Powerless Power

Scripture: Isaiah 50.4-9; Matthew 21.1-11

There’s a scene in the move The Gladiator in which the young, newly ascendant emperor, Commodus, rides into Rome on a chariot at the head of a majestic parade. The people have lined the thoroughfares to welcome the new emperor. They come out of curiousity, out of the hope that free bread will be given. They don’t love Commodus. He is known to them only as a spoiled son of royalty and privilege. To those who really know him, Commodusis, well. . . his own father describes him thus, “Commodus is not a moral man.”

Nonetheless he is Emperor and the leaders of the Roman Senate watch him parade in. They say to one another, “Look at him. He comes riding into Rome like a conquering hero. But what, I wonder, has he conquered?”

There was another parade, in another city, many years before in the capital city of a small province in a corner of the Roman Empire. The city was Jerusalem. The head of this parade was not a new emperor, but some said he was a king. A donkey was his chariot and the people lined the streets and waved palm branches and cried out his praise with genuine enthusiasm, affection, and hope. Yet there must have been cynics in those crowds too, who wondered, what this king had conquered and where indeed was his kingdom.

Jesus entry into Jerusalem is a picture of contradictions. He came with authority. He spoke with authority (Tell them the Lord has need of it) and yet within days, nay hours, he seemed to lay his power and authority aside and not once lift a finger to defend himself and help his cause. In perhaps the most vital way Jesus displayed who God is, He showed us the way of powerless power, of love that conquers by being led to slaughter.

Jesus was always this way. He was the son of a carpenter. He was an apprentice. He knew what it was to learn, to listen, to follow directions and the will of another. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message, Philippians 2, in part, reads:

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.

This section of scripture is called the Kerygma, the great summation of who Jesus is and what he has done. The words are believed to be a hymn from the early Christian church. If it is a song, it’s a song that is in another key than the leitmotif of today’s culture. Today the song is “I Did It My Way.” Much of our culture is an ode to the unholy trinity of Me, Myself, and I. If I can do it, I will do it. Or, nobody can tell me what to do.

Listen to what Jesus says about himself in Isaiah: The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. . .I offered my back to those who beat me. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me?

We watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ at Youth the past couple weeks. I was reminded of the scene where Jesus is brought back before Pilate a second time. This time he comes back after being beaten almost to death. He is not a man covered with bloody scars. He is one bloody scar. Pilate himself is shocked at how savagely Jesus has been beaten by his soldiers. Pilate shows Jesus to the mob that has gathered outside the palace. Isn’t this enough, Pilate shouts to the crowd. “Crucify him,” they answer. Pilate begs Jesus, “Speak to me.” “I have the power to give you death or to give you life,” the Roman governor tells the bloody king.

“You have no power over me,” Jesus says to Pilate, “except that which is given you from above.”

Jesus will not lift a finger to defend himself, nor will he deny who and what he is. He is the God who will die for his people.

The question I am left with is, “How in this world can we at all be like the Savior whom we pledge to emulate and follow?”

I am given this example from a friend. Most of you probably followed the tragic killings in Atlanta last weekend. You may have also heard how the accused gunman, Brian Nichols, fled the courthouse after shooting several people and somehow eluded pursuit for some time. He ended up that night in northeast Atlanta at the apartment of a young single mother named Ashley Smith. Nichols abducted Smith while she was walking to her door late that night. What happened after that is quite remarkable.

Smith recognized Nichols as the suspect all over the news. Nichols made sure she knew. Smith feared for her life and for the life of her 5-year old girl. Nichols tied her up at first and took a shower. Then Ashley Smith and her abductor began to talk.

I told him I was supposed to go see my little girl the next morning. And I asked him if I could go see her and he said no. My husband died four years ago. And I told him if he hurt me my little girl wouldn’t have a mommy or daddy. And she was expecting to see me the next morning.

He still told me no. But I could feel that he started to know who I was. He said maybe. Maybe I’ll let you go. We’ll see.

We went to my room and I asked him if I could read. He said, “What do you want to read?”

I said, “Well, I have a book in my room.” And I went and got my Bible. And I got a book called The Purpose-Driven Life. I turned it to the chapter that I was on that day. It was chapter 33. I started to read it to him, and he asked me to stop and read it again. It mentioned something about what you thought your purpose in life was. What talents were you given? And I asked him what he thought and he said, “I think it was to talk to people and tell them about you.”

Ashley Smith continued to talk to her abductor about God and God’s purpose for him, a killer on the run. He asked her what he should do and she told him to turn himself in before more people got hurt. She suggested to him that maybe God’s purpose was for him to pay for his crimes and talk to other men in prison about God.

Brian Nichols surrendered to police a few hours later.


Brian Nichols was a man of violence who had a gun and who had the ability to give Ashley Smith life or death. But I wonder, after hearing this story, who really had the power here?

Jesus never held a gun, a sword, or a spear. He never struck a person in violence or defense, though he was known to overturn some tables. He lived in the back water of the most powerful empire in the world. That empire is long gone. But Jesus followers stretch across the globe, and they wait for the fullness of His coming kingdom. How did he do it? Jesus conquered the world with nothing more than his words and the stripes on his back.

As his followers we may not be given as dramatic the opportunities to witness to him as Ashley Smith was given, but I am convinced that opportunities to show the powerless power of Jesus word abound in all our lives. Are we strong enough to follow his way?