Deliberate Powerlessness
Link to Video: https://www.facebook.com/138797592802860/videos/972119743247969
Thumbnail image by Shankar S, used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
June 28, 2020—Proper 8A
Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
This is such a beautiful message about hospitality that we can easily miss the point. We get mixed up with later passages in Matthew, when Jesus commands us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. So, we hear him talk about giving out cups of cold water and we think it’s the same thing. We think it’s asking us to give those who are thirsty something to drink.
And we miss the fact that the point is actually OUR thirst.
It was, once again, Debie Thomas over at Journey with Jesus who pointed this out to me. Pointed out that this isn’t about followers of Jesus giving out water. It’s about followers of Jesus who are sent out with nothing, who will depend on strangers to care for their housing, their food and drink. It’s a reminder that Jesus ministered from the margins, and sent his followers to do the same: to go in humility, depending on the hospitality of others, rather than giving hospitality themselves.[i]
What does that mean for us? What relevance does it have for a Christian who happens not to be an itinerant peasant? Do those who are poor have a head-start on this whole Christianity thing? Maybe. Jesus certainly says enough things in the Gospel that would suggest that they do! But why? And how can someone like me catch up?
Honestly, it’s tempting just to skip ahead to the part where I use my money to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. But then I would miss what Jesus has to teach me about the gospel message, and the ground in which it flourishes. And it turns out, that before I can spread the good news, I need to think about power.
As individuals, we have a variety of experience. We are at the center; having plenty and security and social standing. We are at the margins; not having enough, and worrying about rent, food, health, legal status. Those experiences will affect how we hear this passage, but not always in predictable ways.
Because it’s an invitation for ALL of us to consider the dynamics of power, and explore how we feel when we have to receive help. In a world which often equates such things with weakness and shame, this joyful invitation Jesus extends to his followers is so incredibly counter-cultural! Go empty handed, he commands us. Go with nothing, so that you will have to depend on others to feed and house you.
Be deliberately powerless.
Do this, because the gospel message flourishes best in the ground of vulnerability. To be a messenger of the good news, you must be willing to admit your own need. And we all have needs, even if we’ve got money, even if we’ve got a spouse and a family, even if we’ve got all the social capital in the world. All those things do is help us hide our neediness from others. Sometimes, they even hide our neediness from our own selves! But we all have wounds, we all have yearning, we all have NEED. And admitting your need is the first step in evangelism. ‘Cause if you have no needs, then you have no need of salvation, so why would anyone listen to you?
I am hungry for so many things. I am hurt. I am lost. I am thirsty. If I share this vulnerability with you, and you give me a cup of water, then we have lived out the good news Jesus calls us into. From there, we can go deeper; you can acknowledge your needs, and I will be drawn into those; and Christ will be with us as we grow more and more connected.
The good news requires your vulnerability. You have to admit how much you need it. That’s the first reason to be deliberately powerless.
The second is to remind you that the only strength you need is the power of the gospel. Take only the good news, Jesus tells his followers. Relinquish whatever other status you might have.
This is a challenge for many of us on an individual level. But it’s also a challenge for the Church, whenever and wherever the Church has become part of the establishment, entrenched in the center of national and political life. When the Church is wealthy, and respected, and influential, the Church will be profoundly called out by this charge from Jesus:
If you want to bear the good news, you will need to give up that power. Go forward with no power other than the message; which is to say, the healing mercy of forgiveness, the self-emptying of the cross, and the life-giving promise of resurrection. That’s all you need.
You don’t need to be rich; you don’t need to be a gifted preacher; you don’t need to be impressive. Because it’s not supposed to be about you. Which is … disappointing, but liberating too. It’s not about you: all of the integrity and the power and the salvation comes from Jesus.
It changes things, to be sent like this, in deliberate powerlessness. To be honest, it’s a very different model from the one the Church often lives out, when we are called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. If we begin from the admission of our own neediness, if we give up our own power and standing, we can no longer bask in the image of ourselves as gracious benefactors, handing down blessings to the less fortunate.
That’s a hard thing to give up. Because that model left us with all the power, but still allowed us to feel like good people. Talk about virtue signaling!
But, as Jesus reminds us, this isn’t about us. The point of being the Church is not to be seen as fine, upstanding citizens. In fact, if we truly live into the call to surrender power and prestige, in order to minister from the margins, we will probably be seen as pretty questionable citizens. In a country that worships power and prestige (which is to say, pretty much any country), it would be a whole lot easier not to be Christian.
But something in us is drawn to it anyway. Drawn to Jesus, and his values which are so strange, and yet promise so much life, so much flourishing for all people. Something in us longs for his kingdom, yearns for it as though it is a place we have always known yet have never actually been.
There is a word in Welsh, hiraeth, that is a deep, yearning kind of homesickness. It carries something of a place that never truly existed, or one you can’t return to, but my favorite definition is “a longing to be where your spirit lives.” This is as good a description as any for the impulse within us to go where Jesus sends us, even if it means terrifying vulnerability and powerlessness. We go, because something in us tells us that this is where our spirit belongs. We go, because it is abundant, flourishing, everlasting life. We go, because it so clearly leads straight into the heart of God. May it be so. Amen.
[i] Debie Thomas: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2672-welcome-the-prophet