Considering Power

I have just read Henri Nouwen’s little book The Path of Power which offers some timely and challenging reflections on how we use power, along the way suggesting that we might develop a theology of weakness. He comments, “I want to look with God's eyes at our experience of brokenness, limitedness, woundedness, and frailty in a way that Jesus taught us in the hope that such a vision will offer us a safe way to travel on earth.”

Nouwen also reminds us that any thought that Christian history has not misused power is mistaken. “The devastating influence of power in the hands of God's people becomes very clear when we think of the crusades, the pogroms, the policies of apartheid, and the long history of religious wars up to these very days, but it might be harder to realise that many contemporary religious movements create the fertile soil for these immense tragedies to happen again.”

Power is important and has its important place, but it is very easily abused. We cannot, and should not, ignore it, but we do need to channel it.

Nouwen reminds us that this is all best expressed in the nativity story and all that means in the profoundest sense. God relinquished power in order to come alongside us, and yet that was an incredibly powerful act. It gets us thinking as to what power really is and how it is properly used. As Nouwen asks, and comments: “How can you fear a baby you rock in your arms, how can you look up to a baby that is so little and fragile, how can you be envious of a baby who only smiles at you in response to your tenderness? That's the mystery of the incarnation.”

I was particularly struck by what he says about a theology of weakness. – “A theology of weakness challenges us to look at weakness not as a worldly weakness that allows us to be manipulated by the powerful in society and church, but as a total and unconditional dependence on God that opens us to be true channels of the divine power that heals the wounds of humanity and renews the face of the earth. The theology of weakness claims power, God's power, the all-transforming power of love.”

“A theology of weakness is a theology of divine empowering. It is not a theology for weaklings but a theology for men and women who claim for themselves the power of love that frees them from fear and enables them to put their light on the lampstands and do the work of the Kingdom.”

With God’s help may we use power in the right ways – and may our weakness indeed be recognised as the empowering, in the right way, that it is.

God Is Not a White Man

Chine McDonald’s God Is Not a White Man; And Other Revelations is an important and powerful read. It is highly uncomfortable, and very challenging but offers some significant, if painful, reminders of the role of white supremacy, a role which, sadly, is all too continuing in its presence.

The message, one that needs to be heard, is best summed up in some of Chine McDonald’s own words: “To bring about true racial justice, it is no longer enough to quote the right Bible passages or recite anti-racist slogans. It is not even enough to make bold claims about each of us being made in the image of God when the practices of our very own churches – and sometimes the very fabric upon which they exist – suggest that we believe otherwise. The suggestion that God is a white man is one of the greatest lies ever told. But a white God is inevitable – the logical consequence of a world steeped in white supremacy. God’s miscategorisation as a white man is no accident, but a consequence of white men – whose dominance has shaped history and theology for centuries – creating God in their image. This book is a lament for what has gone before us and the original sin of racism that has seeped its way into our churches and continues to drive the prejudices that exist about the beauty, worth, intellect and dignity of Black people, as well as the inferiority of Black women in contrast to the superiority of white men in almost every area of Western society.”

It's difficult, but we need to take seriously the way in which white dominance has misdirected the church, and the consequences that has produced. “When Christ is portrayed as a white man, the consequence is a Church that aligns itself with the dominant and the powerful rather than siding with those who are forgotten and cast aside. The countercultural act of portraying God as Black makes both a political and a theological statement about who God is.”

This book is an important contribution to an important debate. It raises big questions about what we should do in this area, and certainly about whether we are anywhere near doing enough.

Advice On Ministry

“Dear Nicholas ….: A Father’s Letter to His Newly Ordained Son” was originally written as “a rather personal offering from father to son.” Michael Henshall, then Bishop of Warrington, wrote it for his son, Nicholas, when he was ordained. That was in 1989. In 2019, Nicholas, then Dean of Chelmsford Cathedral (where I very occasionally encountered him in my former post) added some reflection and re-published it. (The earlier version had been published and used as a good source of advice for the newly ordained.)

I must admit that I would have loved to have it in my early days of ministry – though that couldn’t have happened as they were a decade before the original. But even now though, at the other end of stipendiary ministerial service, I really enjoyed reading it and found it to be scattered with nuggets of wisdom.

“Your life’s work, Dear Nicholas, is to be an icon of Christ. In a special vocation, tried and tested, you are to be a mirror of God in your generation.”

“Preach well, Dear Nicholas. Spend time in “remote” and in “immediate” preparation. Make sure you are heard. Accept criticism. Ultimately as you well know, preaching, which isn’t lecturing but proclamation, is all about communicating the mystery of Christ, the glory of God.”

“If we fail to make prayer a priority then we are probably lost.”

“Loitering with intent is a crime in English law. As one of the major priorities in the job description of a priest it is, Dear Nicholas, a virtue and moreover something of an art form. Long ago as a vicar, I learned personally the value of loitering with intent.”

“Ecumenical co-operation is not just a fashionable exercise. It is a deep response to Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John 17. It is costly, and it is a significant way of growing in faith. In these days we all need to commit ourselves as pilgrims to ecumenical partnership as a means of growing in our ministry.”

“The mandate is clear enough. Jesus makes it absolutely clear that ministry to the marginalized, the broken and the lost is the first priority of the Christian community, not an added extra.”

Just a few examples of what this little volume offers – as Nicholas says in his preface, “straightforward advice about living priesthood.”

Matthew Speaks

Barbara Brown Taylor’s The Seeds of Heaven offers a series of explorations/sermons from Matthew’s Gospel. There are fifteen in all, picking out a mix of things that Jesus did and said, the origin of the volume being a series of sermons that were prepared for radio broadcast in the summer of 1990.

Taylor introduces a number of very interesting ideas as she reflects on the various passages from Matthew, and I found it a gently inspiration, but provocative, read.

To comment on just one, her reflection on the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, recorded in Matthew 20. The story is of a man who hired folk to work his vineyard on one particular day. Some started early in the morning. As the day progressed, he felt he needed more help, and hired others, and then again, later on, still others. At the end of the day, everyone was paid the same, which was as agreed, but significant disquiet amongst those who had worked the longest, as they felt his generosity was unfair.

I am usefully challenged by Taylor’s insightful comment: “The most curious thing about this parable for me is where we locate ourselves in line. The story sounds quite different from the end of the line, after all, than it does from the front of the line, but isn’t it interesting that 99 percent of us hear it from the front row seats?” Quite so!

She adds: “God is not fair. For reasons we may never know, God seems to love us indiscriminately, and seems also to enjoy reversing the systems we set up to explain why God should love some of us more than others of us. By starting at the end of our lines, with the last and the least, God lets us know that his ways are not our ways, and that if we want to see things his way we might question our own notions of what is fair, and why we get so upset when our lines do not work.”

Preaching

I recently read Doug Gay’s God Be In My Mouth in which he helpfully explores the task of preaching, reflecting on its importance and its possibilities. As he says: “To be called to preach is to be called to see the world as clearly and honestly as we can. It involves an ongoing attempt, in the words of Burns, ‘To see oursels as ithers see us’, but it also requires a willingness to see what other people see, not to look away from poverty or suffering or injustice or privilege. The seeing is important, because sermons turn seeing into words.”

Preaching is certainly both a privilege and a responsibility and those of us who are called to engage in it do well to take time to reflect on that calling and just how we are engaging with it. The book reflects on different aspects and perspectives. It is not easy to preach well but, sometimes surprisingly, even our most faltering efforts can be used in amazing ways by God.

As in all aspects of discipleship, what matters is that we do our best. God expects us to do what we can, not what we can’t – and will use that – but it is important to take the calling seriously, do what we can, and then leave the rest to God.

As Doug says, ““Preachers in every era of the Christian church find themselves in messy, compromised and contested situations, in which they have to do their best - and in which they often fail. Thank God, some preachers manage to speak with prophetic and luminous clarity on certain issues at key moments. No preachers speak rightly about everything, all the time. We may (and should) pray ‘God be in my mouth’, but we will look around and look back to see that, in the mouths of others and in our own preaching mouths, there was also confusion, prejudice, ignorance, oppression and fear.”