This Sunday is also World Food Day. We will be discussing that during the Time for the Young at Heart.
The Scripture Reading this week is Mark 10:35-45
The Sermon title is Power Play
Early Thoughts Over the last few months we have heard a lot of discussion about power and authority, compliance and resistance. And as is often the case I am not sure we understand what power and authority are really about.
Vaccine mandates (or lack there of), mask requirements, limitations on social activities. Do we abide by them? Do we advocate for them to be put into place and enforced? Do we protest them and refuse to comply? What is the appropriate response to power as followers of Christ?
First we need to ask where power and authority come from. And we need to ask if it is justified. We need to consider the end goals -- are they to have power over and exert control or are they to build up a safe community for all members?
Power in the Kingdom of God is different. It is not based on power over or special status. It is based on servanthood. That is what James and John, and the rest of the crowd, get wrong. James and John think they can ask for special status, status that puts them in the places of importance, status that will give them some form of authority. To be fair, the rest of the disciples have the same understanding of that status -- why else would they be indignant that James and John had the gall to ask. But Jesus gently chastises them as he points out that power and authority in the Kingdom of God, that land of Shalom, the world of Harmony are very different.
To this day I think we get power and authority wrong. We still tend grant it based on things other than servanthood and the building up of a safe community. Sometimes we give someone power because they say they will make things better for people like us, or because they promise to control the troublemakers, or because their biases are the same as ours, or because they promise us freedom. Christ still calls us to see power in terms of serving and loving. Christ still calls us to recognize that the las will be first, and the first last, and that to lead is to serve.
Will we be like James and John? Will we seek special status?
Will we refuse to comply or balk at rules set out to build a safe community because they are inconvenient or they seem to rob us of some sort of freedom? DO our needs and beliefs trump the needs of our neighbours?
OR will we seek power that comes from putting others first, power based on servanthood, power that does not seek to control the other?
--Gord
AS a side note, did you know that they motto of the Prince of Wales, Ich Dien, means I serve?
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