Deeds of Power

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
06.01.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:21-29

How do you know you have power? There are powerful people out there, but how do you know they’re powerful?

Here’s how I think most of us determine the answer to that. We look for things that are easy to see. How much influence does the person have? Is this someone who can get things done? Then they’re powerful. How do we human beings get things done? Well, everything we do in our lives as human beings can sorta kinda be split out into two categories of power. There’s social and political power, and then there’s economic power.

Social and political power has to do with how we relate to one another. In a little group, it’s who has the most influence, and who has the least influence. Hey! Go get me a cup of coffee! Hey! Clean up! Hey! My car needs polishing! If you’ve got influence for whatever reason, be it force of personality or seniority or “hott-ness” or an unusually stylish haircut, folks will respond.

If you don’t have influence...well...you may as well just be talking to yourself. In a big group, the politics seem more complicated, but they’re much the same. The networks of social influence all revolve around who you know, and how much pull you have with them, and how useful you are to them. In that way, we’re not that far off from bands of chimpanzees. So that guy can get you a great job with benefits? How, in the infinite vastness of God’s creation, is that much different from the alpha female who teaches you how to fish tasty termites out of a hole with a stick?

Economic power is another way human beings relate to one another. Unlike lower forms of life, we use money to get things, and money is just a way of representing our power to get what we want. It would mean, in chimp terms, that instead of having to spend an hour a day picking bugs from the back of the mistress of termite stick fishing and grooming her hair, you can just give her a pretty rock. For human beings, that means that you can give that guy cash for fixing your roof, or for a car, or to groom your hair. Wealth means influence.

Influence means being able to get done what you want done. And being able to get done what you want done is power.

That is the baseline standard...of worldly power. In Matthew’s Gospel today, we hear how Jesus wrapped up the Sermon on the Mount, which stands as the highest and most significant of all of Christ’s teachings. Throughout the sermon, he makes a point of consistently challenging the way his listeners thought about the world. Throughout his teaching, he constantly told all who heard him that what mattered most was how we responded to the knowledge that God’s kingdom was at hand. He reminded his disciples and the crowds that gathered to listen that what mattered was that perfect fusion of faith and action. That means going above and beyond the demands of the law, and living a life loving ones enemies, being humble, and refusing to be hypocritical or judgmental.

Here at the end of the sermon, though, Jesus looks beyond the moment during which he speaks, looks past the dust and the throng and the smell of that sun-baked Judean hillside. He sees the future of what will rise up in response to His Gospel, and he lays out a warning.

There will be people, Jesus says, who will come in my name. They will use my name as they shout out their own judgments about the future. They will do some things that will amaze you. They will do great deeds of power. But none of that will matter. None of that means a thing to God. He then tells a little story, a familiar parable, about two men who build. One builds on a rock, rooting his actions in the Gospel. A storm comes, and what he has built endures. Another builds...on something else. But that other thing is not a sure foundation, and his work is torn apart in the storm.

Jesus is here warning all of us about our tendency to confuse worldly power with the Gospel message. It’s easy for us to look at social power, or look at the power that comes with a six-figure credit limit, and imagine that this is somehow reflective of the kind of power that God shows us in Jesus.

There’s a movement in Christianity now that presents just such a message. It’s called the Word Faith movement. It’s an offshoot of the Pentecostal church, it’s growing like wildfire in America, and it’s got it’s own very special way of looking at the Gospel. Some folks call it the Prosperity Gospel, mostly because Word Faith churches talk endlessly about getting money. Their members tend to think that pastors should fly around in corporate jets and live in 10,000 square foot mansions. You’ve heard me preach on that part of the movement before, usually right around the time y’all have to start thinking about my salary for the next year. Ahem.

But underneath Word Faith’s teaching about making sure your pastor’s 2009 Audi R8 has the new optional $5,000 full LED headlights, there’s something more troubling about Word Faith. There’s this basic idea, you see, that if you have real faith, God will do whatever you want. Just ask, and ye shall receive, they say. God in heaven gives gifts to those who ask him, so if you’re really faithful, you’ll get whatever you want. You want to prosper? Just ask. You want to get a better job? Just have faith. You want to get ahead in the world? Seek, and ye shall find.

Word Faith basically claims that the Bible teaches that God has to obey the faithful. If you ask, God will give. If you are truly faithful, if you truly believe, then God must do whatever you ask. Having faith becomes sorta like owning the lamp with the genie inside, although Word Faith makes no mention of whether or not God is voiced by Robin Williams.

Of all the many problems with thinking that way, the greatest comes when you actually get past all your daydreams about God finally getting you all the wealth you’re sure will make you happy. Because if having faith means having your dreams all come true, then if you suffer...it must be because you just don’t have enough faith.

If you pray and you pray and you pray over someone you love...and they die anyway...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you pray and hope over someone who just can’t seem to get their lives together...and they never do...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you try your hardest to do what’s right, and that relationship just comes apart anyway, it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. If you put in long hours at work, and do your best, and don’t get ahead...it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. Just believe a little harder, they say. Just pull yourself up by your Jesus bootstraps, they say.

But faith doesn’t work like that. It’s not measured in the same way as worldly power. It’s not social. It’s not economic. It’s not a question of being able to do whatever you want, and impressing people with your power. That kind of power is a house built on sand. No matter how much of it you have...it will fail when the storm comes.

Seek other things.