Not long ago, my brother-in-law, Chuck, sent the family some really cool videos from behind the scenes at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN. He was there because his brother-in-law is a pretty well-known musician and was playing in a band that was part of a special tribute evening (I think for Loretta Lynn). Chuck was saying how cool it was to see all these stars walking through the halls and to have the backstage VIP pass.
I don’t know about you, but I love it when I can get a VIP pass of some kind. We breeze right through the long lines. We get access to the good stuff. We meet all the cool people. We get special treatment and privileges.
Jesus, however, is not much of a fan of the VIP stuff.
In today’s gospel, Jesus has just barely finished with his speech about how he’s going to Jerusalem to suffer and die, when “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (not sure why she is named that way – am guessing that she and Zebedee are no longer an item?) asks Jesus if her two boys can sit on his right and left. In short, can her two boys get VIP passes in Jesus’ club.
I don’t fault the mom for asking, nor does Jesus. But he does question her to say, “Do you know what you’re asking?”
It’s clear that she does not understand the way Jesus envisions the kin-dom, and most people of his time did not. I would submit that this is likely true for you and me as well. It’s hard to understand Jesus and his kin-dom because it does not work like stuff we see working every day in our world.
Recently for one of our Lenten offerings we watched a very powerful documentary called The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code by director Steven Newcomb. It’s a film dedicated to making plain the fundamental connections between some Catholic doctrines from the 15th century, settler-colonialism and modern law in the United States. And as the title says, it reveals that the fundamental power dynamic that was used was domination.
This is the power dynamic most of us understand all too well because it is so deeply woven into almost everything we experience. It’s about winners and losers and survival of the fittest. It’s about law and punishment and might makes right. It’s about ownership and exclusion. And It’s about power, privilege and access. In this understanding, some people get to be VIP’s and most do not.
But domination or ‘power over’ is only one way of using power, and it was the way that Jesus rejected. He said we needed to do something different.
A lot of people might refer to an alternative as “power with”. When we’re using power with (or shared or collaborative power), we’re working to leverage connection and empathy. We view ourselves at the service of or stewards of the community (and not in charge of it or over it) as well as taking on a solidarity mindset. It’s a position of being in deeper relationship versus just working towards a goal. Furthermore, this kind of power seeks to center the voices and perspectives of those who are traditionally left out of the conversation. In Jesus’ time, they called those people “the widows and orphans.” ‘Power with’ models also seek to address power imbalances, work against privilege and engender equity.
Of course we have many models and expressions of ‘power with’ in our world, yet they rarely get the limelight, and most of us get little formal training and exposure to them. Yet ‘power with’ ways of working together form the basis of all the liberation movements that we have witnessed in this country. They are the ways that communities take care of themselves through mutual aid. They are generally the ways indigenous peoples organized themselves, the way the natural world organizes itself and, ideally, they are the way that “church” should operate (at least according to Acts 4).
‘Power with’ models also seek to de-center the singular leader and elevate the many leaders and perspectives that might be present in any community. And ‘power with’ models are also considering future generations as silent stakeholders in current decisions.
For today, think about decisions that you make. Think about decisions that are made related to your life. Reflect on decisions you read about in the paper or online. What kind of power is being used in these decisions? Whose experience or perspective is being centered? How might we lean things more in the direction of ‘power with’?