Power and Privilege

Wednesday March 11

Readings: Jer 18:18-20; Mt 20:17-28

For today, I am going to focus on the gospel reading from Matthew.

Power and privilege are the words of the day.  Most of us when we are young are not officially taught about power.  But we learn the lessons very quickly. And, in general, the more privilege you have in the world, the less you have studied or notice how it works.

In the gospel, the mother of the sons of Zebedee approaches Jesus and asks if her sons can have special places of honor in God’s kingdom (privilege).  Jesus asks if they even know what that means (because he just got finished talking about his suffering).  This sets all of the disciples arguing about things (power conflicts generally do that).  Jesus then gives a brief discourse on power and how it should be used.

 [Note: Before we go any further, let’s do a quick power analysis of the text.  In today’s reading we hear the phrase “the mother of the sons of Zebedee.”  Think about that phrase for a minute.  It’s like me calling my mom (who has a name, Annette) “the mother of the sons of Wilfrid.”  She disappears in that sentence.  So who has the power there?  Whose experience is privileged?

Pretty much every scripture that we will encounter in our bible will have a bias towards men that skews the passage.  That women are even mentioned at all in the bible is a near miracle sometimes.  So as we read our scriptures, we need to pay constant attention to the presence and absence of women, women’s stories, women’s experience, etc. and work to listen to the stories of women who have been left out, overlooked, discounted, marginalized, maligned, objectified, etc.  It will require our constant efforts to address this form of gender bias. And this is only a part of what is required of us if we are going to undo this form of power and privilege.]

My friend and mentor, Kathy Castania, is a great teacher for me. She and many other people keep reminding me that we need models of power other than the “dominator” system that we have been so thoroughly schooled in. Power, in and of itself, is not bad. Power makes things happen. It’s just that most of us have rarely seen it exercised in any way other than the binary, hierarchical model that we see it at play in today’s reading.  It views power and privilege as limited quantities, and everyone must “fight” to get it.  And in this model, when an excluded or target group gets rights that have been denied to them, it can “feel” to the privileged group that they have lost something.

People naturally assumed that Jesus’ way would operate the same way other dominator/hierarchical systems did – which is why the mother of Zebedee’s sons asked for what she did.  You sought favor from the “man in charge”.  But Jesus’ group did not operate that way.  Social privilege did not mean the same to him.  He sought out the people without privilege and power.  And being “in charge” meant that you were a servant.  No life had more value than another.  No one was more special.

This model is great news for anyone who has been marginalized because it finally opens up a door.  This model is a challenge for anyone with privilege because it means that you do not get benefits just for having a specific characteristic.

In his own life, Jesus had to constantly face (and re-face) the temptations that he encountered in the desert.  These were all about how to use power and privilege.  And what Jesus called people to was transformation – not just a different form of business as usual.  Transformed people do not need to build systems of domination.  Transformed people know how to be servants.

So for today, pray for humility, a spirit of service and an ability to exercise power from a place of mutuality. Do what you can to question and interrupt patterns of privilege and domination.