I was a part of a book club for many years in Reno and we read all sorts of things. Novels, essay collections, short stories, non-fiction – all over the place. One of them was a sci-fi novel called The Power. The premise was an imagination of the ramifications of women gaining the power to send electric shocks through their hands – shock powerful enough to kill or harm at will. The idea was to wonder what would happen if the physical dominance that men have over women suddenly shifted to women.

This book was the only book I chose not to finish. It was an excellent read, but it was such a dark representation of dysfunctional power dynamics I just couldn’t handle it. Or at least I didn’t want to. Mostly I read to be uplifted or learn. Or I want to be entertained. What I didn’t want from a book was soul-crushing desolation, so I opted out. However, if that is what you’re looking for in your next book, I can highly recommend The Power by Naomi Alderman.

I couldn’t bear to finish the book, but I still went to the meeting and chimed in. We ended up having a great discussion on the nature of power, specifically on the difference between ‘power over’ others and ‘power with’ others.

Power can be dangerous, particularly when it is wielded by people who glory in that power, who want that power, who enjoy setting the rules to fulfill their agenda regardless of the cries of protest of other people. When we exert power over others we often don’t care, or at least not a lot, if others don’t agree with what’s happening. I suppose sometimes this is necessary, like sending your kids to bed despite their howls of protest. Every night.

But us humans can get carried away with exerting this kind of power over others, getting confused about when it is right, appropriate, and loving to exert that sort of power over others. It is loving to send your toddler to bed on time, despite their protests. It would be different to insist on the same level of control over your spouse, for example.

Hopefully no one does that, but there are plenty of examples of people flexing and asserting power over one another on multiple levels – individually, organizationally, societally, and on global scales. Conflicts erupt as we fight over who gets to have control  and power over others. So, in our book group discussion, some talked about power purely in this harsh way and concluded that power is bad.

However, that’s too simple. Without power, we can’t do anything. In physics, power is defined as a measure of how much work can get done within a system. Without power, nothing happens. We can think of power as our capacity to get stuff done, to change our situations. Without power, we can’t create the change we want to see in the world. We make the mistake sometimes of seeing power only as power over other people. We mistakenly think that unless we can dominate others, then we have no power. In my book club conversation, this is how some of us were defining power and rightly naming it as toxic.

But power isn’t toxic if it is simply the capacity to get stuff done. Domination is a different story.

Our texts today focus on power. In our 2 Corinthians text, Paul writes that “power is made perfect in weakness.” What does he mean? First of all, this is an acknowledgement that power is indeed a good thing. We need power to do things. But power in weakness is clearly not domination. In fact, domination is what Jesus stood against, taught against. The human drive for domination is what killed Jesus. Power and domination are separate things.

Power in weakness, or as I would call it, ‘power with’ looks like the Civil Rights Movement or Ghandi’s campaign to end British colonial control of India. It may also look like a healthy marriage where two people are free to express their feelings, confusions, and needs without being told to be quiet. It may look like a church deciding how to manage assets with transparency, openness, and a heart to be of service. It may look like Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a war horse, being celebrated by the poor and powerless instead of the powerful elites. It may look like dying on the cross.

The power and beauty in all these examples is undeniable. The world was changed by some of these examples, but healthy power dynamics in our personal lives can also unleash a sense of liberation, trust, and love in our lives.

Power is a big and real topic for us to wrestle with, especially when it is so easy to feel powerless in the face of our fraught times. Jesus’ invitation to us is to seek power with others for the sake of ourselves and all of us.

This is a big distinction from the normal ways we seek power in our world. Almost always we reach for power over the ones we don’t agree with. We think we need to win, to dominate for our agendas to take precedence.

But Paul tells us power is perfected in weakness, meaning power with others will always transform our current power struggles with others into something healthy, whole, and beautiful. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but that is the invitation.

In today’s gospel, we read that Jesus’ ability to perform “acts of power” were diminished. The people of his hometown were not having this fancy-pants Jesus tell them what to do. They were not going to acknowledge his power, this upstart who has gotten too big for his britches. Jesus’ works of power were limited in this setting because his healings involved people’s participation. In last week’s gospel, Jesus told the woman with the hemorrhage that her faith made her whole, made her well. She was participating in power with Jesus.

The folks in this week’s gospel said thanks but no thanks to all of that, because they think they knew better. They had no curiosity or openness to what power they could enter into with him, and it stopped that flow of power to change people’s lives. Afterall, Jesus wasn’t going to assert his power over the people in his hometown and force them into anything. He wasn’t going to force them to experience the beauty of God’s power in their midst. Jesus did not exercise power over anyone.

Then Jesus sent out his disciples to attend to the needs of the people of the area while taking nothing with them. They were tasked with heading out with no ability to assert their power over anyone. In fact, they needed to enter new relationships of mutual care and support. If they were not brought into relationship, they were told to move on and shake the bad vibes and the dust off their feet as they went. They were not to force anyone as they looked for opportunities to do the work of bringing God’s Kingdom close and doing it together with the people.

Anyone have the experience of someone telling you to love Jesus or you’ll burn in hell? Was that effective? How about a pushy salesperson or marketing person? Or someone trying to win a fight. It doesn’t feel good, does it? It doesn’t feel like good news. It doesn’t feel like freedom or like coming home or like healing. What it feels like is someone trying to assert power over you. In case you haven’t noticed this yet in your life, us humans do not like this. We tend to resist this, in fact, even if it’s not in our best interest to do so, like our hometown folks rejecting the care and love of Jesus. What we want is to be included, heard, loved, respected, cared about, even if we are being ridiculous.

Jesus knows this. Paul knows this. Ezekiel knows this, from our first reading.

As followers of Jesus, how we approach power is important. We should, imho, strive for power but with others to change the world for the better. This means listening, being humble and ready to learn. This might also mean giving the credit to other people. “Your faith has made you well,” Jesus told the woman from last week.  

I encourage you to look for ways to participate in experiencing power with others. So many of us are feeling powerless and afraid in our world. I include myself among the people who are afraid and frustrated with my sense of powerlessness, at times.

When we think about power as being something more akin to control, then truly we are powerless. But if we think about power as being something we nurture, grow, and exercise with other people for the sake of our wholeness, then perhaps power begins to seem not so distant. Like Ezekiel, we can listen to God’s call, God’s nudge for us to go out, speak what feels like a burning truth on our lips, and find ways to get engaged with others in ways that are powerful and redemptive.  

God’s way of transforming the world and ushering in the Kingdom of God is not top-down control. God’s power isn’t power over others. God’s power is a power that emerges through relationships of mutual care and support. It emerges through the ways that we lay down our lives, our agendas, and our self-centeredness for the sake of the whole. Perhaps this is power perfected in weakness. God help us to learn this lesson, to open our hearts and souls to each other. And God help us to discern what is power in weakness, power with others, and what is just giving up power. May God help us walk in the grace of power that flows when it is shared within your beloved human family.

AMEN