pentecost 16 Year B

Proverbs 31: 10-31
Psalm 1
James 3: 13-4:3; 7-8a
Mark 9: 30-37

 

Power is a spiritual issue. The question of who has it and who hasn’t, what sort of power it is, how it is used and who are the victims in the power relationship is a theological issue and a gospel question. It’s an extremely uncomfortable question. We would much rather pretend to ourselves and others that power questions are for people “out there” – for “secular” society rather than for the community of faith. And if we do engage in the question, we tend often only to ask it as a question about what is happening “out there” in the wider world of politics, in order to be “prophetically critical”. That’s simply not true.

Leonard Cohen makes this point clearly in his song, Democracy. Democracy, he says, is “coming to the USA” – but from unlikely places! “It’s coming from the sorrow in the street/the holy places where the races meet/From the homicidal bitchin’/that goes down in every kitchen/to determine who will serve and who will eat”. Racial justice, he is saying, is an issue that has to be solved in the power relationships that “go down in every kitchen”, as well as on the macro level of government legislation. It’s actually a question for home – in the most common sense of that word! It affects what happens behind the closed doors of our houses and within our churches.

That’s what today’s passages make clear. Mark tells us about a conflict within the group of disciples about power: who will be the greatest in the kingdom that Jesus proclaims is coming. Proverbs raises the question of power relationships within marriage and therefore of the power relationships between women and men in society. James speaks about power struggles within the Christian community and the conflicts that arise. It is precisely because faith is relational that the question of power is so important: power configures relationships. It shapes the possibilities and interactions. Think for a moment about the phenomenon of “power dressing”. Power dressing is a means of claiming and exercising authority. It puts the other person at a disadvantage because it proclaims, “This is not a conversation between equals”, without this actually having to be stated. All forms of power and authority are about inequality. That is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Parents have power because they have particular responsibilities and need power – inequality – in order to exercise those responsibilities. A boss needs power in order to manage a business effectively. Groups need leaders in order to thrive – and the Church is no different. Power is necessary, inevitable and appropriate. The question, then, is what sort of power, and how is it exercised? That is what makes power a moral and a gospel issue.

 

The cross, power and servanthood
The cross deconstructs power and reconfigures it in terms of servanthood. Note vv30ff: Jesus is passing through Galilee secretly. He wants to stay out of the public eye because he is using the time to teach his disciples about the way of the cross. This isn’t a quick “saying”: it’s a sustained attempt by Jesus to tell them about the path on which he is set. As before, the disciples fail to understand. But why? It seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? The clue is given in the private discussion among the disciples about who will be the greatest. This is the second passion prediction in Marks gospel. The third prediction will be in 10:32ff and, as here, it is immediately followed by a discussion about power and influence in the kingdom. In other words, Mark is trying to tell us that what the disciples cannot understand is the absence of power in what Jesus is telling them! They cannot and (more importantly, refuse to) conceive that what Jesus is saying might be literally what he means!

If we read it in this way, then the ensuing discussion makes sense as an immediate response. It’s easy to imagine: the disciples are talking over their unease and puzzlement. “Jesus is the Messiah! We’re going to Jerusalem – and then we’ll see it all happen! Can’t wait! Just imagine what it will be like – Jesus, recognised as the Messiah! I don’t know what all this stuff is about being killed – doesn’t sound right at all! I wish he’d tell us more about what’s in store, glory-wise. Oh, and talking of glory, who do you think is going to get the most important offices?”

Being the greatest is about wielding power. It’s “power-over” – the power to enforce will and decisions. It’s about being able to say what goes, and about how many people each will have “under” him. It’s about the power that goes with rank and status. This is precisely what Jesus is trying to say it isn’t about! Greatness is about servanthood. Greatness will be defined by the cross.

 

Deconstructing and reconfiguring power (Mark 9/James 3-4)
What is so significant about the cross? In terms of greatness (as understood by the disciples), it is abject failure. It is about powerlessness, not power! This is the moment of deconstruction. If power is about force and lording it over people, then Jesus is powerless, not powerful. Is Jesus, then, powerless? No! Paul speaks about the power of the cross, not its powerlessness. There is a naiveté about power that suggests that Christians should neither have it nor exercise it. When that happens in Christian communities, there is a vacuum which is filled by more invisible forms of power: it is exercised, for example, by personal charisma or other forms of manipulation. “Powerlessness” should be kept in inverted commas as a sign that what it means is a denial of common notions of power as “power-over”. Jesus is telling his disciples that his power is not the power of the warrior-king.

What, then, is the nature of the power seen in the cross? Not “power-over”, but “power-on-behalf-of”. This is the power of servanthood – the power to put the interests of others first. It is important not to mistake this as some supposed “power of the doormat”! There is no power in being a doormat, because a person who is a doormat is no longer a person. Selflessness – the sort of power Jesus is talking about – is not about the annihilation of self and personhood. It is something far more difficult: the conquering of selfishness and self-aggrandisement.

James talks about this in today’s texts. He speaks of “bitter envy and selfish ambition” (3:14,16). This is what motivates the disciples. It leads to conflict. It springs from “craving” and “coveting” (4: 1-2). He’s talking about the craving for things (possessions) and for power. It is the desire for “power-over” – ultimately exercised in murder (4:2). The “disputes and conflicts” he talks about are “turf wars” - conflicts over power and possessions. “You do not have”, he says, “because you do not ask” (4:2). “Power-over” is about the power to take. Asking is an apparent sign of weakness. It means acknowledging that what you want or need is within the gift of someone else to give or withhold. In other words, it means being “powerless”. “Resist the devil and he will flee before you!” says James in 4:7. The devil was the Lucifer, the angel of light, who refused to acknowledge Yahweh as God. He tried to “take”. To ask requires humility. And so, says James, we ought to humble ourselves (4:10). “Humbling ourselves”, in this context, is not about grovelling! It is about asking rather than taking. It is about conquering the self – about exercising a new, godly power: the power seen in Jesus.

That is part of Jesus’ reason for setting a child in their midst to make his point. For Jesus, a child is an exemplar of the kingdom because a child was powerless within his society. With no ability to take by force, a child could only receive what Jesus had to offer (the kingdom) as a gift. This is what he tells his disciples in 10: 19. But here his main point is a different one. It’s about the way in which a child is received. If power is “power-over”, then it would be utterly beneath any grown man’s dignity (in Jesus’ society) to kneel before a child. In a family structured on hierarchical terms, the father had the greatest power, followed by the mother, then children on the bottom with no power. In other words, a household servant would be expected to show particular honour to the adults in the household, but not to a child, other than to give formal recognition to the fact that the child belonged to the master’s household.

Jesus has just explained that greatness in the kingdom is measured by servanthood. By using the example of the child, he says, “I want you to give this child the same honour and service that you would me (“welcome a child in my name”)”. Jesus’ own power is seen in his identity with the least. It is “power-on-behalf-of” – the conquest of self and the consequent freedom to serve without abasement. But where exactly is the world-transforming power in this (apart from the individual conquest of self)? The answer lies in the cross. It results in crucifixion – which, ironically, unleashes the power of resurrection! This is God’s power – the power of the One whom the disciples will welcome if they welcome the child (9:37).

 

Power and the battle of the sexes (Proverbs 31)
The Ode to a Capable Wife makes difficult reading. On the one hand, it is extraordinarily and unacceptably chauvinist and sexist. On the other hand, though, if we read carefully, we will find the seeds of deconstruction and reconfiguring of gender roles.

No wonder Jewish men thanked Yahweh that they had not been made women! It would have meant a busy, difficult life. Instead of spending their days at the city gates in the company of the other men (v23), he would instead have had to run the household, trade, get up at all hours of the night to make sure that everyone has what they need, buy and sell land, spin, sew, give to the poor, bring money in by selling what she’s made, teach the children … no time here for “eating the bread of idleness” (v27)! Now, only a man could have written that with no sense of irony! Idleness? This regime would hardly give the poor woman any sort of break at all! And all hubby has to do is to get up and go spend his days chatting with his mates! Oh – and bask in the admiration of his fellows for having such a capable wife!

This is the sort of “praise” that simply reinforces female slavery. And yet, reading it through 21^st century eyes, we notice three things. The first is that the woman is more than capable of doing any task to which she sets her mind – far more capable than most men! It is difficult to imagine what sort of Ode to a Capable Husband might consist of for such a wife – there’s virtually nothing left to do! Imagine what would happen to the husband if this capable wife died – he’d be lost and helpless. Yet if the husband died, one can’t help feeling that the greatest loss for his wife would be the chores on her list that pertained to looking after him!

Secondly, the picture of this woman is not of a helpless doormat – a Cinderella figure who spends her nights weeping at the hearth because she is a virtual slave in her own house! This is a self-assured woman – a capable woman, whose “servanthood” is chosen freely. She has a strength of character and self-assurance which is as attractive as it is enviable. It is impossible to sustain any fiction that this sort of woman is clearly inferior to a man! By what possible standard?

Thirdly, though, there is the final verse of the book of Proverbs: “Give her a share in the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the city gates”. To give her a fair share of the fruits of her hands means, in practice, nothing less than the dismantling of the patriarchal system! It exposes patriarchy for what it is – the subjugation of women for the benefit of men. The husband here benefits for no other reason than that he is a man – and the benefits he enjoys are excessive and entirely separate from his contribution to the family and to society. It is this recognition that has led to the emancipation of women. On what grounds, for instance, would you refuse this woman a vote? Or suppose her less capable than a man of work, and therefore pay her less?

And look at the final sentence: “Let here works praise her in the city gates”. Not, “Let her husband bathe in her reflected glory”, but let her works praise her. This is about proper respect. She should be able to stand in the place associated with power, respect and influence in her own right – as an equal (at least!) of her husband.

I’m not suggesting that this was what the writer of Proverbs 31 had in mind. This is not a text of liberation for women. In fact, it has played quite the opposite part and is beloved among people who want to argue that the traditional gender roles in a patriarchal society somehow reflect God’s will (well, they’d have to, wouldn’t they, because that’s the only compelling reason for maintaining something so obviously unjust and destructive!). Yet, as so often happens, the biblical texts that reflect and apparently endorse unjust systems carry within them the seeds of the destruction of injustice. “Give her a share in the fruit of her hands! Let her works praise her in the city gates!” might well be a (not particularly catchy) rallying cry of a proto-suffragette.

Jesus chose a child as a test-case for the sort of selflessness he was advocating as the power of the cross. If he wanted an example of Christ-likeness (other than himself), he would have struggled to find a better one than the woman in Proverbs 31 – not because she was a “good wife”, but because she was godlike. It’s time we stopped hearing disparaging remarks in churches about “political correctness” when we talk about women and oppression. We inhabit a faith that has consistently oppressed and abused women in the name of God for millennia. We still haven’t got it right. Even within the URC, one finds pockets of residual suspicion that women are God’s “second best” - particularly when it comes to positions of leadership. Chauvinistic prejudice can find an awful (literally) lot of support within the bible and the Christian tradition. Yet today’s gospel reminds us that Jesus is acutely interested in power and how it works. “Power-over” creates victims - and Jesus stands with the victims of that sort of power. He challenges us to welcome the victims as we would Jesus himself - and in so doing, welcome the God of Resurrection.

 

Amen.

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