Power + Purpose
THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
Isaiah 40:21-31 • Psalm 147:1-12, 21c • 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 • Mark 1:29-39
In our local community organizing effort, we spend time talking about power. Power means different things to different people, and people feel certain ways about power. In building our relationships of trust here in Northwest Arkansas, we take time to listen to one another, especially when it comes to sharing stories of lived experiences, when people take the vulnerable and brave step to make their pain public. In our training sessions, we practice listening to individual stories, and we come together around common understandings, like our working definition of power. Using Robert Linthicum’s definition in his book Building a People of Power, we agree that “power is the capacity, ability, and willingness to act.” [1] Community organizing is about building people power, organizing lots of people (through institutions) who have power, who have the capacity, ability, and willingness to act. After hearing testimonies and having empathy for the struggles and pressures our neighbors face, we are not only willing but yearn to act, to alleviate their suffering. It is slow and intentional work, this relationship-building, to provide a firm foundation for organized people power, to have the people connected and organized before there is a program or agenda.
Just as we humans can work intentionally to build up power, we can also choose to diminish the power of others. Do you think the Israelites felt very powerful in their exile in Babylon? We’re given to believe that Chapter 40 from Isaiah addresses those who have been in exile maybe 40 to 60 years. A population of people were driven from their homeland, un-represented in the systems that surround them, and had no foothold for any kind of social or political mobility. In their place, might we feel stuck? Trapped? Might we despair? In survival mode, isn’t all our power put into securing the basics? When systems larger and more powerful than any one of us–or any small group of us–actively work against us to oppress us, don’t they negate our actions? Force our hand? Drive us to keep trying again and again until we lose our willingness? Our hope?
“My way is hidden from the Lord,/and my right is disregarded by my God,” cried out the Israelites, and through the prophet, their consolation comes not in coddling but in not-so-gentle training. If you’ve ever had physical therapy, you know that recovery can be more painful than the surgery where at least we were unconscious. Like our body breaking through scar tissue and rebuilding muscle memory, Isaiah works on the theological memory of the Israelites who can’t see beyond or remember anything other than their despair. As justified as they may be in their oppressive state, don’t they know? Haven’t they heard? Who is their Creator? Do they think there’s someplace they could be hidden from God? Do they think that God isn’t aware of their plight? Do they think they can know the infinite or understand the vastness of God’s wisdom? While he may be exasperated, Isaiah hasn’t given up on them, and God never has, never will.
Even in their darkest hour, they have power. Their capacity, ability, and willingness to act faithfully is in waiting for the LORD (Isaiah 40:31). More accurately translated, they are “trusters” in the LORD, according to Dr. Wright, Hebrew scholar and my Old Testament professor in seminary. The Israelites can exercise hope; they can keep their will intact. Their strength will build, and however hard and humbling it may be, they will persevere in faithful waiting and hope until the time comes, in God’s time, for their deliverance.
And God has God’s own way of showing up.
In the Gospel according to Mark, there’s always a sense of urgency. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever, and as soon as they get to the house, the disciples tell Jesus about it “at once.” Jesus takes her by the hand, lifts her up, and the fever leaves her. In her restored health she serves them. So urgent is the timing, so swift the capacity, ability, and willingness to act, that it’s not until afterward that we realize that the action all happened during the day, before sundown. It all happened during the sabbath, when no work should have been performed. But the capacity, ability, and willingness to heal and be healed was not bound to any restriction or construct. So fully restored to life and power, the matriarch serves them, even before the sabbath is over. She serves them, apparently serving them in a similar way the angels served Jesus in the wilderness. It’s also translated as “ministering,” the Greek word diakonos (διάκονος), which is also where we get our word for deacon. Some scholars go as far as to suggest Peter’s mother-in-law serves as the first deacon.
No time to linger there, however. Night falls and the whole city gathers around the home, as word of Jesus’s power to cast out demons and to heal has spread. Jesus keeps quiet the demons, who, like the reader, know who Jesus really is. We also get the insight of Jesus taking time to be still and listen to God, taking time to pray. It’s the disciples who hunt Jesus this time, the disciples who don’t yet understand who Jesus is and want him to get back to work, who want to direct his power the way they think it should go.
Jesus, however, trained in prayer, disciplined in power, directs them in the way he will go. “Let’s go this way, so I can act there, too, for this is what I came to do.” And what is it he’s come to do? Proclaim the message and cast out demons. He’s come to share the good news and heal the sick. He knows his purpose, that he brings salvation to the people and restores them to wholeness in God. He will exercise power among them, show them how to live into their power, too, like Peter’s mother-in-law, like every other healed person that will follow him because they’ve been restored, and even if they can’t explain or don’t understand, they will know that they’ve been touched by God, their lives forever changed. They will know that their suffering was not the end of their story, that there’s more at work in this life than they may be able to see because God is with them. Their stories can then inspire others to be “trusters” in the Lord, and if others aren’t yet ready to act, maybe they can abide in the wondering and work to receive the compassion that is being extended to them.
There was a group of people getting organized in Tulsa the night before a community action. In a formation room of a Lutheran church, a diverse group of educators, faith leaders, organizers, doctors, advocates and more were reminded of what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said about power in his 1967 manuscript Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. (I looked it up for the fuller quote than we were given at the session.) King said, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” So acting for the sake of acting without connection, without relationship, without compassion, is destructive, and loving without action is just a feeling without depth or meaning or substance. King continues, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Jesus was powerful. He showed up among those who had been cast down and out, listened to those who were being oppressed by powers and principalities that were not of God. Jesus was about bringing justice, correcting everything that stood against love, exercising power to heal the afflicted and cast out evil. And Jesus Christ is still organizing the power of the people who rally around Love, who have a sense of urgency in healing what is broken and sick in our world today. We have the power to affect change in our world. One-to-one or together in power, united in Christ and joining with others in our community in common purpose, we might be the very ones to reveal God’s power here and now, in our time, healing the brokenhearted and lifting the lowly. In every time and place and for everyone, there’s no limit to what God’s power and love can do.
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/Building_a_People_of_Power.html?id=N0yUCgAAQBAJ
© 2024 The Rev. Sara Milford
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas