An article on power and powerlessness - a partial response to Dr Andrew Sloane's lecture

ETHOS has just published my latest article, entitled "Reflections on Power and Powerlessness".

This is the description the editor inserted.

[The article] follows up on Andrew Sloane's lecture 'Justifying Advocacy' with reflections on the biblical notion of power, especially in relation to the paradox of power in weakness.

Click here for the article.

Performing the divine warrior - Tim Gombis

In his book The Drama of Ephesians, Tim Gombis says the following in a chapter entitled "Performing the Divine Warrior" (page 156). I will highlight a few things in this colour in italics.

"According to Ephesians, the church performs the cosmically significant role of divine warfare through mundane embodiments of God's life on earth. Cosmic conflict does not involve defiant chest thumping in the face of the defeated powers. On the contrary, we are called to purposeful, humble, cruciform faithfulness as we perform Jesus for the good of the world. As we will see, the church participates in this transformative process, it harnesses and radiates God's resurrection power, which has a transformative effect on outsiders. This is how the people of God transform their surrounding cultures. This is in direct contrast to the church's long tradition of aggressive coercion and harsh denunciation. Such strategies are surrenders in divine warfare, since they are capitulations to worldly community dynamics. The church must also be a community of wisdom and discernment. And finally, the church must be a culture of justice. When the people of God cultivate these patterns of life, the church performs the role of divine warrior in the world." (Emphasis added)

Gombis goes on to say that Ephesians 6:10-18 has more to do with Isaiah 59:15-19 than the armour of a Roman soldier. (pages 157-8)

Then Gombis says,

"The enemy in the church's warfare is not the world or people in the world but the powers. And, as we will see, the strategy is not militant. In fact, Paul's instructions for engaging the spiritual conflict are quite subversive, upending notions of militancy. But we should expect such a move by this point. Throughout the Old Testament, human actors in divine warfare episodes subvert expectations by taking on postures of weakness. Paul performs his role in continuity with this theme through cruciformity; he imitates the earthly performance of Jesus by inhabiting a role of humility, self-sacrifice and weakness. Paul purposefully performs a cruciform role so that God's triumph might be seen clearly by the powers he has defeated in Christ." (Page 159; emphasis added)

"Our warfare involves resisting the corrupting influences of the powers. The same pressures that produce practices of exploitation, injustice and oppression in the world are at work on church communities. The church's warfare involves resisting such influences, transforming corrupted practices and replacing them with life-giving patterns of conduct that draw on and radiate the resurrection power of God. Our warfare, then, involves purposefully growing into communities that become more faithful corporate performances of Jesus on earth." (Pages 159-160; emphasis added)

Wealth, poverty and being servants

A friend pointed me to David Chronic's article about Jesus' being a servant. I think he makes some very good points here. Although some may disagree with his view on economics, he is right about exploitative power dynamics and the sinful human nature that tends to misuse power. Here is an excerpt.

"Early in my Christian walk, Jesus’ words, “Go and sell what you have, give to the poor, and then come follow Me,” challenged me to simplify my life in order to serve God. I didn’t hear these words as a harsh, top-down command; rather, I saw how Jesus modeled this message and invited me to walk after Him. He gave up the riches of heaven to “take the nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:7). His actions encouraged me to give up my comforts and to become a servant. In my experience of “downward mobility,” I identified myself with Jesus’ move from master to slave or royalty to servant — or at least, so I thought. Focusing on Jesus’ actions, I missed something essential about the nature of God. And it has been among socially and economically excluded peoples that my eyes have been opened to see beyond God’s serving actions to God’s servant nature.

I had thought that the move of Jesus was one from lord to servant, a sort of trickle-down movement. Margaret Thatcher, a former British prime minister, is quoted as saying that if we want to serve the poor, we need to empower the rich. When the rich have wealth, they, like the Good Samaritan, take care of the poor. Since Thatcher said that, the trend of the rich getting richer and the poor poorer has debunked her trickle-down theory.1 Never having “enough,” the rich tend to serve their own interests — without “taking the form of a servant.”

Not only do we rarely see servanthood modeled by the upper classes in the stewardship of their power and possessions, but it is among the marginalized and oppressed that we find amazing lessons of servanthood. One of our friends, a mother of five, awakens early to go to the market. She spends the days cooking, cleaning and caring for her kids. On top of all this, she is always looking for odd jobs to bring some income to the family, often working late into the night. Although extremely poor, she is one of the hardest-working people I know, and she does it for the love of her family."

(Click here for the entire article.)

God uses the weak and lowly to show us profound truths

Sight Magazine has just published my latest article. Here is what the editor says.

"I think the educated, the unlearned, the rich, and the poor, all have gifts and talents to build up the body of Christ. The most important person in the Bible is Jesus, and He does not grade people according to their social or economic status. Our pastors, teachers and conference speakers should be people who can help us know Christ and the Scripture. Their qualifications and ministry success – or their lack of them – simply cannot be our primary focus."

"The most inspirational people are often the least known people, including those at the margins of the society."

I then survey the New Testament and find some "unknown" people who have been most inspirational. After that I look at two communities that I participate in, and show that God does speak through the weak and lowly.

Click here for the full article.

Social justice and salvation (Centre for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE), Ridley College)

Last year Dr Tim Foster (Ridley College), Merrill Kitchen (former principal of Churches of Christ Theological College) and I spoke at a theological forum run by World Vision Australia. The topic was Social Justice and Salvation.

Short versions of the papers presented at the forum are now published by the Centre for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE) at Ridley College, Melbourne. There is an additional article written by Nils von Kalm in response to the speakers at the forum.

The full articles can be found here.

Below are the excerpts from the articles (one from each author).

"If Jesus’ death effectively dealt with evil, if his resurrection was bodily and real, and if Jesus now reigns as Lord, we cannot for a moment see salvation as something that lies in the future, but something that is both present and future. This is the whole basis for Pauline ethics. So in Colossians 2 & 3, Paul states that we have died with Christ and we have already been raised with Christ, so we ought to live the resurrection life now. Salvation is about the present and the future. Salvation is not something we wait for, but something we can enjoy here and now, genuinely anticipating what happens in the future." (Foster)

"It must be acknowledged, also, that there is a strong apocalyptic element in the Hebrew understanding of salvation. The religious, social and political control entities constantly challenged the values of justice and equality valued by the Israelites, with the threat of annihilation constantly around the corner. But it is not an understanding of triumph over others as much as a ‘rescue from attacking nations’ (Zech. 12:7) and the ‘gathering of the dispersed’ (Is. 43:5ff) that will have a final conclusion in God’s timing. Salvation is described in Isaiah as a ‘well’ (Is. 12:3), in which ‘all the world can share its salvation.’ The promises of salvation in these Biblical documents were nearly always corporate in their focus. It was not just about the privilege of Israel over and against others but it brought good news for all humanity." (Kitchen)

"People in Rome were familiar with socioeconomic, political and religious oppression. The early Christians in Rome were not exempt from this, experiencing all sorts of injustices. In light of this, Romans 12:9-21 would have made good sense to Paul’s audience. They are called to be patient in affliction (thlipsis) and joyful in hope (12:12). They are to “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour,” and “associate with the lowly” (12:10, 16; NRSV). The society in ancient Rome was highly hierarchical. Slaves did not enjoy mutual affection from free people. Those in relatively high positions on the social ladder did not normally give honour to those in the lower classes. Hence Paul astonishingly envisages a huge status-reversal taking place." (myself)

"The great hope of the Christian message is that God is in the process of putting the world to rights, as N.T. Wright describes it. What we read in passages like Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21 is the wonderful story of the new heavens and the new earth, of heaven and earth coming together. It is about God coming here to live with His people. What we see is not us going ‘up’ to be in heaven, but heaven coming here. This is the transformation that we long for, and it is coming. It will be a transformation of not just society, but of the human heart as well. It will be a time when there will be no more tears and no more pain (Rev 21:4), a time of justice and peace for all. But note also that Jesus says in Revelation 22, ‘I have come to make all things new’. In the new creation, it will not be just humanity that is transformed, but the whole creation. Our hope is that ‘the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God’ (Rom 8:21)." (von Kalm)

Lent’s Witness by Brian Gorman

I found this Lent reflection in a post in Michael Gorman's blog. It's quite a good reflection on the testing of Jesus by the devil in Luke 4. Here is an excerpt.

"Temptation #2: The offer of the kingdoms of the world. Jesus is here offered the chance to take over the government and thereby bring God’s kingdom to earth in an authoritative way. The parallel for the church is obvious, that we are offered and tempted for the chance to reform the empire as a means to achieve God’s work in the world. But just as Jesus rejected the kingdoms offered to him, we the church must also reject the temptation to believe that we can bring the kingdom of God through the government. Jesus’ way is the way of death, of weakness and rejection. We must take up that cross daily (the word “daily” is added in Luke’s Gospel from Mark’s). Milton sees this temptation as the temptation to overthrow Rome on behalf of the Jewish people. The fascinating thing about Milton is that his Satan is acutely aware that the restoration and salvation of Israel from Roman Empire is an important part of Jesus’ mission, but his temptations are temptations to not use his divine power (the way of weakness) to achieve the ends. Luke’s answer to this temptation is in Jesus’ anti-triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, where Jesus creates almost a farce of a coup d’etat, coming in on a donkey."

Click here to read the entire post.

Reflection: Some thoughts about power

Here is a recent reflection.

The notion that power is in and of itself not evil and that we can have power as long as we use it properly sounds good (and indeed is quite right). But the problem is that when we are in a position of power we can hardly understand what it is like to be powerless. (Or if we have experienced powerlessness before, we can quite easily forget about what it is like if we now have a lot of power.) This in turn means that we probably don't know how to use power properly. Paul's resolve to boast in his weakness in 2 Corinthians has much to say to us today.