Give your power away. November 24, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:35-43

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. Some of you may be familiar with him because he’s the host of a popular podcast called The Science of Happiness. Among other things, he has devoted a lot of time to studying leadership skills and organizational behavior. A couple years ago he published a book entitled The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence.  The thesis is this: those who want to have power, which he defines as the ability to influence people and events, need to act collaboratively to get it. They work well with others; they are team players; they are a positive presence in meetings; they listen to the ideas of others; they support others. This is what leads to promotions and higher positions. This is what garners them positive attention and votes and whatever else they need to acquire power. But here is the paradox as Dacher Keltner sees it: once people accrue power, they often abandon the behaviors and practices that brought them power: they become self-centered and self-serving; they don’t listen to others, but treat others with indifference or contempt; they become isolated and out of touch — all of which leads them to having less influence and less power.

This dynamic can be seen in many different organizations: businesses, law firms, country clubs, churches, committees. Probably many of us have seen this played out in one form or another. So you can imagine, for example, a hypothetical priest named Gertrude. Gertrude has lots of energy. She is a great colleague who enjoys working with her fellow priests. She becomes dean of her region, and loves talking to clergy and supporting them in any way she can. She remembers people’s names and she is always willing to listen to them, always has a kind word for them. She is widely known, liked, and respected. She gets elected to the Standing Committee of the diocese and becomes a delegate to General Convention. Not surprisingly, she is eventually elected bishop. But then Bishop Gertrude changes. She loses patience with meetings; she wants things her own way; she becomes more dictatorial; she does not encourage her staff but pushes them hard; she’s critical of priests when she visits them; she becomes an isolated and disliked person. And although she is the bishop, she actually loses a lot of her power and influence as she abandons the social skills she practiced in her rise to power. That is the kind of thing that Dacher Keltner says happens all too often.

And he identifies a remedy, what he calls the power principle. It’s very simple and it goes like this: “we keep and gain power by giving it away . . . . Our power expands as we empower others.” The people with the greatest power are not the people who horde it the most, but the people who share it the most. That finding comes out of research in social psychology and is supported by work in done in other fields as well, like anthropology and economics. But while the scientific branding may reassure us, the truth being presented is not new. We see it graphically illustrated in our readings today.

Jeremiah castigates the rulers of Judah, the shepherds who have failed so miserably: Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the LORD . . . It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and have not attended to them. Instead of sharing power for the good of the people, they are abusing power for the good of themselves. New shepherds who will actually use power to care for the people must arise. But we can’t stop there. The message goes even deeper than that. Because, according to Jeremiah, who will raise up those new shepherds? God. Think about that for a moment. The LORD does not directly govern the people of Israel, but delegates it to others. God Almighty exercises power by giving power away. The power principle described by modern psychology is rooted in reality because it reflects the very nature of the Creator.

And that leads me to the Gospel. Today is the last Sunday of the church year, the Feast of Christ the King, the day when we proclaim Jesus to be King of kings and Lord of lords. So we would expect the Gospel passage to reveal Jesus in the most kingly and powerful way possible. And so it does. But unless we grasp the power principle I just laid out for you, we will never understand the Gospel today. Because Jesus is hanging on the cross. He forgives the people who are executing him. He offers Paradise to the criminal being crucified next to him. Slowly suffocating, he gives his power away to the very end, to his last dying breath. This, we are told, is Jesus Christ at his most powerful. This, we are told, is the perfect revelation of God’s power. From the very beginning, when God speaks the universe into existence and says Let it be!, she exercises power is by giving it away.

Now this would all be marvelous if we were just supposed to sit back and admire it. But we’re not just supposed to admire it: we’re supposed to imitate it. We are called to live in Christ, to have the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God, live in us. Not so that we can earn our way into heaven but so that we can begin to experience heaven now. We often think the key to a happy and successful life is amassing power in one form or another, but it’s not: the key is giving power away. As Paul writes to the Philippians, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.

We don’t have to accept this on blind faith. We can see it in others: the most powerful

and influential people I have ever personally known have been great lovers and great givers, people who readily give power away. But we can also live this and see how true it is for ourselves. All of us, after all, have power. So here’s the charge I give to all of us as we honor Christ the King: think of how you will give your power away this week. There are many ways we can give power away. We can encourage others. We can help others. We can share our gifts and resources with others. We can serve other people. We can listen to others. We can defer to others. We can forgive others. We can treat others the way we ourselves want to be treated. Doing that is not always easy, of course, but doing that does lead us into the great paradox at the heart of our faith, the great paradox at the heart of all creation: the more we give away our power for the happiness of others, the more power we have and the happier we are.