Great to Good 3 – 11.4.7
How will you use your power?
Dennis Mullen 

            Usually if I use an illustration from TV, I start by saying “Now I don’t watch much TV, but I was flipping through channels the other day…” It’s a bit of spin control, a way of making myself look better by claiming to have little to do with TV.

            But today I don’t have to say that, because I can truly say that I walked into the room this week and saw something awful on TV that Cindy was watching!!! J

            What she was watching was a hatchet-job celebrity documentary on some wealthy Hollywood kids, how they live in these huge mansions provided by their parents and grandparents, places with guesthouses as big as our church, with swimming pools, tennis courts, servants, fancy cars…and how ther lives are about nothing more than going out with other such celebrity heirs and heiresses and getting drunk, getting high, fighting, making obscene gestures to cameras, wrecking half-million dollar cars, getting arrested and going to rehab. This show featured, Rod Stewart’s kids, and the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore…the worst of the bunch (at least according to this show) was a guy named Brandon Davis, who apparently never steps in front of a camera sober.  Brandon’s grandfather Marvin Davis made millions in oil and was known as a businessman and a philanthropist, but his grandson is known only for blowing all his wealth partying.

            After we saw a few minutes of this stuff, all the cars and money spent on drugs and rehab and especially the 20, 30, 40 million dollar homes, Cindy said:  “Think of all the good they could do with everything they have.”

            The fact is that each one of these young people is blessed not only with limitless money but with tremendous POWER.  There is power in money but there is also power in fame.  Both open doors and get you in to see and talk to leaders, opinion shapers, people who can do something about whatever it is that concerns you.  There is power in being connected to other famous people and power in having parents and grandparents who have done so much in their field, and there is power in not having to work for a living and power in being able to buy your way in to the best schools and hire the best tutors. 

            These kids have tremendous power and look what they’re doing with it!

            By the standards of our culture, these are the children of the great ones among us.  BrUce Wilis may not be thought of as a great actor but he is a great success, and he gets somewhere close to $20 million a movie.  Rod Stewart has made tens of millions or hundreds of millions off his music, and he has been a fixture in the culture for 30 years.  People may not admire them, but many envy them and want to read about them and would gladly trade places with them.

            If that’s what GREAT is….then every follower of Jesus Christ certainly must turn his or her back on greatness and descend with Christ toward a GOODNESS that is centered on others and on God.  Hence the title of this series, Great to Good.

            But in truth, Christ didn’t accept any other standard for greatness than his own, and he said:  "...whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all."  Mark 10:43-44  He didn’t tell us to descend from greatness to goodness, but rather to descend to greatness, to aspire to serve anyone, everyone, to put others first and trust Christ for the rewards.

            When I saw these young people on TV, I saw power being wasted.  But then I realized that we all have power – sometimes it isn’t much, sometimes it comes and goes and returns – but we all have power.  And the question we’ll have to answer for is the same one these young people will when we stand before our Maker and that is:  What did YOU do with the power you had?  Did you use it for yourself?  Did you use it for the benefit of others?  So my title today: What will you do with your POWER?

            We all know the saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and so many of us try to avoid power where we can.  OK, maybe that’s wise, but it ignores the fact that we cannot avoid power and all of us have power in one or more parts of life. 

            If you are a parent, you have a certain amount of power over your kids.  It changes as they grow up and perhaps even diminishes, but it is always there.  If you teach, you have power when you step in front of your classroom.  A person who picks up a mike and stands before this church suddenly has the attention of everyone in the room and that is power, to be used or misused or squandered.  As a husband, you have a certain amount of power over you family and maybe if you are strong-willed or demanding and used to getting your own way or manipulating people with your anger, you have more power over people than anyone wishes, and you can cause each evening at your home to be either pleasant or a living hell, depending on your mood.  That’s a perverse sort of power that I hear about a lot.

            At work you have power.  Maybe it’s the power to get people to do what they should or the power to evaluate them or to hand out raises or to withhold them.  Or maybe you don’t have a single person reporting to you.  You still have a bit of power to represent your employer, your store, your product by the way you conduct yourself. 

At my first job, as a small grocery store, no one reported to me, but since I bagged and carried out groceries and stocked shelves, I had the power to make people hate the store or maybe to like it by my attitude and my skill and my personal hygiene and by how well I did my job.  My boss gave me that power.  What do you think his reaction would have been if I had decided to use it for myself?  He would have fired me.  He didn’t give me power to represent his store to make my life better but only so that I would use it to build his business.

            That’s the essence of what we call in church STEWARDSHIP.  Whatever power I have and you have…it isn’t about us.  It is a trust.  If we use it for ourselves, to make life easy and to make our own name grander, to win friends and turn people to our own agendas…if we use power in this way, then the only difference between us and the heirs and heiresses on that TV show is the SCALE of our abuse.  They have more power than me and their abuse is more flagrant, but it it isn’t different in kind, because we’re both using power for ourselves.

            At Catalyst, we heard Andy Stanley speak on this theme, and he brought up a familiar Scripture that speaks to the use of power and captures the heart of this series about pursuing greatness as Jesus defines it (and I’m using some of Andy Stanley’s ideas here)…It’s from the upper room, John 13.

            1 It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.  This was his last night and it was his last chance to crystallize for his disciples everything that was important for them to know.  That makes this stuff important.

            2 The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus.  Now note this well, this next line describes his motives:  3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God;…That is ultimate power.  We can talk about what Rod Stewart’s son does with lots of financial power or what you do with the power that comes from having some employees, but Jesus know that the Father had put ALL things under his power.  What do you do with that kind of power?  Declare yourself king?  Set up a charitable trust?  Force people to be good?  Here’s what Jesus did:   4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

            By taking off his robe, Jesus shed the symbol of his authority as a rabbi.  Wherever Jesus went, people recognized him as a teacher and when he went to the synagogue he was expected to read from the scroll of Scripture, indicating that his clothing, though simple, identified him as a teacher and was therefore a symbol of his authority.  When he found himself with ultimate power, he took off that symbol and wrapped a towel around his waist, which was the dress of a common household slave.

            A couple of things to note:  1.  You know, of course, that washing feet was a needed act of hospitality in those days, and when you visited someone for an evening meal, if that person was respectable, he had a servant wash your feet. 2.  The 12 disciples and Jesus were having this meal by themselves and there was no owner of the house present and no designated servant, so no one washed their feet.  It’s like when a lot of guys are standing around waiting for lunch to be served and someone spills a coke, and there is that moment when they all wait and wonder who will clean it up and they all hope for someone’s wife or Mom to do it.  3.  Only a few days earlier, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, so he had never been higher on the pedestal in their eyes than he was right now.  THEREFORE, when he began washing feet, they all got nervous.  None of them had been proactive or humble enough to do it, but when JESUS started doing it, it didn’t seem right, and their immediate reaction was something like:  Get back on your pedestal, Jesus!  And that’s why they had this exchange…

            6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
            7 Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
            8 "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet."
               Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."

            And Peter, known to overreact, said:  9 "Then, Lord…not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!"  Which wasn’t needed.

            Now this wasn’t just about service but also about a lesson, and here it comes: 

12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. 13 "You call me `Teacher' and `Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

            Jesus is saying:  Now that I have done this for you, what excuse do you have?  No servant is greater than his master.  This is your example.  It’s the example of what to do with power, and it is an example for every husband, every father, every elder or teacher or leader of ministry, it is the example for every employer and for every person who is given the power to represent a company or go to school or use money.  It’s the example for us all because all of us have a certain amount of power and we all face the decision of what to do with it, and here is the lesson:

            If I use my power to protect me or increase my pleasure, I’m saying:  I’m better than Jesus.

            In a way, that is exactly what our image problem as Christians is all about.  I talked to you a few weeks ago about the book unChristian and all the terrible things that younger Americans associate with the church – 91% say that the first and best word to describe us is “anti-homosexual”; 87% say it’s “judgmental” and 85% pick the word “hypocritical”.  What they’re basically saying is that Christians have power that we have gained through the years – power in numbers, power in politics, the power that comes from having money.  And what have we used it for?  In their eyes, we have used it to bash gays and oppose gay marriage, to portray others as awful people and to cover up our own hypocritical lifestyles.  We have used our power (at least in their eyes) to try to elect candidates and censor the media and force our curriculum to be taught in schools.  Even if we can say (with some justification) that we are misunderstood, this is the perception of how we have used our power.  Four weeks ago I said that we need to make a change and that change is summed up in these words from Jesus:

            MT 5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  Another way to put it:  Use your power to bless others, to make their lives better.  It isn’t about us.  It’s about Christ’s ministry to others.

When as a faith, as a church this is what we do, people will follow

            There’s a book with an interesting and scandalous title that’s making waves on Christian web sites.  The book is called I Sold My Soul on eBay.  It is written by an atheist.  It is published by a Christian publisher.  The author, Hemant Mehta, didn’t really sell his soul, but he offered his Sundays up for bid and said that the highest bidder could purchase his time and send him to whatever churches they thought would give him the best exposure to Christianity.  The winning bidder sent this guy to a whole year’s worth of church services and Mehta ended up learning a lot about Christianity and church and he wrote this book.  I read an interview with Mehta in Revevant Leader.  Listen to this:

What would make you convert to Christianity or any religion?

Hemant Mehta, author of I Sold My Soul on eBay

“There are two ways that religion could appeal to me.  One is that I would have to see evidence that a particular religious explanation is the best one for the world I live in.  Experiencing a miracle might do it.  However, this would defeat the whole notion of having faith.”

            “But if Christians (or those of other faiths) really want to connect with an atheist, they should focus on taking action to make the world a better place.  If I saw Christians helping those of all classes, races and religions, regardless of the recipients’ beliefs, my attitude would certainly change.  At this point it is hard for me to refute that religion hurts us rather than helps us (as other atheists have claimed).  I hear about too many missionaries who are more concerned with converting people in the short term than with making sure their lives are better in the long term…           

            In other words: If Christians would leverage their power to bless others rather than to build up their own little empires, it might change my point of view.  But that isn’t what he has seen.

            Or listen to Brian McClaren.  He’s a Christian, author of a couple of best-selling books about the new generation of Christians (even though he’s older than I am).  He also spoke to Relevant Leader….

            What theological emphases of the evangelical church do you think are hurting Christianity?

Brian McClaren, author of A Generous Orthodoxy and Everything Must Change

– “First, many of us seem to believe that God is only interested in saving human souls for the afterlife.  We assume that God wants to destroy the world and extract souls for heaven.  We focus on Bible verses that affirm these assumptions, but then we miss or minimize the parts of the Bible that also emphasize God’s plan to heal creation by turning human history from its suicidal trajectory, through the Good News of Jesus Christ…This imbalance can lead to a kind of theology of abandonment where we want to evacuate this world for heaven ASAP…This imbalance is in real tension with Jesus’ words in the Lord’s Prayer, where he teaches us to pray, not “May we go to heaven, where Your will is done, unlike on earth,” but rather “May Your Kingdom come.  May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

            In other words, McClaren, who is part of the church, says that we have used our power to promote a very partial understanding of the Gospel and we have neglected to use it to benefit the very people Jesus blessed with his power during his earthly ministry.

            One other witness, this one you definitely are familiar with… Rick Warren.  After 25 years as a pastor of a megachurch, making decent money probably, Rick wrote the book The Purpose-Driven Life, which made him tens of millions of dollars.   What’s he doing with that kind of power?  He is leveraging it to try to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems – poverty, AIDS, spiritual emptiness.  Leadership, in the Summer 2007 edition, did an interview with Rick Warren, in which he said:

"The American church as a whole needs to move from selfish consumerism to unselfish contribution. Those are poles apart. To start with a woman who's most interested in how many diamonds she's got in her tennis bracelet, and move her to sit under a banyan tree holding an AIDS baby- that's a giant leap. People in this culture are trained to think about me, me, me; I've got to do what's best for me. Even when we go to church we have this consumer mentality." 

            We sure do.  Even at church, personal power, the power of choice as to whether to attend or not, give or not, listen or not, change or not, is often paramount.  But if we take the power entrusted to us and quit spending it on us, the world will notice that something is changing, that we are becoming more like Jesus and more like what we’ve said all along that we believe. 

            I said four weeks ago that our “brand”, the Christian brand, has (without our intention) become:  “Antigay, judgmental, hypocritical, shallow, self-centered, political.”

            What if the Christian brand was “People who leverage their power for the benefit of others?” 

            That’s what Jesus had in mind.  John 13…

13 "You call me `Teacher' and `Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Today let’s close by praying just the first part of the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-10):

  " `Our Father in heaven,
  hallowed be your name,
  MT 6:10 your kingdom come,
  your will be done
    on earth as it is in heaven.

Are you ready to help make that happen?  Then DO SOMETHING.

 Morrison Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN  37763   (865) 376-5205