Power…is to pour out our lives in love.
Winners and losers! In the USA where I currently live, and in Canada, my home and native land, the past year and the year to come were and are years of political upheaval and elections. And there are winners, and there are losers in these processes.
I am not going to go into any of that in any detail, as that is not why people read Restoration.
But the spectacle of the matter has gotten me pondering the whole question of winning and losing, of gaining power and losing power, and the pomp and theatrics of it all.
Of course, it is not all theatrics. There is the real business of actual power and its exercise and what happens when power shifts dramatically in a nation or society from one group to another.
It is serious and real, and a subject for deep prayer and supplication to God for all who occupy high places in our world and for the ways they use or misuse the power given them.
For us who are Christians, though, our meditation must go even deeper than that very basic and laudable call to lift up prayers and petitions for our civic authorities and all in leadership positions. All God-believing people can unite in that.
For us Christians, the whole question of winning and losing power, and what it means to exercise power in this world, is connected inextricably to Christ, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And this leads us directly to the liturgical feast I wish to write about this month, which is Palm Sunday.
Here we have true pomp and theatrics, a drama of faith and power. The Lord enters Jerusalem as the King, the Messiah come to claim his royal throne, come to establish his messianic kingdom once and for all.
There is no other way to understand Here is your king coming to you, meek and riding on an ass (Mt 21). And Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord (Lk 19).
The people chanting hosannas and tossing palm branches at his feet understood one thing by all this — that Jesus was the winner; the Romans were the losers.
Jesus understood exactly the same thing. He did come to win the victory and to signal the end and the vanity of all human empires. And, indeed, greatness was dawning for Israel. But of course, his way of achieving these goals was very different from what the people of Jerusalem had in mind.
And it was very different from how all politicians of all points on the political spectrum understand the business of winning power, keeping power, exercising power.
Be they good or bad, honest or corrupt, servants of the common good or ruthless authoritarian thugs, all politicians nonetheless share a common view of how the deal is done, how the game is played, all the ways and means and schemes so familiar to us — so often tawdry and mean — that are the realities of modern political life.
Jesus’ great “political” move, on the other hand, was to undergo arrest, unjust trial, torture, public humiliation, and then a brutal, agonizing death. And this is winning, this is victory, this is greatness. This is power beyond power, a power that continually renews the entire cosmos and the innermost soul of man in light and love.
Some may not care for my using the word “political” to describe the passion and death of Christ on the Cross, so debased has that word become in our current affairs.
But it is precisely that, in the original sense of the word — the lives of the people (the polis) are shaped and reshaped in a definitive and real way, both individually and communally, by the actions of Jesus on Calvary.
And his reshaping of all human life is expressed here and now in the life of the Church, a people called together by Christ to live out the Paschal Mystery as a body of believers, to proclaim his death and celebrate his resurrection, and to live the meaning of it in lives of unceasing service and unconditional charity for all men and women without exception or reserve.
For Christians, any consideration of power and its exercise has to be understood in light of these mysteries of faith which are at the uttermost center of our lives. It simply does not work the way the world and its power structures believe it to work.
For followers of Christ, power is not only at the service of love, power is love in a basic and radical way. I do not gain power and act with power by dominating, by grabbing hold of the levers of society, by forcing my will and agenda on others. I certainly don’t gain power by winning an election.
The only real power, the only real way to shape reality at its core, is to pour out our lives in love. This is true political radicalism, not the radicalism of the political left or of the right, but a radicalism wholly other, outside and surpassing all the various political spectra of our time.
The power that is exercised by a single action of love: by a tired mother in her kitchen making one more meal for her family; by a father coming home from a day of work and caring for his wife and children in humble domestic ways; by the priest showing up day after day, serving his parish in myriad, unglamorous ways; by any ordinary person moving through the day, looking for every opportunity to do the next thing that will be of some small benefit to their neighbor.
All this is more “political” in the best sense of that word, shaping the lives of people, than all the overtly political actions of government leaders, except insofar as these too can be acts of loving service.
Christ is King indeed, but let us all take great care to know what his kingdom is, what it means, and how his kingly authority and power is exercised in this world. It is love, or it has nothing to do with him and his kingdom.
Let us live accordingly, and yes — let us pray with great sincerity for all our civic authorities while we do so.
Image: Sketch by Denis Heames
