Powerlessness, privilege and why I’m so mad at the Three Wise Men

What makes you feel hopeless? The global political chaos, climate crisis, an addiction that keeps knocking you back, a loved one who is ill…? Is there even any hope in the world? Where is God in the middle of it all? And what does Christmas have to do with any of it? The thread running through all these situations is powerlessness, that sense that my hands are tied, there is nothing I can do about this, I can’t fix it. I have no power, so I have no hope. I don’t think we can talk about hopelessness without talking about powerlessness, and I don’t think we can talk about hope, on this first Sunday of Advent, without talking about power.

Of all the people in the Christmas story, the Three Wise Men are the ones who are ‘powerful’ in the way we normally understand power. They are educated, wealthy, their voices have a platform. They can walk right in to an audience with King Herod and command his attention – can you imagine if the shepherds tried that on?

They start off well enough, excited to follow the star that will lead them to Jesus. But somewhere along the way, they start to think they know better, they stop following the star and turn off course, towards Jerusalem, where any right thinking person knows is where a new king would be born. Except, as we know with the benefit of hindsight, God is no right thinking person. The consequence of that of course, is that a whole generation of baby boys is massacred. I imagine them waltzing in to the palace asking for the baby king, and God and all the angels trying to shush them – we were trying to keep that on the low down! There was fanfare enough elsewhere, celestial symphonies for the shepherds, but not a peep in Jerusalem until the ‘Wise Men’ put their foot in it so thoroughly.

I wonder whether they even knew the damage they caused to those children, those families, those communities, I wonder if they just left again, oblivious of the destruction their shortcut had caused. And if they didn’t know – maybe that’s what grace looks like. I wonder whether they would have ever been able to sleep at night again if they’d known.

Those of us with the most privilege, with the most power, those of us whose voices are heard – we have the most responsibility to follow the star, to hold tight to where God is leading us, to go where He sends us. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman says.

The Wise Men are the outliers of the Nativity. God invites them in to meet the Christ Child, but everyone else present is there because of their powerlessness. Mary – young, female, illegitimate pregnancy; the shepherds – socially awkward, weird, smelly, insignificant by the standards of most; Joseph – homeless, can’t provide for his family, why is he putting up with all this? Jesus – a baby, a refugee, comes leaving behind all the power and majesty of heaven to turn things the right way up for the powerless, the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed people. The way of Jesus is the way of powerlessness. The Church has got that wrong so many times over the centuries, and like the Wise Men, has caused the most damage when we’ve stopped following the star, and followed the road to power.

The apostle Paul writes about Jesus’ death and says, ‘For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.' (1 Corinthians 1:!8) But it could equally be said about his birth. It makes no sense, it's upside down, it goes against everything we know about how to change the world, everything we know about influence, success, power. But this little, weak, poor, oppressed, very human, very poopy, noisy baby is God's strategy for saving us, for giving us access to all of His power. 

If I have hope that my (obviously purely theoretical) football team are going to win, that hope isn’t placed in myself and my own awesome football skills. My hope is placed in the awesome football skills of my team and the players.

Hope comes when we choose to stop believing we can fix it all ourselves, stop believing in our own power as the only solution.

Hope comes when we choose to believe that God is powerful, and it’s his power that we have hope in.

Hope comes when we choose to believe that God is good, that God is loving, that God is at work in the world. That God has a plan. That somehow out of all this mess he can make something beautiful.

Jesus’ human powerlessness is not an accident, it’s God’s strategy, his whole plan in the Incarnation. And that means YOUR powerlessness is not an accident either. It’s his plan for the world to see hope through you and your life.

What if the place where you have the least hope, the place you are most powerless, what if that becomes an altar, a place of encounter with God? What if that problem, that situation, that failure becomes the best thing that ever happened to you, because it’s there that God wants to come and meet with you? What if that means you can give up trying to have it all together, and finally lean into God, and his power?