Changemaking Made Simple: Pass the Power Mark 6:30-44

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1 Rev. Kathleen McShane October 28, 2018 Changemaking Made Simple: Pass the Power Mark 6:30-44 Opening I wonder if you feel, as I do, heartsick about the hatred and violence that became so visible in this country this week. In the violent acts of someone who thought bombs were the way to make a political point. In the shooting that happened at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh yesterday morning, the deaths of people who were in that place simply to worship. Especially when the world feels like it is tipping off its axis, it s important for us to come together. We come together to remember who we are. To remind one another that we are the offspring of a God who despite all the evidence to the contrary has not given up a vision of justice and peace and love, for all of creation. Believing that does not keep us from feeling the full sorrow of this moment. It just gives us someplace to take that sorrow. I invite you to a moment of silence, so that you might carry your own heart, and the broken hearts of our Jewish brothers and sisters, into the God whose heart also grieves. It has always been so. Listen to the words of Psalm 46, ancient words, translated by Stephen Mitchell: God is our refuge and strength, our safety in times of trouble. We are calm though the whole earth trembles and the cliffs fall into the sea. Our trust is in the Unnamable, the God who makes all things right. And while it is true that God s purpose is to make all things right, it is also true that we are the instruments in God s hands for doing that. What if every time something like this happened, its consequence was to raise up a great wave of goodness in response? What if every act of violence and evil evoked in us a counter-action that restores the balance of good in the world? I invite you, during this hour, to reflect on some extra act of kindness or goodness or generosity you can do today, this week. To be part of God s work of making things right. Let us be partners to the God who is healing and peace. The God whose power is in us. The God to whom we sing our praise and thanks. Will you stand as you are able, and let us sing. Sermon A few weeks ago I discovered on my bookshelf a book I don t remember ever buying, or receiving as a gift. I have no idea how it got there, or why that book came into my line of sight now. But there it was. It s called Legends: Women Who Have Changed the World, through the Eyes of Great Women Writers. But it sounds like something I would buy. Inside the book there are beautifully-written tributes to maybe fifty women. Each of them is accompanied by a photograph a portrait, really. You d recognize most of the women s names: Golda Meir, Babe Didrikson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, Anne Frank. Princess Diana. Twiggy. They are world leaders, artists, athletes, writers, activists. Every one 1

2 of them is a legend in some way, someone who is remembered because she did something that made her extraordinary, larger than life. It struck me, as I leafed through the pages of that book, that as much as I might honor those women and their accomplishments, I would never read about them hoping to model my life after theirs. I admire them, but I d never think about using their lives as a template for my own. What we know about people we call legends is that they have a unique set of gifts, some talent that is extraordinary. And so when their presence is gone, it s irreplaceable. Thinking that way is actually a thing; it s documented. The Great Man view of history, it s called. It was suggested first by Thomas Carlyle, a philosopher who lived in the nineteenth century. Carlyle believed that the story of civilization is really a biography of great men (yes all men) who have shaped history through the force of their leadership, their intellect, the beauty and charisma of their presence. Think Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Napoleon, Washington, Aristotle, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr. Our culture has mostly adopted this theory. We like people who singly, individually, accomplish great things. People who act like heroes. We wait for some bigger-than-life figure to come and lead us, to fix what is wrong, to overpower all the obstacles with their goodness or their answers to the hardest questions. Often, when we discover that they re real people with flaws, they disappoint us. But when they do, we just keep looking, thinking that maybe the problem is simply that we made the wrong choice. I see this in myself. When I was in college, I thought about and gave up the idea of a career in politics because I couldn t see one candidate who quite measured up to my sense of what this world needs. We tend to wait for a hero with our arms crossed. Critical, but also a little bit passive, because we feel powerless. Not able to change things, and so, not responsible for repairing things ourselves. This is one of those places where I am quite sure that Jesus intended to turn our expectations upside down. Jesus didn t have much use for hero worship. He was never captured by other people s expectations about what a Messiah was supposed to be able to do. He was always turning people s focus away from himself. All through the Gospels, you can see that people kept wanting Jesus to capitalize on his power, to be the hero they needed someone to be. Turn stones into bread. Tell them you re the king. Save yourself. Don t die. Jesus didn t shy away from being a leader, but he led in a different way. He used power in a way no one had seen before. Differently from the way we re familiar with still all these years of Christianity later. When Jesus led, what he came to do, he did it with an odd sort of submission, an obedience to a larger story, a vision bigger than his own this thing called the Kingdom of God. Status and privilege seemed to mean nothing to him. He didn t seek those things for himself, and he didn t back down when he faced them in other people. It was like instead of being intimidated by the power structures around him, he was disarming them. 2

3 You can see why Jesus couldn t be a political leader. Political leadership is always about accumulating and exercising power over things. Politics is about giving someone the power to control: people, laws, institutions. Jesus used power for something different. It was a container he poured from. A magnum of compassion, emptying itself again and again for the sake of others, for their healing, their flourishing. And he offered power his power to everyone. He literally gave power away, as if there was no reason to hold onto it. As if it was a continually renewable resource. You give them something to eat. You go out and heal people. You go make disciples. If we are going to be changemakers part of mending the world the way Jesus did our work will be like his not only to serve other people, but to empower them, set them free. Changemaking is using power the influence all of us have not to dominate, but to bless and unburden people. Changemaking liberates people by noticing when systems that are broken, repairing the ways we have always done things before when those ways leave people out, or make some people un-free. This is a whole different way of being in a world that sees power as a scarce resource, the prize in a zero-sum game. Changemaking in the way of Jesus is about serving other people, but it does it in a way that encourages not their dependence but their partnership. It s the Habitat for Humanity model. Habitat doesn t just give a house to a family; it asks them to participate in its construction. Every family that receives a house built by Habitat has invested five hundred hours of sweat equity in it if not with their own hands, then with the work of their family and friends. So that the house will be theirs. So that they have an already-made community by the time they move in. It isn t particularly efficient, but it does something else. It invites people to participate in their own well-being. It enlarges their own sense of meaning and purpose. This is serving people in a way no government would ever do. It s practicing generosity and good intentions using an alternative script which is exactly what following Jesus is supposed to be. That alternative script is what our Changemaker Fellows have been rehearsing in these six months since they began. In the last four weeks we ve talked about the four qualities of compassion-driven change makers. They re people who are rooted in compassion, moved to action by someone else s suffering; work with others, who collaborate, who know that none of us does our best work alone think creatively about how to use the things they are holding right now to make a small, significant difference toward solving a big problem lead differently, who use their own influence to empower other people. I hope you ve been able to see something about how this framework is working in our Fellows, who have been practicing this way of putting action to their faith. 3

4 But what about the rest of us? If we are going to be a Changemaker Church, how will all of us be connected to this calling? This Initiative is not about adding more church programs. It s also not about every one of us going out and starting up some new non-profit that focuses on a cause that no one s ever thought of before. We ve started with a few Changemaker Fellows who were brave enough to be pioneers, to lead us. They were called to this work. They ve given it a huge piece of their time and energy this year. But the point is not for us to applaud the heroic work of a few special people. The Changemaker Initiative is about giving you all of us a new lens, for seeing that we are all powerful enough to change something that is not working well. In your work, your school, the places you lead and volunteer, your life with your family. How might those things that you are doing already shift just a little if what your faith makes you is a compassiondriven changemaker the way Jesus was? What if compassion became, more and more, the lens through which you see the things and people around you? Re-focused you, so that when you deal with other people colleagues, employees, your family, people who serve you you re thinking not only about what you need from them or what you have to get done, but what will help that person in front of you live well? What if every time you face a hard problem, you remembered to look for the people who could be a team, come alongside of you not necessarily because it will help you get things done faster, but because working together is how you make change that will last? What if you lived every moment confident that whatever you hold in your hands now is enough to make a significant dent in even the biggest problem you are facing? What if every time you serve someone the person standing in line waiting for food, or your child, or your parent, your student, your patient, your client, your customer you remember that the most important use of your power your influence is to lift up the full and powerful humanity of the person in front of you? A changemaker church understands that this is not the way things usually get done in the world that you live most of your life in. A changemaker church recognizes that where you live, where you pour yourself out, isn t just here, on Sundays. It sees and honors where you spend the rest of your week your work, your school, your home, your volunteering. A changemaker church a church that helps you become more like Jesus is one that offers you and helps you remember that there s an alternative script from the one this world offers, a script that frees you to live differently from the way most of the world gets by. Starting next month, we re going to use the fourth Sunday of every month as an opportunity to recognize a particular profession, an occupation that some people in this community do. We ll talk for a minute in those services about what it might look like to be a compassion-driven changemaker in that setting. Each month a different occupation. Send me an and tell me something about your work, so that we can include what you do. 4

5 Changemaking the kind of changemaking we re doing here at LAUMC isn t about making a better church. It s about changing the world. And it s not an invitation only to some people. It s an invitation to everyone. To you. This is what walking in the path of Jesus can look like. We are what Jesus changemaker project looks like. 5