(~) I HAVE THE POWER A Sermon by Thomas R. Henry May 7, 2006

TEXTS: Ephesians 4:22-27 / John 10:11-18

I have some wonderful friends. Not long ago, some of those wonderful friends gave me a clock. Not the beautiful German-made clock that some of you have seen in my office, but this battery powered plastic clock. It has the face of Jesus on every hour from noon to midnight. And the words: “There is always time for Jesus.” It s quite special.

Actually, there doesn t seem to be much “time for Jesus” in the more liberal churches. Yes, there is a great deal of attention given to the Cuddly Christ of Christmas and the Crucified and Resurrected Christ of Holy Week, but the rest of the church year is more focused on the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus: the Golden Rule, the Great Commandment, and the parables. Not much attention is given to the flesh and blood Jesus and what he might have been thinking and feeling. But the flesh and blood Jesus has been the topic of more than the usual number of discussions I have had with people recently, so I thought that maybe I had better heed the clock and take some “time for Jesus.”

The Gospel lesson from John is about Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and when this scripture comes around every 3 years or so, most preachers dust off their sheep sermon and tweak it a bit. You no doubt have heard many sermons on the Good Shepherd. But what kept bouncing around in my brain as I read this passage assigned for this particular Sunday did not have anything to do with sheep. Instead, I kept coming back to one or two lines in which Jesus is referring to his life. He says: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again.”

“I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again.” The writer of the Gospel seems to be making it clear that Jesus is not a victim of circumstance. That neither life, nor death, nor any earthly principality is doing this to him. That neither the government, nor the evils of the day, nor even God, is taking his life from him. He is laying it down of his own accord, and he will take it up again.

Theologians continue to debate scripture passages like this. Scholars debate free will, and especially the free will Jesus had or did not have. Could he have lived or died any differently than he did? Did God control him? Did God control the circumstances?

As I was taking time for Jesus this week, I realized that of all the things that I have been taught about Jesus from the time I was a child, I have never been taught to feel sorry for Jesus. Somehow the truth of what John has Jesus say about his life was passed on to me: “I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up again.” He laid down his life. But he was not a doormat.

“I have the power.” I believe that those words hold the key to life, to the abundant life which Jesus talked about and lived. In those words is the key to survival amid the anxiety and violence of our time.

The author of a book entitled The Rage Within: Anger in Modern Life, says that anger is the dominant emotion in American life today and that anger often erupts into rage in those who believe they do not have “the power” over their lives. I am not sure I completely believe that anger is the dominant emotion in our country. But I know all too well the numbers of people who believe, sometimes with very good reason, that God, or some person, or society is “doing it to them.” Those who believe themselves the victims of circumstances over which they have no control.

Victim is a word we hear almost every day and maybe even think of ourselves in this way. Yet, it is interesting that out of the approximately 775,000 words in the English language (New Revised Standard Version) Bible, the word “victim” appears only eight times. (Four in the Hebrew scriptures which we also call the Old Testament and four in the New Testament, sometimes now called the Second Testament.)

As I took time for Jesus this week, I discovered that Jesus never used the word “victim” or any word with the same meaning. At least not in anything that is recorded in the Gospels. In spite of all that happened to Jesus and his disciples and to his own Jewish people, there was still the belief, deep down, that he had the power to lay down his life and to take it up again. Oh, there were moments of doubt and wavering, to be sure, but he always got his groove back. Because he believed in a God who was with him, a God who was always with him, and most certainly within him.

Today, there are thousands, no millions of people, including people who say they have faith, in this country and around the world who believe themselves to be victims because they believe they do not have the power, any power over anything, and most especially over their own lives. And as a result, we are all paying the price of the rage that erupts not only in overt violence on the streets or in homes, but sometimes more covertly, and seemingly more civilized, in the anger that lurks in the laws of the land.

It s not only the poor who are prone to victimhood. Although those who are mired in poverty certainly seem to have good reason to believe that someone is doing it to them, but all too often those who are poor, and those who are poor in spirit, are encouraged to believe that they are victims in order to further the agendas of those who want to have power over them.

But it s not only the poor. It s also those with many of life’s resources who are being overcome by the belief that something or someone is doing it to them. That something or someone is taking their life from them. That they do not have the power. Those who fear their company pension being taken away or a corporate merger and downsizing whisking their job away. Those who read the latest Social Security bankruptcy scare. The high school kids who watch as college scholarships and loan options disappear. And any person for whom a tank of gas can cost more than their annual contribution to the church. And then there are the property taxes doubling and quadrupling. And the feeling of being left out of everyone s else s liberation movement.

A church member said to me a couple weeks ago, “Please help me find a politician I can vote for; someone I can trust. I feel totally powerless.”

Is there a sense of powerlessness and possibility for rage in someone who sits next to us or someone we will pass by on the street today. We don t know. Because the belief in victimhood is a powerful belief often pushed far down inside where it can simmer for a long, long time.

In the letter to the church at Ephesus, the writer, identified as Paul, shows that he understands rage. He does not use that word, but writes instead of anger on which the sun has set. Sunset anger. Anger pushed down inside day after day after day, after day, after day. Pushed down inside, poisoning the system. Or as the writer of Ephesians puts it: “making room for the devil.” Feeding the growing belief in millions of people that I do not have the power to lay down my life, nor to take it up again. Someone or something else has that power over me.

Such belief, nourished by sunset anger, often leads to one or two kinds of behavior: RAGE or APATHY. Rage that erupts in violence, which can be anything from pounding one’s fist on a table to shooting someone in the head to passing a law that gives more support to injustice than to justice, or apathy, from being worn down and worn out by the anger. Either rage or apathy is the result of believing that one is a victim of someone else or of some unseen force.

Once the belief in powerlessness becomes sunset in the soul of a person or a people, no change of circumstances will miraculously end the sense of victimhood or rage or apathy.

The belief must be changed. That is hard to do. But we who follow Jesus, the Christ, must keep at the task of doing just that. We ourselves must be changed, for there is, even in us, some of the sunset anger that there was in the church in Ephesus. We have to believe and share what we believe in many different ways that say: “I have the power to lay down my life and I have the power to take it up again.”

This is the power of the resurrection. It is a power which has as much to do with life in this world as it does with life in the next world. When Jesus says, “I have the power,” he is talking about the power of God that is in him. And that power is in us, too. We have the power. Not over everything, of course. But you have the power and I have the power to keep our souls from being sucked out of us. God gives us the power. That s what Jesus was talking about.

Now, to change the belief of millions of people seems overwhelming. It will take generations in some cases. But God is working this purpose out, as year proceeds to year. And there are signs of that. No matter what you or I might think must be done legally concerning the very complex issue of undocumented immigrants in our country, those 400,000 people who marched peacefully, yet forcefully, in Chicago on May Day Monday chose not to erupt in rage as victims, but instead they chose to believe that they have the power to lay down their lives and lift them up again.

“I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up again.” These words of Jesus are so strong in me. From the time I was a kid, growing up in a home where my father s alcoholism and abuse often made me feel powerless, I heard Jesus words coming through my mother s words. She would say over and over again: “One day, it will be OK.” And she helped me work toward that day.

According to my mother: One day it will be OK.

According to Jesus: I have the power.

But also according to Jesus (the clock): I’m out of time.

So, amen.