“Witness Power”
Text: Acts 1: 1-8; 2:1-13
POWER ISSUES
The first part of our text gives us two, important pieces of information. First, the Disciples are still fairly clueless; they ask Jesus if he will now take over Jerusalem and set up his worldly kingdom. In short, Jesus tells them they’re not on the need to know list. Secondly, Jesus promises them that when the Father sends the Holy Spirit, they will receive power: power from Heaven.
The second part of the text tells of the fulfillment of that promise—the advent of the Holy Spirit and the start of the Church. God’s power fell upon the Disciples on Pentecost and has fueled the Christian movement ever since.
Question: What do you think of when you hear the word power?
To be quite frank (and to save a lot of time), questions about power have totally dominated the modern era. From the 1800s till the present day, philosophers, politicians, and activists—the Scribes, Sadducess, and Zealots our day—have interpreted the entire world and all of human relationships strictly in terms of power.
Power is the lens through which we have come to view all things and our public life is dominated by words like rights, empowerment, equality, justice—and these are what make up politics—our systems of command, order, and control.
Everyone wants their own hands on the great steering wheel of America, and if not ourselves then it darn well better be the people we choose. Therefore we have endless, insufferable power issues; and because we have power issues we have authority issues as well. Who gets to say how and why things are to be the way they are? Who says so? I didn’t vote for that person! etc.
Our power issues inevitably wind up in issues of selfishness and self-interest. Trust erodes and the common assumption becomes that each one is out for him or herself, and therefore power means self-empowerment. It winds down to money, greed, taking care of me and mine; and it is no wonder that we have power and authority issues.
belonging over power
I want to suggest that worldly power is not the best lens to view the world, history, or anything else. It is a failed perspective—one that dumbs down human beings and institutions to oversimplified terms. Hundreds of years of political philosophers have taken us nowhere; we’re still caught playing control games—politics and power paranoia.
So we should ask, as Jesus promises to give the Church the power from Heaven, How is God’s power different?
How can we be sure that the power given to us, the Church, will be qualitatively different from the powers of this world? After all , it’s easy enough to see in church history how its rise to worldly power also imbued it with all the negative traits of power: dominance, control, and self-absorption.
God’s power is not like worldly power.
God’s power has a different focus.
The New Testament word for power is dunamis, from which we get the words dynamism, dynamic, and dynamite. Dunamis means ability, not control. In biblical terms, to possess power is to be able to do something; it doesn’t mean that you hold control.
What a different picture of power we get when the focus is not about personal control but enablement and empowerment. We can perhaps better understand human beings and institutions by abandoning the lens of power and instead seeking to see things through the eyes of God.
How does God see us? As he made us—not to play little gods among ourselves but to live in peaceable community as his children, surrendering all control to him.
As such, the will to power gives way to something more centrally human: belonging.
When our drive is less to control and take, and more to belong and to see that others belong, then we actually advance toward wholeness, which is the real goal.
So when you hear the word power, I’d like you to shift gears and think instead about belonging. When you hear “power,” think, “belong.” When you hear of political struggles, think instead of what fosters a true sense of community. When you hear activists demanding rights and privileges, read the subtext and consider their need for inclusion and unity as a solution.
The power God gives the Church by the Holy Spirit is not in order for us to take the worldly controls to ourselves; it is the power of empathy to remake ourselves and our society.”
The mission of the Church has nothing at all to do with political empowerment of social groups and everything to do with announcing the good news of the gospel that all people would turn to God, acknowledge him Lord, and redirect their lives toward him. And once that is done, to turn to one another and regard each one as brother or sister—family.
The path of love is lit by the light of belonging, and the Church is to take responsibility for all who have been singled out through run-of-the-mill power politics.
our power witness
Dunamis power means that love is our witness, and the Holy Spirit gives us the power from Heaven that our lives may look different from those of the rest of the world. That difference—that Holy Spirit power, the strength to love, to do what is even irrational in world’s eyes—is the very thing by which they may come to seek and acknowledge God.
That difference was apparent from the very beginning, and Christians no older than Madelyn and Shelby were among its most powerful witnesses.
We read in the writings of the ancient Roman, Pliny the Elder, writing in 112 AD:
So far this has been my procedure when people were charged before me with being Christians. I have asked the accused themselves if they were Christians; if they said “yes,” I asked them a second time and a third time, warning them of the penalty; if they persisted I ordered them to be led off to execution. . . . An anonymous letter was laid before me containing many people’s names.
Some of these denied that they were Christians or had ever been so; at my dictation they invoked the gods and did reverence with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose along with statues of the gods; they also cursed Christ; and as I am informed that people who are really Christians cannot possibly be made to do any of those things, I considered that the people who did them should be discharged.
receiving the power
So how is God’s power received? How is it we Christians—we present day witnesses—receive the Holy Spirit and the power from Heaven?
Scripture is clear: they come through the sacraments. What makes a sacrament a sacrament instead of just a ritual or favored practice of the Church? Answer: because they were not established by the Church. They are the events instituted by Christ himself. God initiates the sacraments, not the Church. The sacraments are God-given, not manmade; they are God-empowered—God’s promised means to give of himself and his power to us.
There are two and we’re obediently celebrating both today.
1. The Sacrament of BAPTISM
From the beginning, it was through baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit was given, granted and guaranteed. All who proclaim Christ as Lord do so only by the power of the Holy Spirit.
While the event is meaningful to us—our spiritual death and rebirth by water—the real miracle is God’s promised presence and empowerment. All who are baptized become his witnesses.
2. The Sacrament of THE LORD’S SUPPER
This is the meal by which we are fed the bread of Heaven and the Holy Spirit continues to empower God’s people. We did not choose the bread and the cup; Jesus chooses them. We do not make them effective or spiritual; only God can do that; and the great thing is that this is precisely the promise. As we break the bread, take and eat, and drink from the cup, we participate in the real presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
the purpose of power
The ultimate mystery of Pentecost is that through us God’s good news goes out to all the world—to every tribe and nation—and we (you and I) are to be his witnesses, martyrs, to the end of this harvest season.†