Superpower
“ I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. ”
This weekend, my family and I sat down to watch the movie Antman together. It’s rare to find a movie that none of us have seen. Antman had gotten decent reviews but I think most of us couldn’t believe that a movie where the superhero’s power is being as small as an ant could be any good. And then, a couple weeks ago, we saw the sequel being filmed in San Francisco and then, it was the ONLY decent movie that none of us had seen, and so we decided to risk it.
And even I, who doesn’t usually go for the superhero movies, enjoyed it.
It turns out being as small as an ant is really powerful. You can fit in tiny places and be inconspicuous, even invisible when you need to. And ants may be tiny, but they are incredibly strong. An ant can carry 10 and 50 times its own body weight, and run at approximately 300 yards an hour, a rate of nearly 800 times its body length a minute.
We often associate power with big and strong, but sometimes it also is small and vulnerable. Our failure to grasp that – my failure to grasp that – is often our undoing and what keeps us stuck in our lives.
This passage in Ephesians is one of Paul’s poetic openings to his letters where he praises the people he is writing to and blesses them with a prayer. It’s easy to read these as almost a hallmark greeting card in the Bible. Just a lot of niceties at the beginning of the letter. But actually, this text is deeply theological, and honestly, I find it challenging.
He begins with gratitude for who they are as a community of faith. He praises their faith and love. That part I get.
And then, he prays a prayer for them that is specifically, laser-like targeted at their inner reality. It is deeply intimate while at the same time being full of intense theology:
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
We are so accustomed to praying for external realities: that we will get a job, that we will find physical healing, that we will be safe.
Paul is praying for the inner reality of those he is writing. He prays that they would have wisdom and revelation, that they would see with the eyes of their heart (not the eyes of their head), that they would know hope and then lastly, that they would experience power.
I have two primary reactions to this text. First of all, I desperately want it to be true. I want to live in this reality that Paul is portraying. I want someone to pray it for me and I want to pray it for others because the person who is living this way is strong and wise and grounded. If I could have one prayer for each of you, it would be that you experience this inner reality.
But secondly, I confess to you, I’m afraid to believe it’s true. And that fear is based on a couple of things.
First, I don’t want to be in the business of false advertising. As a preacher and a pastor, I don’t want to raise your hopes that you could live in a way that is so internally free and powerful and then have you disappointed when you try.
Second, and this is somewhat related to the first concern, I have known too many people who have claimed this kind of power in the name of Jesus and who have actually abused their power. This week, in response to the #metoo movement where women have been recounting their stories of abuse, someone began a #churchtoo hashtag and social media began to be flooded with stories of those who have been harassed because of their gender in church:
Growing up in purity culture, I was taught that men were “visual creatures” that couldn’t help feeling aroused at the sight of slightly revealed ankles or knees, and that all men were imagining me naked 24/7. The entire system shamed women for even existing. #ChurchToo
I was 13 and the pastor’s daughter. A prominent church member molested me and I reported him to the church. The church covered it up, fired my father, and made the church member an elder. #ChurchToo
Let's remember the indigenous women who have been assaulted and raped by men who claimed to be Christians, speaking of salvation for the heathen savage, while destroying lives and cultures that thrived before they got here. #churchtoo
It goes on and on. Ever since the gilding publicly fell off the church with the scandals in the late 1980’s with Jimmy Swaggart and Jimmy Bakker and the continuing revelations of abusive priests, it is hard to speak unequivocally that we need to take anything on blind faith. There have been so many people who have claimed power in the name of Jesus and then abused or misused that sense of power to hurt others.
Power is a topic that makes us squirm a bit in the Presbyterian church. We prefer to discuss things that we can understand with our minds and control with our actions. Power is something for churches that are more likely to raise their hands or for people with less education who “need that sort of thing.”
But I have to say that, despite my reservations, I think we’re missing the very heart of the gospel and our faith if we don’t attend to this.
Paul is expressing what those early followers of Jesus experienced when they were with Jesus and when he left them. They experienced a power that they knew they had not produced and that was beyond their personal capacity.
It was less a big and strong kind of power and more of what Paul describes here – a power that brought inner healing and wholeness. It was a capacity to discern and to love. And they knew it had to do with Jesus. I think in many ways you could read the entire New Testament as an attempt to describe what they were experiencing. They weren’t sure wat it was but they knew it was real and they knew it was saving them from themselves, from their fear, from their selfishness.
I grew up in a faith tradition that wants to know the date and time when you were saved. When was that moment, that you prayed the prayer that saves your eternal soul? I can give you a few examples of the times when I did that, beginning at 3 and a half years old and continuing to thirteen.
But when I read this passage, I think instead of the moment when I was 21 and I was lost in grief over the murder of my best friend’s brother and I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t power through the way I always had. And at some point in my pain and grief, I knew that underneath all of that, there was an anchor, holding my soul, loving me, not letting me go. My salvation was not a moment in time when I took hold of Jesus but when I realized that Jesus had ahold of me. And all of my raging and all of the world’s violence could not touch that.
The power that Paul is referring to is not something that we claim any credit for. It is not something that is used to gain power in the way the external world defines power. It is a power that allows us to say a deep and soul-filled “yes” to a reality that we cannot fully understand or grasp but that we in faith believe. It is the reality that love is the foundation of reality. And that love is powerful. So powerful that it can transform the dirt and muck of our everyday lives. So powerful that it can transform our internal reality. So powerful that it is stronger than death.
Today is the last day in the church’s calendar. It is called “Christ the King” Sunday, where after traveling all year through the birth, life and death of Jesus, we proclaim that Christ is the center of reality. Ironically as we make that bold and big claim, a claim of power and empire, we next week step into Advent, where the power of God is nearly invisible, buried inside the womb of a woman.
When I get lost in the failures of the church and my own fears about whether all of this is true, I go back to some of my favorite saints… to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, to the mystics like Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila, to contemporary teachers like Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren and Cynthia Bourgeault, to my friends in Africa who don’t have as many of these hangups with faith. And I remember that this power is real and it is for me, it is for you. It’s authenticity is measured in love, in power under, not power over. We don’t access it through bold and visible gestures. We access it through the keyholes of silence, truth-telling, community, vulnerability and service. And in these small spaces we find big trust and yes, even big power.
I love the story of Dag Hammarskjold, the Secretary General of the UN for 8 years until his untimely death in 1961. He was a powerful man in the world and yet, they found writings in his home that were deeply mystical. He was a man of great power externally but even more so, he had discovered a power within himself that is the power Paul speaks about. May his prayer be ours:
“For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to come, yes!”