“Belonging Is Powerful”
Mark 11:1-10
Mark 11:15-19
Philippians 2:5-11
I want to begin this morning by posing a question—a question for you, for me, for the church, for all people everywhere, really.
The question—and our answers to it—is relevant not only to Christians beginning Holy Week. I think this question, and our understanding of it, is also central to how most people live. I think this question is absolutely critical to our understanding of what is happening in our government, in our neighborhoods, in our country, and around the world. Coming up with the right answers to this question is, I think, essential for those of us who hope that we and all we hold dear will survive this frightening time of chaos, cruelty, lawlessness, and tyranny.
The question, bluntly put, is this:
What is the source of your power?
For some of us this question might require a preliminary query, something like:
Do you have any power—personally, spiritually, politically, economically, or otherwise? And then, once that’s sorted out:
Where does your power come from?
It is an important and urgent question in part, of course, because the governmental powers that be would like us to believe that any power we once held has been taken away. They want us to feel like there is nothing we can do about what is happening and that, as a result, we will not do anything.
In fact, they have managed to weaken or eliminate many of what we thought were the sources and essence of our power.
Take wealth, for example, or just the basic need of having enough to get by, of knowing we can afford housing, medical care, food, retirement, and whatever else we need. Well, last week’s tariff chaos, stock market dives, and the prospect of much higher prices have reminded us how fleeting financial power can be.
As Americans, most of us have rarely thought about the power we derive from the rule of law; it was just a given. We have certain inalienable rights, we have laws that are supposed to apply to everyone equally, and we have a multi-layered judicial system that is supposed to uphold them. On top of that we have regulatory agencies, laws, standards, and policies that are supposed to protect us from epidemics, fraudulent business practices, shoddy products, dangerous medicines, dirty water and air, and extreme weather. We live in a democracy, after all—or at least we used to.
Well, I don’t need to tell you that the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security seem undaunted by our constitutional rights to due process. When legal immigrants can be thrown into prison or out of the country for speaking out against genocide, where does that leave us? When international students discover that their visas have been revoked for seemingly no reason at all, who is safe? When the executive branch ignores the rulings of the judicial branch, what recourse do we have? When billions of dollars in scientific research can be halted because some government official doesn’t like a university’s free-speech policies, and when public education funding can be stripped because a school teaches actual American history and honors the gender expressions of all its students, what power do we the people really have?
Even those of us who have been uncomfortable about acknowledging the power and privilege we have because of our skin color, citizenship, education, income, sexual orientation, and ease of voting can no longer be sure about what those things get us.
So, if our true power, our greatest power, is not in things like wealth, status, the law, or other privileges, where does it come from? Let me ask you again:
What is the source of your power? To the extent that you have any power, where does it come from?
Well, we will get to the source of ultimate power in a moment, but meantime let us give thanks that—for now, anyway—we still have the power of protest.
And that is exactly what Jesus and the multitudes of seemingly powerless Jewish subjects of Rome were doing on what we now call Palm Sunday.
They were protesting the tyranny of Roman occupation. They were protesting the collaboration of their religious leaders. They were protesting their sense of powerlessness by praising God for the prophet who had shown them the power of belonging to God and one another. They were protesting their hopelessness by celebrating the carpenter’s son from Nazareth who had blessed people like them—the poor, the meek, and the outcasts. They were protesting their brokenness by putting their hopes in the one who had healed them.
“Hosanna!” they shouted to Jesus. “Save us! Surely you have been sent by God. Surely you will restore us and all of Israel to power. Surely,” they said to the man riding a borrowed donkey, “you will be our king. Hosanna!”
Who’s to say if, for the briefest moment, Jesus was not caught up in their joy and carried away by the faintest taste of power. Maybe that’s why he was emboldened to overturn tables and drive out moneychangers from the temple. Then again, maybe he simply knew at that point that he had nothing to lose. The die had been cast. His fate was likely sealed, so why not use what little earthly power he had to shake things up? Why not cast his lot with God and the poor one more time?
Because that, after all, is where real power—his and ours—comes from. Not from accumulating, not from striving, not from claiming our privilege, and doing whatever we want to get our own way—but by emptying ourselves of whatever power we think we have and standing with the powerless.
We come into our power not by putting ourselves above others, but by standing with them. We come into our power not by acting as if we are God, but by acknowledging that we belong to the God who is love, that we are made in God’s image for love, and that—while the cynical powers that be would divide us for their own ends—we gain power when we realize that we are all connected, that we all belong to each other, and that we belong to all creation.
Our true power lies in the love, mercy, and grace of God. Our power comes from the faith that God’s extravagant love is both tender and fierce, both personal and all-encompassing, and that it seeks not only our healing and wholeness but justice and joy for all.
Our strength derives from the light and Spirit of God that lives within all people. Our healing and transformation are to be found in the self-emptying love of Jesus, which allows the same mind that was in Christ Jesus to be ours.
Like Christ, we find our power by giving up, going down, and standing with. Real, life-saving, world-changing power is well-acquainted with suffering and grief, but no stranger to joy. Our liberation is collective. The way through the wilderness is found in beloved community.
Belonging is powerful. Belonging to God and one another is what will deliver us.
Where does your power come from?
May it come from your connection to the Holy, your awareness that you are loved with an everlasting love, your trust that none of us is alone, your faith that Love is stronger than greed and corruption and hatred and even death, and your hope that, together, standing in God’s power, on God’s promises, and with one another, we will know the fullness of life.
May you know that the power of God’s love within you and all people is able to accomplish far more than you and we can ask or even imagine.
