No Need To Brag--July 14, 2022
I can't tell you how often I keep coming back to a bit of wisdom from the late Margaret Thatcher. The former British Prime Minister is reported to have remarked that being powerful is like being a noble lady of class and refinement: "If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." If you have to tell people you are powerful, you do not really wield as much authority as you boast about. If you have to constantly remind others of how important, or prestigious, or well-connected, or intimidating you are, well, perhaps you are none of those things. And if you have to shout to other people about how great you are, maybe you aren't really so "great."
On the other hand, people who truly command respect don't have to remind others--they just exude something compelling. People who have genuine power don't have to rattle sabers to get attention. And people who really are important have a way of making others feel important, too, rather than making others shrivel up in fear or shame. And yet... we have a way of continuing to fall for the bragging of demagogues and the terrible logic of the insecure; we keep shouting our importance rather than letting what is genuine speak for itself.
So we really do need to keep listening to Paul and to the face-to-face confrontation he is prepared to have with the folks at First Church of Corinth who have puffed themselves up and think they are more important than they really are. Within the congregation, there are folks blustering about how important and prestigious they are, largely based on which important apostle or "Big Name" they have rubbed elbows with. They're name-dropping Peter and Apollos; they're talking about the important people they've learned from, and they're vying for power in the house-church gatherings there in Corinth. And Paul is just plain disgusted by it. It's like they don't even understand that the community of Jesus is meant to overturn all of our old understandings of how real power works. It is down-right anti-Christ to be clutching at power in the name of Jesus--instead, our kind of power is always on loan from God [and therefore not really "our own" to wield as a threat] and is meant for the sake of all. God's power is real--and therefore, we don't need to brag or bluster or boast about having it. The pretenders have to go around riling others up with talk about how "great" they think they are.
In our day, of course, we still struggle with those internal squabbles in the church. Sometimes it is over such embarrassingly small issues that we are laughable--we bicker about who is in charge of the church ice cream social, or who gets to decide the color of the new social hall carpet. There are sometimes folks in official positions of church leadership across denominational structures who can be smug and self-serving, to be sure, whether pastors, priests, bishops, presbyters, or district superintendents. And quite often the world just snickers and shakes it head at those situations, finding it ridiculous that we fuss over situations that have such little real power in the big scheme of things.
But more dangerous and more ominous in our day are the ways religious-sounding voices will talk big talk about wanting to have religious leaders in authority over all of public life. You hear it more and more these days, often from talking heads and demagogues who want to raise their profile and get more acclaim for themselves and their political futures. You hear the folks blustering about how the church should dictate things to the government [as though there were uniform and clear agreement from "the church" about nearly anything--we can't even agree on the color of the carpet in the social hall, remember?], and about how the church should have more power, influence, and authority in the public square. Quite often, what it is is just talk--the kind of bluster that smacks of desperation. And it makes the real community of Jesus look pathetic, because it says we've given up on being our own unique presence in the world to embody God's Reign, and instead we've just sold out in the tired old quest of making ourselves look important. It makes the followers of Jesus look arrogant and out of touch, when the One we say we follow shows his greatness by being humble and connected with others.
Back in the first century, Paul was warning the folks in the church at Corinth that when they start blustering to make themselves more important and influential, they're setting themselves up for a fall. Authentic Christianity doesn't brag about how important it thinks is, and it doesn't whine with nostalgia for some past era when it was more prestigious or controlled the levers of influence. Authentic Christianity doesn't need to brag about its greatness or rile people up in the attempt to "reclaim" its position of power in society, because our real power has only ever come from Jesus, the Crucified Suffering Servant and Washer of Feet whose authority is in self-giving love. And our way of wielding that power is with a towel and basin, not with a podium and a press conference.
Let me say it again, as clearly as possible, to remove any ambiguity: when Christians bloviate about how they think the church should have more overt power and influence over our common public life, they not only make us all look pathetically over-inflated, but more than that, they are pursuing an agenda that is literally anti-Christ. Genuine power in the Christian community is always grounded in the way and character of the God revealed in Jesus, who deliberately chose NOT to build an empire and never once had to TELL other people about how great he was. People knew the greatness of Jesus from being in his presence and saw the way the power of the living God flowed through him to bring others more fully to life. He didn't have to moan about not having enough influence over Caesar, because he knew it was beneath him to play the Empire's game.
Paul's words to the factions puffing themselves up in Corinth are a good warning to us as well: if we fall into the same terrible mindset of needing to talk our way into more power or influence, we are courting disaster. Rather, like Eberhard Arnold put it once, "This is the root of grace--the dismantling of our power. Only to the degree that all our power is dismantled will God be able to give us the fruits of the Spirit and build up his kingdom through us, in us, and among us." But in a world still convinced that we need to shout about our importance, that will be a surprising and countercultural message. It is one the world deeply needs, though, exactly because it is countercultural.
Today, what if we didn't have to worry one bit about how powerful or prestigious anybody else thought we were, but instead, we just trusted that the real power of God--made visible in the self-giving love that looks like Jesus--would be compelling enough to draw people in?
Lord Jesus, stop us from chasing after the world's modes of power so that we can be filled with the power you give us already by your Spirit in the way of Jesus.
Amen! Well said.
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