To the best of my knowledge there are no billionaires in this congregation. Few of us think of ourselves as having the power of money, but when compared with most of the world the majority of us are wealthy indeed. We have food on the table and beds to sleep in. We have access to education and medical care – luxuries many in the world lack. And money is power. Sometimes the power of money can be abused. Wealthy donors, be they to a church or a university, have been known to control major decisions by threatening to pull their donations should things not go their way. Thankfully, I'm not aware of that happening here.
Sometimes the power of money comes from unexpected sources. Lonnie Porter was a janitor at United Theological Seminary when I was a student there. He was a quiet man whom I seldom noticed as he swabbed a mop across the linoleum or ran the vacuum cleaner. Janitors seldom make a lot of money and Lonnie was no exception. What no one knew until he died was that for all the years he worked at the seminary he had quietly set aside a few dollars per paycheck. He had no family and so he named the seminary as his beneficiary. He left them enough to endow a faculty position, likely the first one ever named for a janitor. Lonnie had the power of money which continues to educate for ministry people who never knew him.
Sometimes we have the power of position. I wonder whether the cardinals who elected Jorge Gorgoglio as pope knew what they were getting? Now Pope Francis he continues to surprise the Roman Catholic Church and the world. When he came to the United States he not only spoke to congress, he ate lunch with prisoners. He is using the power of one of the most influential positions in the world to advocate for the poor. He chooses to live in a simple apartment instead of the papal palace. In the United States he rode in a Fiat rather than a luxury car. In spurning the trappings of luxury normally associated with his office he is changing the notions of the papacy.
France is Pope only because his predecessor, Pope Benedict, took the unprecedented step of resigning. Benedict too chose to let go of power. As different as those two men are they have both followed in the footsteps of Jesus in whom God let go of power.
Those of us who follow Jesus are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes to us each in different ways and enables us to do things we might never have thought possible.
I asked a month ago on Face book for stories of how people had experienced the power of the Spirit. A former seminary classmate told how his normally shy wife who hates speaking in public went on a spiritual retreat, called Walk to Emmaus. At the end she ran to the front to give a five minute testimony about how she had experienced God.
Another person wrote about how the Holy Spirit is present at AA and NA meetings so that people who never thought they could last for a day without a drink have attained sobriety.
JW wrote, "I believe I get to see God's work every day, specifically at the Habitat Surplus Store. According to the calculations and projections of Habitat for Humanity International we shouldn't be making any money at all." The Store is doing well.
Like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, power used justly nourishes life.