I think the true nature of power can be summed up in a lyric from Kanye West. You may be tempted to roll your eyes, but I believe that a biblical understanding of power is found at the end of his 2010 hit single POWER (yes, all caps). It goes like this, “Have you got the power to let power go?”
The same idea is found in Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” in which an intoxicated SS officer turns to Schindler and tells him that he is on to him: he knows why he never gets drunk. “That’s your control,” he says. “Control is power. That’s your power.” To this Oskar replies, “True power, Amon, is when we have every justification to kill and we don’t. A man steals something, he’s brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for his life, he knows that he is going to die, and the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, the emperor lets him go… That’s power, Amon. That is power.”
The Gospel Lesson for Christ the King Sunday this year takes this kind of power even further. In celebrating the kingship of our Lord we read about the crucifixion of Jesus. You might think the assemblers of our lectionary were crazy, but you’d be wrong. For while all four gospels are trying to get you to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?”, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do so in a very unlikely way.
In each of these gospels, Jesus comes onto the scene doing incredible things. He does wonders that get people to ask questions like, “Who is this that even the wind and seas obey him?” But whenever they are sure that they have him figured out, the Gospel writers show us how they have, in fact, gotten him all wrong.
The ultimate example of this is around the time of the transfiguration: Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah.” (In other words: You are the King.) And he’s right — more right than anyone has been up to this point in the Gospel. Only to get it completely wrong. For once Jesus goes on to say that the Messiah must suffer and die, Peter won’t have any of it. He rebukes Jesus because he cannot fathom a king who would willingly suffer and die. He has no room in his paradigm for a power that lets power go.
The strategy of the gospel writers is to keep us guessing about Jesus’ identity until the very end — until the picture is completely clear — when we see the Christ helpless on a cross and hear a centurion proclaim, “Surely this man was the Son of God.” According to these Gospels, if we do not understand him like this then we are like Peter: we don’t understand him at all.
We see this paradoxical identity of Jesus in the Christ the King reading from the Gospel according to Luke. This is where the disciples witness their king dying a most inhumane death. Left to breathe his last, he cries out, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” With his dying words, this king chooses to pardon. “These worthless [men], the emperor lets [them] go.”
As powerful as this is, the horror does not end here. The crucifiers continue to laugh and scoff, but in their mockery they unknowingly declare his identity: “He saved others,” the religious leaders taunted, “let him save himself if he is the Messiah.” “If you are the King of the Jews,” the soldiers mocked, “save yourself.” “Are you not the Messiah,” the criminal jeered, “then save yourself.”
Luke’s use of repetition not only makes clear that Jesus is king, but reveals the kind of king he is. From out of the mouths of scoffers, the reader is not only shown that Jesus is Lord, but that he is a lord who saves — a king who pardons even at his own expense.
This is the deep inversion of the Gospel writers. This is their scandalous claim: a claim that only makes sense if he was, in fact, vindicated. If he was not raised from the dead, this is sheer sentimentalism. If he is not God-in-flesh, this is at best nihilistic art. But if he was vindicated, it means that the way we ordinarily think about power is completely upside-down. If he did, in fact, rise, it means that the one who was given “all authority in heaven and on earth” won this power through defeat, by letting power go.
If the reader will embrace this scandalous claim, then there is a whole new way of looking at the setbacks and defeats of this life. For if it is true that “his power is made perfect in weakness,” then there is comfort in apparent failure. If it is true that the power of God is so often displayed in this paradoxical way, it means that true power is not in fame, wealth, winning an election, or even in control. It means that true power is shown by letting power go; by giving it away.
The crucifixion story does not offer quick fixes or easy answers. But the comforting word of this text for sufferers is that despite present loss there is still hope. Hope that is found in the One who works out his purposes in the darkest of circumstances.
This is good news. It means that God is up to something in the midst of our deaths. It means that despite our setbacks and defeats, nothing that we have done has been in vain. And the reason for our confidence is that we serve the One who vindicates lost causes; the reason we do not lose heart is that we have a God who “raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist,” both in this life and in the life to come.
So then, in the sure hope that nothing is wasted, do not be afraid: “let [your] power go.”
