BBC Sermon 20 September 2009

Bible readings: Prov 31:10-31, Jas 3:13-4:3, 7-8, Mark 9:30-37

Theme: Power, status and competition

How much power do you think you have?

How much status do you think you have?

Who do you feel you have to compete with?

If you’re like me you probably often feel that you don’t have any power or status. Feeling helpless and powerless is a fairly common experience for most of us. I recall when I was having a hard time in a previous church my outrageous daughter Liz bought me a badge with the message, ‘What I want is more money, more power, and less crap from you people’! (actually the four letter word was even more shocking). I didn’t ever wear it in church. We can all feel powerless from time-to-time.

I want to link three concepts together this morning: Power, Status, and Competition. Many of us spend our whole lives in the pursuit of recognition – esteem from others to bolster the self esteem that we lack in ourselves. We can blame our parents for not encouraging us enough  when we were little tackers, but I think it is more deeply embedded than just our nurture in childhood. From the womb we struggle to know our place in the world and to make our place in the world. Who am I and where do I fit within the world in which I find myself?

Philosophers like Sören Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich and Ernest Becker link the anxiety of the struggle to understand ourselves with our awareness, more than any other animal, that one day we will die. Tillich described anxiety as ‘the state in which a being is aware of its possible non being’. Every time I go to a funeral, and I’ve been to some big ones lately, I am conscious that some day, perhaps not all that far in the future, that will be me lying in that coffin. That realisation doesn’t necessarily create instant anxiety for me, but like all people, I experience anxiety on a regular basis and these philosophers argue that it is bottom line about this awareness that one day, I will be not as a physical presence in the world. Tillich and Becker agree that one of the most significant factors in anxiety is our need to find meaning in our existence, and that brings us back to the question of power and status; our desperate need for meaning can lead us to struggle to be someone who makes an impact on the world. To do that we need some power and influence to make a difference – how often do we hear politicians tell us that they went in to politics because they believed they could make a difference. Unpack that and we find the same need for meaning and significance that is common to us all, the question is ‘How do we go about achieving it?’ Listening to the politicians in question time fills me at times with a sense of despair. If our national leaders can speak in the public arena with such disrespect for each other in order to win an argument, God help us and future generations of our children who learn from their example. The need for significance in order to overcome our anxiety about dying can lead us into a competition for supremacy that leads us to dis-empower others.

Show Leunig cartoon on overhead

The story in Mark’s Gospel tells us about Jesus and the disciples wandering through Galilee on the way to Capernaum. On the journey Jesus told them that he was going to be betrayed, that he was going to die, but that he was going to rise after three days. They didn’t have a clue what he meant, but this was talk of death, of mortality. He must have walked on his own for a distance because when they arrived in Capernaum he asked them what they had been discussing with each other on the way. They were too ashamed to tell him because, while Jesus had just told them of his impending death, they were arguing about who was the greatest in the company of the disciples, who was the star (did they mean who would become the leader when Jesus died?) Like us and all people, the disciples had a need to know that their lives had meaning, that they counted for something. They had a need for status, to be the first among the disciples.

Jesus response is profound for all of us who feel called to be leaders in the church or in society:

Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.

Then he took a little child in his arms and said:

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.

Matthew goes even further and has Jesus say:

Unless you turn around and become humble like this little child you won’t get into heaven.

There can be no other form of leadership than servant leadership for those who follow Jesus. We need to look for the meaning and significance of our lives, not in power over others, nor in being the greatest or the winner, but in knowing that as we serve others, particularly the vulnerable such as our children, we are serving God.

This principle applies not only to leadership within the church, it applies to the whole of life. I love the picture that Proverbs 31 paints of the good wife. She is a woman of rank and privilege – in fact the whole of Proverbs is about rules for living in the court of the king, and this good woman’s husband is an elder, or a judge, who dispenses justice at the city gate. But this woman does not bask in the reflected glory of her husband. She is a business woman who runs a cottage industry in fabric and clothing, who buys and sells property and establishes a vineyard. She runs her household with good systems and with compassion, she reaches out her hands to the needy and opens her mouth with wisdom and kindness. This is the Therese Rein of the 8^th Century BC. What a woman. She is constrained within a patriarchal society but does not allow that to rob her of industry and dignity in her own right. She is a servant leader of her household and her community.

This is not a gender issue. I have a son-in-law who has taken on the role of house husband and stay at home father to my grandchildren while my daughter works as a fairly senior HR person with General Motors. He has learned to cook for the family and invited guests, he walks the children to and from school every day, takes them to basketball and other sport activities, attends parent teacher interviews, and does as best he can all of the multitude of household tasks that women have traditionally done. This is a man with an MBA who has put his own career path on hold to serve the family. He is a good husband, and he has blossomed since taking on the role. His only flaw is that he barracks for St Kilda and will be insufferable if they win next week.

So the qualities of the good wife are qualities of servanthood that are not confined to gender, status, place or time. They are principles which challenge the need for coercive power and ferocious competition in order to achieve status and meaning in life.

It is interesting that none of the first group of disciples eventually emerged as the leader of the Christian community. In Acts 15 we find that it is James who speaks with authority at the council of Jerusalem. Whether he is the author of the epistle of James is doubtful, but the sentiments expressed in the letter reflect those of a person who recognises the pitfalls of power, status and competition:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.

Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.

For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Power: we all have it even in small measure, so be aware of the power you have and use it gently and wisely.

Status: that is something that other people give you, and like the political polls, can just as quickly withdraw. Do not hunger and thirst after status to bolster your flagging self confidence, but after what is right whether popular or not.

Competition: listen to what those of a different persuasion have to say. You just might discover that they are right.