Jesus’ quiet humility reminds us of the paradox of God’s power

Tomorrow is the day Christians celebrate as Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus rode down the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem to cheers and mixed expectations. Some cheered him as a conquering hero. Others no doubt thought him a fool. (Today’s crowd would be no different.)

A man whose power would conquer Rome would no doubt ride a soldier’s horse. Jesus, however, rode a burro. The symbolic peace and humility was possibly lost even on his supporters. His critics likely saw him as a powerless man to be dismissed.

But Jesus’ power contradicted every common perception of power. His power lay in his relationship to God, not to Rome. His power looked so different that most people didn’t recognize it as power, but powerlessness.

The power living within Jesus is still recognized as powerlessness by most people, even those of us who claim to follow him. We so easily see “power” as a force to be used only to “defend against something, someone,” to separate ourselves – feel free to pick your own example.

We also so easily overlook the reality that the power embodied in Jesus was used to include others, to embrace human beings – not push them down and apart from us. Jesus’ power contained “sprezzatura.” And we don’t deal with sprezzatura very well!

This delightful-sounding word means “paradox, contradiction.” Power is a paradox. It “conflicts with our expectations.” I like how Leonard Sweet, in “The Gospel According to Starbucks,” describes this paradox:

“We expect God to be loving and compassionate, yet there is so much natural and human-made devastation in the world. Where is God? That is paradox.

“Our rigid belief shouts out a firm answer. But faith whispers a cry to God, ‘Can I trust you to be in the midst of that devastation? I want to trust you. I need to trust you.’ ”

But our tolerance for paradox is often very limited. We need to be in control, don’t we? When we feel out of control, we quickly resort to using any form of power that we can find. Sometimes it is given us by others. Sometimes we just take it from them.

In those moments, we act like Jesus was the fool riding on a donkey and that he should have been on a warrior’s horse. In those moments, we miss the whole point of his ride that day.

His life and ministry remind his followers that God-power is a sprezzatura, a counterbalance to what we normally experience as power.

Who do you know – today – whose life-power is based on inner, not external strength, on persuasion rather than coercion, on collaboration rather than domination? Picture that person in your mind. I suggest he or she also reflects these two qualities.

This person doesn’t need to prove he/she has power. Also, this person knows that whatever power she/he has is not her/his own. Again, the paradox of power lives. Honor that paradox. I believe it’s important to also live that paradox.

Jesus’ power came in part because he didn’t push it on others. But he did use it to challenge the religious forms of power that tried to dominate people.

He actually used it to subvert others’ destructive use of power by standing up to their power. His inner power also moved him to suffer the consequences of those subversive actions.

We still struggle with that “lesson” too often. I suspect we will never come to any harmonious understanding of how to use our power. Our power-expectations are too conflicted to stay in balance for too long.

Fortunately, God’s Grace is powerful enough to understand.