Sermon for Sunday, April 6, 2025 || Lent 5C || Philippians 3:4b-14

Two-thirds of the way through this sermon, I’m going to bring today’s second reading into it, but first I need to set the stage. Today, we’re talking about power, which is one of those tricky words because it can mean many different things to different people. We’re going to talk about three understandings of power, and I hope you will stick with me because the third one is the one we are aiming for.

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At its broadest sense, “power” is “the capacity to act.” If the “power” goes out at your house, you won’t be able to run the washing machine or the television. Hospitals have backup generators so that critical life-support systems will still have the capacity to run when the power goes down. So, hold onto this broad definition – “power is the capacity to act” – as we keep going, because it makes sense in all three understandings of power.

I learned about the first understanding of power in my political science classes in college. I vividly remember my Diplomacy professor saying that power is “the ability of Actor A to get Actor B to do something that Actor B does not want to do.” This power is “Power Over.” When I’m reffing a soccer game, I have “power over” the proceedings because I am the one with the whistle. Even if I get a call objectively wrong, because, say, the ball nicked off a player’s toe and went over the line and I didn’t see it, the call still stands.

This type of “power over” is an innocuous example, since the referee is supposed to judge the game in a fair and unbiased manner. Too often, when a person or a government has ultimate power over others, that power is used in a coercive, oppressive, and violent manner. This is the type of power that dictators and tyrants attempt to wield. Rather than using power in the two ways we’ll talk about in a minute, the point of “power over” is to accrue more of it. The goal is to achieve unfettered capacity to act, no matter how the tyrant’s actions impact others or the environment. So, “power over” is not just destructive; it is selfish.

The second type of power is so different from the first that it’s strange they share the word. This second type is better called “empowerment.” This is “I can do it” power, the power of agency. When you teach a child to read, you “empower” them. Whole new worlds of imagination and reality and ideas and language open up to them simply because they can decipher little symbols on a page.

“Empowerment” happens when those with greater capacity to act teach, train, or equip those with lesser capacity, like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san to “wax on, wax off” in The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi defends Daniel LaRusso from the bullies once, but after that, the old Japanese master teaches Daniel to defend himself. “Empowerment” also happens when those with greater capacity to act use their capacity to remove barriers standing in the way of those with lesser capacity.

The thing is, too often the first type of power is used to squash the second. The last thing Power Over wants is empowered individuals. So what does Power Over do? It either coerces or seduces the empowered into its camp. Or it seeks to isolate the empowered from each other so they are incapable of supporting one another and they end up losing their power due to exhaustion or despair. 

And this is where the third type of power comes into play. Not individual empowerment, not power over, but Power With. This type of power brings individuals together for mutual support in a common cause for the betterment of all. Power With shares responsibilities amongst the group, and leadership guides but does not dominate.

The challenge is creating a “Power With” dynamic. Power Over is easy: the strongest dominates or the one with the most resources dominates or the one with historical advantages dominates. Empowerment makes logical sense. Give individuals what they need to thrive and they will. But Power With is really hard because it asks us to check our egos at the door and be part of a team. Power With asks us to give up historical advantages in order to create room for more people to share power. This is, by the way, why white supremacy is such an intractable foe. People who look like me often don’t even realize the advantages that have accrued to us, so how could we try to share them if we can’t name them?

In today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Paul gives us the main step towards being able to foster Power With. He begins by listing some of the ways he could assert Power Over. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more,” Paul says. “Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

But then Paul does a U-Turn. He rejects all of this, saying, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Paul then re-centers his identity fully within the suffering and the promise of Jesus. “Christ Jesus has made me his own,” Paul says. If Paul belongs to Christ, then Paul no longer belongs to himself. If we belong to Christ, then we no longer belong to ourselves. And thus we can let go of our egos. We can let go of our desire to dominate. We can let go of the need to grasp at our historical advantages. And we can embrace the life-giving nature of “Power With” types of relationships.

The Faith-based Community Organizing that you have heard me speak about on occasion is a prime example of Power With. Everything starts by coming together one-on-one and sharing our stories with each other. We listen for shared heartbreak and trauma, for ways we wish the world would be but isn’t, for how the thread in your story intertwines with the thread in mine. Then we collect all those stories, all those hours of personal encounter and witness. We comb through them for ways we can act concretely in our local context to make people’s lives better. We choose issues, and then bring people together to effect change. We empower those directly affected by the issue. We challenge those with power over the issue. And we create power with each other, new capacity to act that none of us could achieve alone.

Because Christ Jesus has made me his own, Christ has empowered me to give over to him everything that makes me cling to whatever small slice of Power Over I have. I understand that my standing in society is not a zero-sum game. When Christ Jesus makes you his own, too, then I’m not suddenly kicked out into the cold. We are both in Christ. And Christ dwells in us. With the empowering, ever-giving heart of Christ beating in us, we can learn to embrace the third kind of power, Power With. And we can take our places amongst a great multitude working to create justice and peace on the earth.