Jul 22 | Mirroring Us: Summer 2018 Preaching Series, Part 6

Today’s citations:

2 Samuel 7:1–14a

Mark 6:30–34, 53–56

 

Good morning, saints – is how Pastor Laurie at Spirit of Grace Church in Oregon greets parishioners in worship. I am glad to be back among you, and glad to be back to our preaching series on kings.

As we planned our recent trip to Oregon, my husband Paul and I decided to forego the indignities of air travel and take the train. It left us with lots of time on our hands, during which time I read some articles on Twitter.

One of them, written by Jerry Useem from The Atlantic, was about power – political or social power – and what it does to the human brain. It was quite fascinating. Historians and now several scientific studies have shown that power causes a form of brain damage; in particular, to the parts of the brain which manage empathy.

This might be no great shock to you, but to have it scientifically proven is pretty astounding. The article interviews Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkley psychology professor who conducted many of the cited experiments and lab work. From the article, quote, “Subjects under the influence of power, [Keltner] found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.” Another expert, neuroscientist Sukhvinder Obhi at McMaster University in Ontario, discovered in a brain scan study that, quote, “power impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy.”

Mirroring is a more subtle form of the mimicry that happens between the powerful and their inferiors – say the way people laugh when their superiors laughs, or tense up if we can feel that person is tense. Mirroring actually happens in the brain itself. When we see someone perform an action, the part of a healthy brain associated with that action lights up in response. In the brain of someone who is powerful, however, it was shown that this response doesn’t occur.

This gives us a specific neurological reason for what Keltner calls “the power paradox,” the strange tendency to forget all of the social tools one used to gain that power.

It’s possible this occurs because when we are powerful, we use less energy trying to convince others to do what we want, and since we are in charge of more people this can help us become more efficient. But that pride, that hubris, has many terrible consequences.

The bad news is that Dr. Obhi, the neuroscientist, discovered that explaining the idea of mirroring to people before a second test did not change their ability to empathize. The good news is that Dr. Keltner, the psychologist, found that in some cases, a person recounting a time when they didn’t feel powerful could help keep them in touch with reality.

You can imagine that a regular person who becomes very powerful could easily lose touch with the world, but just imagine someone who has always been powerful, and how difficult it would be for them to rearrange the way they had always seen the world.

Actually, we probably don’t need to imagine that hard.

Knowing this, don’t you think it’s amazing that God, the most powerful force, the source of all life, is not only able to connect deeply with all of creation, but wants to?

King David, who in the passages before today’s reading has seen and celebrated God’s awesome power while traveling with the Ark of the Covenant to his home, now feels that it deserves a grand house of cedar rather than a tent. This is a normal response to his good fortune. He feels grateful and wants to share his blessings with God. At first, Nathan sees nothing wrong with this, but later God corrects him. God tells Nathan to remind David about the great salvation of the people from Egypt, and adds that there has never been a commandment for a house. God does not need a house from David, for God’s blessing on his line is unconditional and therefore impossible to return, which keeps things in balance. God then reminds David about his own roots as a shepherd, a seventh son, a nobody. God anchors David in his humble past, then lays on David the responsibility of producing a son who has the spiritual strength to create a house for God, a concrete symbol of that special relationship, in the future. David’s job is to always remember the easy trust he has had in God so far. Modeling that for the people is the most important thing. The grand gestures can come in the next generation.

We move from King David to King Jesus, and we see a shift. Jesus seems immune to the temptations of power. He refuses the offers from Satan in the wilderness. The section missing from the Gospel reading this morning is the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and then his walking on the sea. That last one, and the stilling of the storm, are the only non-healing or exorcism stories of Jesus showing his power. He rarely shows power for its own sake, choosing instead to feed and heal people, literally using power to bring others closer to him and to each other. In fact, in the Gospel of John there is even a story where the people try to make Jesus king by force, and he takes off to the mountains to be alone.

Mirroring, then, seems to come naturally to Jesus as he gains power, which is the exact opposite of what should happen to a regular human brain. And maybe this is only one way of how God chose to be incarnate.

Perhaps we could even say that in Jesus, God was choosing to “mirror” us. Perhaps God knew that, by doing so, our relationship could finally go both ways.

How incredible is that?

God eschews sovereignty, pushes away a royalty that oppresses or bullies in favour of trying to be more like us in order to love us better. God, loving us as deeply as a parent, was able to see the best of humanity and therefore took that on to mirror us and teach us – and yet also chose to do so in a very humble form, the form of a poor brown man in an occupied land, a man who like all of us started out as a defenseless baby. God wanted to reach out to the most vulnerable and therefore mirrored them. God chose solidarity with dust.

How do you even respond to that kind of love?

Accepting it is the first step, and the difficulty of doing that should not be underestimated. It’s the work of a lifetime.

But there is more to do.

Accepting love gives you real power, the kind of power that can last or languish. You can only really accept it if you’re willing to let it change you.

And maybe that looks like remembering our roots as fragile things who need love, who are worthy of love, who are only here by love, for love.

When I was at Spirit of Grace I met a wonderful man called Fliegel. We talked at length about the world and its many problems and hurts, and particularly about his fears and frustrations for his own country.

“I think the United States needs to get rid of this idea of independence,” he said. “I think what we need for the new era is a declaration of interdependence.”

Don’t you love that?

We are all part of a sacred web of life, and there’s no way to opt out of it. If we are called to be more like Christ – or like God in Christ – then maybe we need to try to mirror each other more. Maybe we need to mirror the earth more. What would it be like to mirror the earth in your life? What would it be like to be solid like a stone, or nonviolent but gently cajoling like water, or hopeful like a lark in the morning, or wide open like a prairie sky? What would it be like to gather wisdom, to gather the building blocks of a whole new self, from the creatures all around us?

Maybe like falling in love, every day.

Imagine that.

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