Behind-the-Scenes Blog

A different kind of power

We’re all too familiar with a terrifying amount of misused power these days. Too much. Too often. Too ruthless. Too harmful.

So it was with a different set of eyes that I read about the power struggles in this week’s Narrative Lectionary story of Pilate condemning Jesus (John 19:1-16a).

The Jewish people claim they have no power to crucify Jesus.

Pilate claims, “I have the power to release you and power to crucify you.”

And Jesus responds, “You have no power over me unless it is given you from above.”

Jesus’s idea of power is obviously different, but how are we to understand what “power from above” is?

Unfortunately, the kind of power we’re most familiar with is “power over.” How is “power from above” different?

How can we shift from equating power with dominance, to equating power with love?

What if we thought of power not as domineering over others but as something to be shared? As a way of lifting people up? As a way of empowering them?

Power under

What if “power over” became “power under”?

In between my bouts of loathing the abuse of power that’s so rampant right now, I stop for a minute to consider: What drives people to want power over others? Is “power over” so attractive because it means “control over”?

We see this top-down approach in some leaders, for sure. But what about in the church? How many times has a body of religious authorities set the rules, even made rigid laws? How often has the church taken on a top-down form of power, where those “above” us tell us not only how to act but what to believe?

That’s not how I understand Jesus’s view of power. He embodied an upside-down model.  Not from the top down but from the bottom up. Not for domination but for service. Power that reaches underneath our despair or weakness and lifts us up.

As I write this, I visualize the lineage of individuals who have lifted me up over the years. Some in smaller ways, like helping me find a place to live or helping me get a new job. Others lifted me up in more profound ways, like seeing my gifts when I could only see my failures.

I think in particular of a woman named Peg who lived near me during my years in California. I met her when I started attending La Jolla Presbyterian Church, where she was Assistant Pastor. I was immediately drawn to her because I had never before attended a church that had a women pastor. (This was during the mid-seventies, and women’s roles in ministry were pretty restricted!)

I learned a lot from Peg’s Bible study groups, but perhaps my most valuable lesson was her consistent support. Instead of taking the role of a pastor reaching down to help me, she was a caring saint willing to walk alongside me, to lift me up when I needed it.

In an earlier blog post, “Lessons from the Long Night,” I wrote about my struggles with loneliness when I moved to California. I often regretted my decision to leave everything and everyone I knew back in the Midwest, and bouts of depression that I thought were “over” kept resurfacing.

I felt safe enough with Peg to share a bit of that. And her way of responding was not to try to fix me. She simply offered an open invitation to “come on over” if I wanted some company. She had recently moved into a condo just down the road from me, and she welcomed me to come hang out while she did ordinary stuff. We might have a conversation or I might curl up and read in silence on the couch. I might help her cook dinner or she might just hand me a cookie and a coffee. Whatever our exchange, I never felt talked down to. I always felt as if she were reaching under my sagging psyche and lifting me up.

It might be a stretch for me to compare this with something that Rocky Kanaka does. Rocky is a renowned animal rescuer and dog lover who visits shelters and sits with frightened or shut-down dogs. One of the things he works toward is earning enough trust from the dog to do what he calls “the scoop.” When he’s been in a kennel with a dog long enough to feel as if he’s come to an understanding of what that dog needs, Rocky “scoops” up the dog, lifts them onto his lap, and holds them against his chest to let them know they’re safe and loved. It’s no wonder millions of people love watching his videos!*

From a spiritual angle, I can’t think of a more moving portrayal of lifting us up than the lyrics to “On Eagle’s Wings”:

And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
make you to shine like the sun,
and hold you in the palm of his hand.
—“On Eagles Wings”, Michael Joncas

This is how I envision “power under.”

Power with

What if the power of one became shared power?

Last fall, Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation offered a week-long series of meditations on power, and one of the mediations nudged me into thinking about power from a different perspective. Rohr suggests that “we start by reclaiming the wisdom of Trinity, a circle dance of mutuality and communion.”

Spiritual power is more circular or spiral, and not so much hierarchical. It’s shared and shareable . . . The Trinity shows that God’s power is not domination, threat, or coercion. All divine power is shared power and the letting go of autonomous power.
—Richard Rohr, “Calling for Good Power,” September 12, 2025

Shared power. Not held by one. Not power over but power together. Power with.

That’s not something I run into every day. I can hardly open a news report without reading cries about “American dominance.” And then there are the headlines about global power, with war threats, terrorist threats, security threats everywhere. Makes me wonder if there is any hope for global collaboration.

Yet we’ve seen that it can happen. From the Olympics to the United Nations. From disaster recoveries to fighting pandemics. Even in the religious arena, there are interfaith alliances.

But what about on a personal level? How are we sharing power, empowering each other?

I pause here for a moment to tell you about my fireplace. In an earlier post titled “We Need Light,” I had written about installing a fireplace in my Philadelphia row house. But, here, I want to tell you what I learned once I tried building fires in that lovely fireplace.

The first and most obvious fact was that a single log by itself could not burn. I also knew I needed to add small kindling pieces to get the fire going, and then larger pieces to sustain the fire. But it took a lot of practice to learn how to keep the fire burning. I learned how important it was not to crowd the logs. They needed each other, but there also needed to be plenty of room between them for air to circulate. When the air flowed freely, the logs responded, and I was rewarded with watching the dance of flames as they reached up and played with each other.

The evidence was clear: Logs burn better in company.

I think the same holds true for us. People of all varieties, all strengths, all gifts—we need each other to create light and warmth and beauty.

It’s not accidental that the lyrics of the Civil Rights song “We Shall Overcome” include the words “We’ll walk hand in hand.”

It’s not accidental that Michael Jackson’s song “We Are the World” topped music charts all over the world, raised 80 million dollars for African famine threat, and won multiple Grammy Awards.

It’s not accidental that “Lean on Me” was sung at the Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in 2009, and the next day the crowd, stuck in a tunnel waiting to get into the inauguration ceremony, started singing it spontaneously.

This is how I envision “power with.”

Power within

What if power outside became power inside?

If “empowerment” means believing in yourself, knowing your gifts, and enjoying what you can do well . . . I have to say, that was a foreign concept for me as a child. When I look back from this vantage point, I can see a creative little girl who was smart and had lots of abilities. But I also see a little girl who questioned everything she did.

My mom saw my straight A’s as a potential source of the sin of pride. She saw my winning the church poster contest two years in a row as a breeding ground for the sin of pride. (She told me not to enter the contest again, to give someone else a chance.) Instead of being celebrated when I was good at something, I felt humiliated. Instead of being praised, I felt sinful.

I’m really sad that I grew up with those blinders on. And I’m really sad for my mother, too, that she couldn’t get past the perceived threat of “sin” to get to the full joy of living.

For many years, I vacillated between feeling guilty for enjoying anything I created and feeling ashamed because surely someone would find out I was a “fake,” that I couldn’t really do it. During my college years, at the urging of one professor, I changed my major from piano to composition, but the college didn’t have a composition professor on staff at the time.

So each week, I took the train into Chicago for composition lessons. Each week, as the train sped toward the Loop, I had the same fear: This is the week that I’ll be exposed. This is the week that the professor will look me in the eye and say, “You can’t do this. Who gave you the idea that you could write music?”

Even when I was offered a scholarship to the University of Washington in Seattle for a grad program in composition, I still felt as if, surely, someone there would discover I was a fake.

Wow. It took a lot of therapy hours to unravel that knot! It took a long time for me to be able to claim what I did well and not feel guilty. It took a long time for me to be able to hear the words “you are amazing” and not brush them off.

But when I was finally able to step out onto what had previously felt like thin ice, I could feel how solid I was underneath the surface, how deep my strength went down, how much I had to give.

It was—and continues to be—a shocking development to think of myself as a person with gifts. To understand and really know I could—and should—claim the gifts God gave me. And it took even longer to begin to enjoy those gifts!

I had wanted to conclude this section, as I did the previous two, with a music example. (After all, I do like order and symmetry.) But I couldn’t seem come up with any music that celebrated this kind of power within. Pretty telling, isn’t it?

So I conclude, instead, with these meditative words from Richard Rohr:

“Authentic power is the ability to act from the fullness of who I am.”
—Richard Rohr, “Love and Power,” October 15, 2023

This is how I envision power within.

—Marcia Broucek, graphic designer for Narrative Alive

I welcome your comments about my reflections. If you have anything you want to share about your journey, I invite you to share your experience in the Comments field below.

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* If you want to watch one of Rocky’s heartwarming “Sitting with Dogs” videos, check out this rescue of a dog he named Bunny. The full video is about 41 minutes long, but the first five minutes will give you an idea of the severity of this dog’s trauma. Then, if you fast forward to minute 29, you can see the “scoop” in action. It’s beautiful to watch the transformation!

Click here to read more of Marcia’s blog posts.

Click here to see the Narrative Alive graphics and sermon themes for the Narrative Lectionary reading “Jesus Condemned.”