The Prince

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. Dr. David Williams; 06.05.2016

Scripture Lesson:  Psalm 146

LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:

This next year, we’re going to be thinking a great deal about what it means to lead and be led, what it means for someone to be in charge.  What makes a person a leader?  What makes a leader effective?  Why does this endless election season make us wish Jesus would just come back already?

The dynamics of leadership and power are a source of some fascination for me, and so I recently read a classic book on leadership that’d I’d been meaning to fully digest for some time.  Oh, I’d read excerpts, but I’d never waded through the whole thing.  So, in the interests of actually knowing something, I read it.   The book:  Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance classic The Prince.  It’s got something of a reputation, as leadership literature goes, although for some reason my seminary chose not to include it in my Pastoral Leadership Excellence course readings.

“I’m reading Machiavelli” is one of those things that Sessions usually don’t like to hear from a pastor.

I mean, sure, Niccolo’s little book was so well received that his name has come to describe the coldest and most calculating approach to power.  If you read the Prince, it’s easy to see why Machiavelli gets that reputation.  The Prince instructs princes and monarchs on the use and maintenance of power.  It extols the necessity of violence and deceit.  It talks about merits of being feared rather than loved.  It suggests that the best way to maintain power over a people you have conquered is to take their land and property and give it to your friends.  In several pungent sections, it counsels the systematic extermination of other ruling families as the best way to insure that you maintain power over your domain.  Don’t just kill your enemy.  Kill their whole family.

This is Game of Thrones writ into the bloody mess of human history, and a dog-eared, well-worn copy of the Prince probably rests in the library of House Lannister.

But what’s most peculiar about The Prince, and what I did not anticipate, is that it does not read like a celebration of power.  It contains none of the cold-hearted celebration of the powerful individual that one finds in Nietzsche or Ayn Rand.

Machiavelli writes it as a lament.  He does not say, “this is the way things should be.”   Over and over again, Niccolo argues that while princes must lead through power, that same power is morally inferior.  What princes do to maintain authority is evil.  Period.  Given the context of the writing, this was understandable.  The Prince was written in 1513, and dedicated to the a member of the Medici family, who had earlier that year  imprisoned and tortured Machiavelli after they overthrew the government of Florence.  

“Human beings being terrible, fallen, wretched creatures,” he starts innumerable sentences, all of which end with a justification for doing something wet, unpleasant, and nasty to your political opponents.  The reason that monarchs can’t just be kind and compassionate is that leadership concentrated in the hands of a single person is inherently wrong.  

What’s equally fascinating about Machiavelli, and what I didn’t realize before reading him, is that The Prince only pertains to his thoughts on princes and monarchs.  It isn’t his political philosophy, just his advice to monarchs.  His preference, as revealed in much of his other, lesser known writing, was for government by republic.

Rule by one person, he argued, left a country weakened, for two reasons.  First, because that person was always trying to cement power for themselves and their line.  Their interests were rarely the cold-eyed interests of the state they were attempting to maintain.  Second, because a single individual doesn’t have the variety of gifts that are needed to respond to changing situations.  What might be a strength in one crisis or moment becomes a weakness in responding to another.  A war may call for a brash leader, bold and fierce.  But that same leader might not have the temperament to govern in a time of peace, or in a time of famine or disease or economic crisis.

That doubt about power, about the ephemeral dynamics of any power focused on a single individual, that’s hardly a new thing.  

We hear that basic skepticism in the 146th Psalm this morning, as a song of praise is presented that’s at least as filled with doubt about princely power as anything Machiavelli ever penned.

Psalm 146 comes at the beginning of the end of the Book of Psalms, and is the first of a Hallelujah chorus that brings this collection of ancient Hebrew music to a close.  It’s literally that, as Psalms 146 through 150 all begin and end with the Hebrew phrase hallelu-yah, meaning Praise the Lord.

The song continues, unusually, with a call for one’s own soul to praise the Creator, something that only happens in two other Psalms in the 150 song collection.  

What is particularly fascinating, given the context of this Psalm, is how vigorously it rejects the power of the princes and kings and rulers of this world.  Psalms, after all, are typically liturgical, meant to be sung in the context of the temple...which is right there in the heart of Jerusalem, at the heart of royal power.  

Our songwriter reminds the listener that those who have power or find themselves in a position of leadership are just as ephemeral and fleeting as any living creature.  The emphasis, for the psalmist, is a contrast between orienting your life towards a particular power structure and orienting yourself towards something greater.

The assumption, written and rewritten into these verses, is that justice is fundamentally part of the divine will.  The universe, all humans, all creatures, all of it falls under the sovereign power of God, and that power bears no resemblance to the self-serving power of a king or a prince.

A prince, after all, has certain things they need to do to retain power, as Machiavelli so pungently observed.  But God?

What possible need does the Creator of the universe have of the machinations of power?  The answer:  none.  What matters instead, to the God who is all knowledge and compassion?  What is significant, for God who knows the suffering of the poor as deeply as the pleasures of the prince?

The emphases presented by the Psalmist reinforce what matters to the divine.  Justice for the oppressed.  Food for the hungry,  freedom for prisoners.

The people who matter aren’t those who hold wealth or influence or the reins of authority.  What matters to God are those broken and bowed down by life, those who’ve lost social status, those who are strangers in a strange land.

That, or so we hear, is what matters to God.

And in this year when we’re asked to turn our fealty over to one person or another, when we are all lined up as partisans for this or that, there’s stuff Christians need to hear from Machiavelli about princes.

In particular, we need to be aware of the danger that lies when we place fealty to an over fealty to the well-being of a people.  There is a distinct, human, and dangerous tendency to want a face on our power.  We need it personified.  We identify, not with the principles for which a person stands, but with an individual.  They become a celebrity, a projection of ourselves.  Instead of seeing the principled interests of our nation, of our people, of our tribe, we attach to a particular soul, with all of their flaws and appetites and hubris.

We fixate on them, rather than looking past them to God’s purpose for human life.

This is the very essence of what it means to create an idol, and it is a blight that impacts almost all of the political spectrum.  It is a danger wherever human beings organize themselves, up to and including this whole church thing that we do.

As we move forward into this strange and difficult year in the life of our nation, it is worth holding that in mind.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.