Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
“I believe the root of all evil is the abuse of power.”
This statement by writer Patricia Cornwell is strongly reflected in today’s gospel. Power, and how it is abused, is a primary story line found in nearly every biblical account from the garden of Eden to the Egyptian pharaohs and Israelite kings, continuing with the infamous Pontius Pilate, and ending with the sweeping condemnation found in the Book of Revelation.
The stories of power, and its misuse, are legend and reach into every dimension of life to this day – including the centuries long subjugation of women, the similarly horrifying treatment of slaves, the blatant greed of the pharmaceutical industry’s involvement in the recent opioid crisis, and the devastating addiction throughout the modern world to child pornography and child sex slavery.
The stories of power, and its misuse, are legion and reach into every dimension of life involving the workplace, politics, church, marriage, relationships, and even parenting.
In today’s gospel, the misuse of power is central to Jesus’ teaching.
Here we find him speaking forcefully about what the good use of power looks like as compared to its opposite.
Good power, Jesus passionately argues, embraces a selfless, benevolent dimension. It involves the sharing of burdens, not the imposition of millstones around the necks of others.
Admittedly, this argument of Jesus requires a substantial upgrade in human consciousness. It is clearly the opposite of reveling in our vanity and self-importance, the opposite of seeking vengeance and domination, the opposite of desperately advancing ourselves to suppress others, the opposite of valuing money more than morals.
Notice, for example, the contrast that Jesus emphasizes between the bad use of power and the good:
“Do whatever the scribes and Pharisees teach you … but do not do what they do.”
Why? Because “they do not practice what they preach …. They do all their deeds to be seen by others ….”
In contrast to this misuse of power, Jesus offers an opposing truth:
“The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This teaching represents the heart of the ethics that must belong to the new faith community that Jesus is founding – as it must be in our faith community now some 2000 years old.
Implied in Jesus’ teaching about the rightful use of power are four major themes:
First: Walk the walk. Don’t just talk the talk. Central to this teaching is the connection that must exist between the word and the deed. We are what we do, now what we say.
Second: Make certain that your use of power is always directed to love towards others. The law of love does not involve preaching or teaching so much as doing. Action is what makes the difference.
Third: Piety is an internal affair of the heart. It is not about impressing people or looking for ways to be honored and glorified.
Fourth: We are all called to a life of holiness, not only those in leadership positions. It is not the “job” of priests, ministers and religious leaders to be holy. The call from Jesus to live a new kind of life, embracing a new kind of power, extends to everyone.
The good use of power involves developing a new kind of language, a new set of words – words like: “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
This is the kind of language that Jesus promotes in today’s gospel … the language that protects children, the poor, the hungry, the dismissed, the irrelevant, the less-than’s. It’s the kind of language that moves us as a people from violence to nonviolence, from imperial power to relational power, from domination to transformation.
The ultimate result of using this kind of language will then become a primary way of living lives of kindness.
And, as Mark Twain powerfully reminds us: “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
11/2/17
