Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (21st May 2023)

Readings: II Samuel 23.1-5; Ephesians 1.15-end

Suddenly Frodo noticed that a strange-looking weather-beaten man, sitting in the shadows near the wall, was also listening intently to the hobbit-talk. He had a tall tankard in front of him, and was smoking a long-stemmed pipe curiously carved. His legs were stretched out before him, showing high boots of supple leather that fitted him well, but had seen much wear and were now caked with mud. A travel-stained cloak of heavy dark-green cloth was drawn close about him, and in spite of the heat of the room he wore a hood that overshadowed his face; but the gleam of his eyes could be seen as he watched the hobbits … ‘What his right name is I’ve never heard, but he’s known round here as Strider.’



If in the corner of your college bar – the prettiest in Cambridge, I understand – you noticed such a person, you probably wouldn’t think they were up to much, still less that they were a king. After all, as this month’s events reminded us, kings wear flowing robes and buckled leather shoes; they sit on ancient thrones and drink fine wine from jewelled goblets. They do not wear battered, travel-stained cloaks, resting muddy boots on rickety wooden tables while sipping a craft ale.



Now, most of us won’t be royal (unless you marry well, in which case please remember Caius with affection). Some of us may be in or end up with obvious power, at prominent seats in the board room or the war room or the Cabinet room or even high table. But whether or not we have a big job, salary, and status, I think most of us spend much of our lives feeling powerless. Facing your first reading list or problem sheet, your first college council agenda, your first appraisal form. When the sales figure or satisfaction surveys or attendance statistics are gently but firmly sinking. A loved one or friend or colleague who is obviously unhappy or heading in the wrong direction. Seeing something awful on the news or a crisis breaking in your home or workplace.



Some of our problems with power, though, I think, are because we tend to think of it in a certain way. We associate power with those who look and sound the part, those who impress, those who Get Things Done; those who speak or shout or post first and loudest and longest, on whatever latest social media platform it is that the dons are about to join and the teenagers have already left. And maybe we think that’s what power is. But that kind of power, loud and hasty and brash, doesn’t actually get you very far. It might get you to the role you want in your work or networks or family; but you’ll have bruised so many people and said so much over-the-top stuff, that you won’t be able to do much good once there. You might make waves and takeover a global brand, but it won’t help you run a company (Exhibit A: Mr Musk). You might win elections, but it will make it practically impossible to construct a government and run a country (Exhibit B: but no, you choose).



Fortunately, the Christian tradition offers a better attitude to power. First, go back to Strider. Tolkien was a serious Christian whose faith gently underpins his stories. Strider certainly has courage and charisma, and at the end of the story will end up with a crown and a throne and all the rest. But Strider’s true identity becomes really clear not in the arduous journey or in combat, but in what happens after the great battle. In a scene sadly deleted from the film, Strider lovingly tends the hurts of the wounded, healing not just their injuries but the terrors of their ordeal. A gossipy but shrewd nurse quotes an ancient proverb, The hands of the king are the hands of a healer / and so the rightful king could ever be known. It is the power to heal which, for Tolkien, is the true sign and measure of royalty.



Secondly, if you’d met the boy David in ancient Israel in around 1000BC, you probably wouldn’t have looked at him and thought ‘king.’ He wasn’t a prince or even a famous leader or soldier. He was a shepherd, the youngest of seven elder brothers, kept back from the front line of the war to help with the baggage train. There was only a royal vacancy in the first place because the previous king had crashed the government and all the other options had been ruled out. But unlike some potential candidates he was nice-looking and well-brought up and not obviously out of his depth or out of his mind – a sort of Dishy Rishi three thousand years ago.



What David has, though, by the end of his life, is a right sense of why he has power at all. It’s not his good looks (long since faded); not his valour (too young to fight wars before, too old now); not even his wisdom (his moral and political failings caused no end of trouble, leading to rebellion, adultery, and a bitter battle for the succession). David knows he has power only for the sake of others: He that ruleth must be just… And he shall be as the light of the morning. Power is not meant for its wielders but for doing right by those who are led, for governing justly.



So: Tolkien depicts a king who heals after conflict, David recognises his power is to care for others; both crucial Christian images of what real power might look like. True power, expressed not in dominating or commanding, not in being first or loudest, but in the gentle, careful, painstaking work of binding up wounds, soothing the troubled, reaching out to those in need, doing what we can to treat others well.



Whatever circumstances we face, whatever roles we hold, whatever relationships we have, we have power. We can utter that sharp rebuke or cutting jibe – or not. We can send that edgy but abrasive tweet or text message – or not. We can like / follow / share the predictable influencers of contrived outrage – or we can look for quieter, smaller presences on social media which are doing hidden good. We can speak words that heal or wound, belittle or bless. We can put our own interests and opinions first, or we can make the effort to try and understand where the other person is coming from and, perhaps more importantly, why. These may seem like small and insignificant things, but each time we use our power well rather than badly we take a tiny but important step to a relationship, a workplace, a community which is kinder and gentler, more just and more caring, and therefore stronger and healthier. And imagine an institution or an internet, a college or community, where people behaved like that, trying (however hard and falteringly) to do the best by others, build others up, rely on the power of healing and just dealings. The king who serves through healing, the king who rules through justice and compassion, are encouragements to us to use power better.



Of course, underpinning the characters of Strider and David is a deeper vision. It isn’t just that power is about service and healing, important though that is. Strider is one of the very few in Tolkien’s story who remember that earthly power was given to the leaders of men by the heavenly powers, way back in the time when Sauron was the servant of an older and darker enemy. And David on his deathbed confesses that his power was a gift, describing himself as the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob. Power, then, is given from above, and makes the wielder both responsible and accountable to a higher Power.



We see this, perhaps surprisingly, in the coronation service, whose elaborate ritual reveals a deeper radical meaning. For the most important part was not the monarch dressed up in all that Byzantine bling or festooned with silver jewels, not riding in a golden coach surrounded by soldiers, but an earlier, quieter, simpler moment. The sovereign is stripped to a plain white shirt and black trousers, kneeling silently before the altar.



In this way a coronation like ours, whatever you think of monarchy and Christian faith, reminds demonstrates the limits and conditions of human power, whether it is a ruler’s or ours. The sovereign’s momentary helplessness is a stark and subversive reminder of the Christian message that all human power and all of us who wield it, however prominent (or not) in human terms, depend on – and must give an account to – the ultimate source of all power, the God who raised Christ from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places … Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, wrote St Paul in our second lesson. I wonder how we would all wield and experience power differently if we always had in mind that whatever power we have is a divinely-given responsibility, and that one day we will have to account before the seat of divine power for what we’d done with it.



Exercising power, of course, does sometimes mean showing strength or being sharp: bad behaviour must be challenged if everyone in the family or workplace is to feel safe and included; underperformance needs to be tackled if the team is to work effectively. And we must always be alert to the particular needs of those who feel powerless because of their social and economic circumstances, or their health or education, or an aspect of their identity. But all of us will, whatever job we do or life we lead, will in different ways, wield power, if only in our relationships with others. The examples of Aragorn and David and the coronation, one literary, one historical, and one very contemporary, reveal the deep distinctive resources of the Christian tradition for helping us think about power.



The purpose of power, then, is to heal and to act justly, for the good of others not the wielder. This concept is even more potent if we remember that even the most powerful of human beings is a subordinate of the Ruler of all, Jesus Christ. The cosmic, creative energy which flows through all things is seen in Christ, killed by the abuse of human power, raised to new life by a limitless and unconquerable divine power. Taking more seriously the source of power, and our accountability to God for its use, would mean a gentler, kinder, happier, healthier, more inclusive world; where all power was wielded for the good of others and the glory of the God whose creative strength and healing energy courses through the cosmos from the seat of the one true Power, whose loving reign lasts for ever. Amen.