THE POWERS

THE POWERS

            In the middle of the 6^th chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians (6:10-20),  the author begins a description of a Roman soldier putting on his battle armor.   He uses this process as a description of the Christian life, and in a history that is soaked in the blood of people killed in the name of Jesus, such a description is hard to take.  It seems primitive and violent, and coming on the heels of telling people held as slaves to obey their masters as if they were obeying Christ, it seems to have been written by slaveholders for slaveholders.  Yet, thanks to people like Walter Wink and Dorothee Soelle and James Cone and Jacqueline Grant, I have to come to appreciate this “battle” metaphor in a different way.

            The author (likely not Paul) uses the battle metaphor as a description of the Christian life, urging us not to be the conquering slaveholder, but rather reminding us that our journeys, both individually and collectively, will be ones of struggle, if we seek to live a life of love and justice.  He reminds us that our struggles are not just with an individual like Donald Trump but with what Trump represents and with the powers that have captured our hearts to such an extent that we would vote for someone like Trump.  He describes these as the powers, as the rulers. The Greek words here speak not of particular rulers but rather of the constellations of power that take over our collective and individual hearts.  Once I began to hear this passage in this way, I began to understand how good people could support and could even do terrible things.  Male domination, white supremacy, exploitation of those who are poor, the belief in redemptive violence, homophobia – all of these and more began to make sense in this context of “the powers.” 

            We all have received these configurations of power from those whom we love and trust, and thus they are not only external to us in our institutions, but we have also internalized them.  We have believed that these configurations represent the theological and scientific realities of our lives, and it will be a difficult struggle to begin to loosen their hold on our hearts and on our communities.  The answer is not so much a powerful will that enables us to stand against the powers – the answer is rather a vivid imagination that helps us begin to see ourselves and others in a whole new way.  To use the metaphor in Ephesians 6, seeing the world in a different way is a powerful weapon to use to loosen the hold of the powers.

            When Caroline and I visited our daughter Susan in Baltimore at the beginning of April, we had the privilege of touring the new National Harriet Tubman Center on the eastern shore of Maryland.  As a short guy, I was amazed to see that she was even shorter than me, and yet she was such a giant!  One of the things that has always impressed me about her was that she had the imagination to see and dream a different world than slaves and masters.  She imagined a life for herself and for others as a free woman, not as property of masters or men.   She believed that the vision was a gift from God, and then she acted on that vision.  Her life was one of many struggles, but she was led by her imagination to a vision of a different configuration of power.  Life was not necessarily a hierarchy of masters and slaves – there was a different vision:  sisters and brothers, the self-evident truth that we are all created with equal dignity in the image of God.     

            In these days of the struggle with the powers of domination and money and racism and patriarchy and homophobia and militarism, let us recall these words from Ephesians 6, with their acknowledgment that freedom is a constant struggle.  We are asked to recognize the depth of our captivity and to dedicate ourselves to seeing a new vision, a vision that will enable us to find love and justice at the center of life rather that domination and injustice.  The powers will laugh at our first attempts to begin to break free, but if we persevere in this part of the journey, we will find that we may be like Harriet Tubman – our new vision will drive us back again and again to share the good news that there is a different way of life for us as individuals and for us as community.