A friend of mine (who works in a hierarchical church) had a meeting scheduled with his supervisor that he was sweating a little.  With a word his superior could change the course of his life.  I called my friend later on the day of the meeting to see how it had gone.  Like many things in life, the actual event was not as terrifying as the anticipation of it.

The upshot of their conversation was that my friend’s superior had spent a couple hours talking and listening but was careful to say little of substance and to agree or disagree with absolutely nothing.  Clearly, he wasn’t going to commit one way or the other to someone below him in the organizational flow chart.

This, my friends, is the way of power.

Power isn’t just the ability to manipulate things and people to your own will, but most of all it is the ability to act any way you want.  Power is often expressed in caprice.  People in power do not readily commit themselves to underlings.  They hold on to the power to decide as they wish.

That’s why we see power expressed in capriciousness.  Doing what you please is a powerful act.  (Those of us who don’t sit in the seats of power sometimes envy the powerful because we too would like to be free to follow our whims.)

But God is utterly not like this.

As churchy people, we are used to hearing the word “covenant.”  It’s a word with rich and nuanced meaning that I will not belabor here, but a covenant is like a contract that binds individuals or groups to one another and sets conditions for the way they will deal with each other.

God makes covenants with humans.  Think about that for a minute.

God makes promises and imposes obligations on God’s own freedom.  God makes covenants with Noah and Abraham and the people of Israel.

Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember the covenant Christ makes with us at the cost of his broken body and shed blood.

God’s faithful, unbreakable love for us is the opposite of the capriciousness of power. 

God’s love is such that God obeys self-imposed limits on divine freedom.  God obeys the law of love.  God makes and keeps promises like: “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Prayer:  Help me to play God better than I have before.  Instead of doing anything I please, let me surrender my freedom to the unyielding demands of love. Amen.