A big boy on a playground experiences a rush of excitement when he punches a smaller boy. According to the raw, wild rules of animal instinct, the stronger boy has established dominance over the smaller boy. He delights in the initial surge of adrenalin and later, though he may feel some regret late at night when he is alone with his soul, he cannot help feeling a swell of intoxicating pleasure when he sees the fear that now appears in the other child’s face.
This, the big boy says to himself, is power.
Power, that begins as the simple exercise of physical strength, becomes a kind of intoxication in the influence of fear.
Power, in this very human sense, is the pleasure of exerting one’s will over another person.
In human terms the measure of an individual’s power is calculated by the quantity of people that the individual can exert his or her will over. The librarian who hushes a group of people who are chatting in the reading room has a modest amount of power. The President who can orchestrate legislation that gives, or takes away medical insurance from millions of people – has considerably more power.
This is a vertical view of power. The power that is exerted from above.
Is this how we should understand God’s power?
In today’s reading from the Epistle to the Colossians, we encounter the Apostle Paul in one of his more blustery, opinionated moments. Actually, Paul may not have written this letter – scholars are divided on this question. Be that as it may, whoever wrote this letter to the faithful in Colossi was not in the mood to mince words.
The writer tells his readers to
Set your minds on the things that are above,
Then he (the writer was, in all likelihood, a man) offers some straightforward ethical advice, saying:
now you must get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another,
While this advice is sweeping and probably very difficult to maintain, I can go along with the underlying sentiment. These are good ethical aspirations to hold to.
But when the writer says:
Put to death whatever in you is earthly
I start to get nervous.
To my 21st century ears the advice starts to sound, at this point, more like a tirade…
Put to death whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
I begin to wonder if the author of the letter might have been one of those dried up humorless fire and brimstone fellows who insist that the human body is the devil’s playground, and that all physical pleasure is a sin? Was he one of those insufferable pontificators, who can’t stand the sight of people having fun? It begins to sound that way when he says that it is, quote
On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.
So, are we to believe that the human body is inherently evil?
Is it wrong to dance?
Is human sexuality, in all its variation, a sin against God?
I don’t believe any of it.
Over the centuries, the literal interpretation and the inflexible imposition of such ideas have been used to justify unreasonable cultural austerity. But that’s really the least of it. Equating sexuality with sin has been used to rationalize all manner of unthinkable social practices, like conversion therapy, anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilization and honor killings.
These forms of oppression, not surprisingly, are much more likely to affect women than men.
So why do so many religious traditions – including Christianity – consider the things of the body – and in particular the process of human reproduction – sinful?
**
The more that I concern myself with the Bible — and it is very much my business to do so — the more I am convinced that this vast and important body of sacred literature is, in many ways, formed by the friction that results from two major themes that are continually vying to control the narrative.
Each of these themes can be summed up using one word.
One of the themes is Power.
The other theme is Love.
For a while Power takes control of the narrative.
Do this!
Don’t do that!
If you obey, you and all your offspring will be blessed.
But if you do not obey you and all your offspring will be thrown into the pit to burn for eternity.
Then at other points, Love is the dominant theme.
Love God with all your heart and mind and spirit.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Feed the hungry…
Visit the prisoner
Sometimes you can see both love and power at work at the same time, and the scripture feels tense or confused.
The result is the Bible – an immense body of work that is dedicated to understanding God, but does so in an all too human way.
Is our experience of the Divine, the experience of being controlled? If so, what is our role – how are we to live as people of faith?
Or, is our experience of the Divine, the experience of being loved? If so, what is our role as people of faith?
The answers to these questions have, unfortunately, been less about what God is, than about what humans want from God.
For those who are interested in power, God is a good collaborator – but only if His motives (in such cases God is usually male) are suspiciously similar to their own.
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image, wrote Anne Lamott “when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
As you know, I have a dog in this race. You can tell where my sympathies Iie in this argument by the fact that every time I begin a prayer, I invoke the Divine with the words “Gracious and Loving God.”
You do not hear me say “Almighty God…”
My ministry is dedicated to emphasizing the love of God.
I spend little to no time or effort discussing the power of God.
By this I do not intend to suggest that God is not powerful. If we, as people of faith, believe that there is a divine principle at work in the universe – that there is a mystery greater than ourselves that is somehow involved, not only in the creation of all things, but also the sustenance, well being and ultimate salvation of all things, than it would absurd to suggest that such divinity is not filled with great power – power that extends far beyond our limited mortal minds can imagine.
Can we speculate about the nature of divine power?
The big boy on a playground embodies the vertical nature of power. Though it is understandable and quite natural that we might imagine God in these terms, it is always very dangerous to do so.
Looked at in these terms it is not hard to see human history as a playground for tyrants who have made God in their own image.
That said, there is another way that we humans have manipulated the power of God.
This is a kind of horizontal power. This power is not exerted over the people by those in power. This is the kind of power that people exert over each other. There are many names for this. Piety. Social expectation. Cultural norms. Status. Appearances. Honor.
As people of faith, we should have our eyes open to this manipulation of God’s power, because we are susceptible to it. The discussion of sexuality that got us into all this speculation about power, is a good example of this misuse of God’s power.
From a purely functional standpoint, I consider it the height of absurdity that any religious belief system should call sex a sin.
Why?
Well, think about it…
If God designed us in such a way that, in order to consummate our love for each other, and fulfil our instinct to have children, we are forced to sin against the Divine… then doesn’t it seem like God rigged the game against us? I get that human suffering is part of human life, but I don’t think God created us and put us here in order to make us suffer. Is that the much celebrated Divine Plan?
I will not lend my voice to advocate a view of Christianity that perpetuates such violence.
So I shy away from preaching on scripture passages that complain bitterly about the sin of sexuality. What good does it do us, today, to fixate on ideas that we have worked so hard, as a culture, to overcome?
**
But as I wrote this sermon, I noticed something that alters much of what I have said.
In the passage from Colossians that has stimulated all this talk about power, the writer does not condemn sex itself as immoral. Rather, he condemns sexual immorality.
Sex may not be immoral itself, but there certainly is such a thing as sexual immorality.
A prime example of sexual immorality – the practice of taking underage girls and grooming them to become the sexual toys of wealthy men – is very much in the news at the moment.
Condemning such practices is not, I would argue, a misuse of God’s power.
I would call that an expression of God’s Love.
Just as it is possible for powerful people to manipulate God’s power to satisfy their desire for control, it is likewise possible, for people like you and me – people of faith – to cultivate God’s love as an active reality in our world.
I like to think of God’s power in this way – as the horizontal insistence, in community – that God’s love is the power that governs our decisions.
Amen.