Power and Powerlessness

Matthew 25:15 – “He gave five talents to one [servant], two to another, and one to another according to their ability. Then he went away.”

The master is giving these men money to be invested and traded in the market. These are not day trades but rather long-term investments. Like any boss, he’ll want a report on his return. The master would have been expected to be gone quite some time. Travel in those days was rough and harsh, and there was no timetable. There was no way to predict when he would return. In these days of cars and airplanes, it’s easy to forget that fact when thinking about this parable. The usual interpretation of this parable is that we all have God-given talents and abilities. We must use them in service of God’s kin-dom rather than wasting them. 

However, there are other translations available for the word ‘ability:’ power, strength, authority. If we substitute power for ability, we can read this as a call to use our power, strength, and authority in service of God’s kin-dom. Now, you might be saying to yourself, I have no power or authority. One of the things reading and studying Wonder Woman taught me is that even those we see as powerless – ourselves? – have power. If nothing else, most of us have a certain amount of power over our own actions, our thoughts. 

Just as our natural talents and abilities grow as we use them, power grows as we use it. It also grows in community. People coming together have more power than individuals alone. That is of course why we have labor unions, strikes, and protests. Theoretically, when our voices are heard, (through email, phone, protest, letter, town halls) our government representatives take that into account. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. Governments at all levels have tamed the tool of mass protest. Republicans in particular have chosen to ignore these protests or to lie about them. So much so that police have become more brazen about abusing protestors.

This brings to mind police shooting Black people with impunity, police and prosecutors putting innocent people in jail with impunity, and police and judges keeping them there even when it’s discovered they are innocent. Our failure to humbly listen to, believe, and care about people of color when they described their oppression to us, white people, has given police the idea that killing Black people and framing them is okay. Our failure to use our power and abilities to address this egregious situation has given police the idea that they are unaccountable. Our failure as white people in the US to use our power to truly address its rampant racism. Conceived and grown to justify slavery, our racist attitudes have blossomed into the corruption of the Donald regime. 

I use the term ‘failure,’ but the truth is more complex. There is intention undergirding these developments. They didn’t just happen. It was planned, and that plan has been carried out over these last forty years. Reverend William J Barber II has called the effort to reverse these trends the Third Reconstruction. The First Reconstruction was in the latter years of the 19^th century, and the Second Reconstruction was the Civil Rights Movement. We have not yet finished the work that began with the Civil War. We have not accepted people of color as full citizens. In fact, we treat them as interlopers or visitors. The question, “Where are you from?” is a great example of this categorization. That question implies that they cannot be American, because they aren’t white.

It is time to face our culpability, educate ourselves, and begin the work we’ve been putting off by being willing to have uncomfortable conversations about race. Although Republicans are supporting the president, “this is not about left versus right. It’s about right versus wrong,” in the words of Dr. Barber. It’s up to us as Christians to use our power to further God’s ends.

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