In the present sense of the phrase, a power broker is not necessarily such a bad thing. A broker is a go-between, someone who brings people together to make deals or to form partnerships. A power broker is someone who mixes and matches people of influence to maximize or focus influence or to focus resources - usually to create more influence and more resources. The common power broker is trying to make friends to make money and exercise control. Conquest. Force that to happen. Someone has to bring the parties together. (All this is pretty fresh…I've been reading Grisham's The Broker.)

Now take the money and control out of the equation. In a sense, you could call Jesus a power broker. The power is in God. The commodity is spirit - the Holy Spirit, really, who distributes love, hope, joy, peace beyond measure to those who want into the deal; into the partnership. These powerful forces for good are available for distribution, where they reproduce and compound daily. But someone has to bring the parties together. God wants to franchise out; God wants to be lavish in the distribution of assets and aggressive about seeing them bear fruit, without forcing anyone into the deal or offending His sense that every member of His company should want to be part of the enterprise. So Jesus is the go between - the human face in the transaction. He's the dealmaker.

The Bible says that we were reconciled to God by Christ's death and saved by His life (Romans 5:10). "We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." (Romans 5:11).

The problem with earthly power brokers is that power is toxic. It tends to stain our souls, poison our values, and twist our motives. Some rare people are so guileless that power barely fazes them (Frodo Baggins). Most of us can't handle power without being sucked in by its allure and slowly poisoned by its toxicity. The classis power broker is one shrewd dude, with a hard heart and a dirty soul.

Jesus is obviously shrewd and urges us to be as shrewd as serpents. Jesus is also innocent, and teaches us to be innocent as doves. That's quite a magic trick. How we handle power has everything to do with the purity of our souls and the health of our internal lives, not to mention the real progress of the church. Even as a collective, Christians have always found it easier to imitate Christ from a position of suffering and depravity. We've generally done martyrdom pretty well over the centuries, and "the blood of martyrs is seed." What we haven't always handled well throughout history is power. It's harder to stay Christ-like in a position of power, since power itself is one hot potato.

So how do we handle it? We give it away. We learn the art of empowering others. We live to empower others. We become power brokers, in the best sense of the word power, bringing God and people together and letting the love and hope and joy and peace and the power of the gifts of the spirit find a new habitat - a new temple in which to dwell and find expression.

The best way to handle power is to hold it lightly and with free and open hands.

In the Pharisee's house, Jesus the taught the whole world to take the lowest seat at the table. People who are willing to sit there generally won't stay there for long. People who love to empower others tend to be elevated, promoted, honored, even exalted over time. It's a natural law. Those who exalt themselves - who love the seat of power - have short seasons of honor and influence and then suffer humiliating falls. (The book of Proverbs teaches us that lesson over and over again). Peter says the same. James says the same. Paul describes Christ as someone "who did not regard his equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the very nature of the servant…"

Even today's secular leadership models acknowledge the real power in this approach. I mentioned last week Collins "level 5 leader" as a person who is conspicuously inconspicuous because empowering others is the key to success.

I mentioned two weeks ago, from the world of sports, Roger Craig writes about Joe Montana, "Joe was never the most talented athlete on the field. What Joe did was get rid of the ball quickly and put it in the hands of people who could make plays." Look at a sports almanac sometime and see that Dan Marino, who broke all the passing records, never won a Super Bowl, while Montana won four. And imagine that Peyton Manning might never win a Super Bowl in a career of breaking Marino's records, while Tom Brady may win more than his current three.

Jump sports. Michael Jordon was the rare bird who could win scoring titles and championships. Why? Because Jordon averaged seven assists a game, along with his thirty points. He got the ball around. He empowered his teammates. Even during the season when Wilt Chamberlin scored 48 points per game, his team was beaten by Bill Russell and other team oriented Celtics who got the ball around. If the ball is power in sport, those who handle it well, carry it lightly and pass it around, empowering others.

Let's get closer to home - like, the home. Same story. The best marriages are mutually empowering and mutually submissive (Ephesians 5:21). The saddest marriages involve constant power struggles. As for parenting, most of the counselors in the country are making their living thanks to harsh, domineering parents with control issues. Yes, abandonment wreaks havoc, too. But the best parenting empowers a child in age appropriate ways to become increasingly solvent (able to solve problems without my interference or micromanagement). The best parenting is mentoring. It begins in strong, almost military attention to obedience and it ends with freehanded, hilarious respect for freedom. Parenting, as many have said, is "learning the art of letting go more and more every day." It's not an exact science. Many of our children will use their increasing freedom poorly, and sometimes freedoms need to be reigned in until another tutoring session (or ten) can reinforce certain values and principles. But then it starts again - letting go, letting go, letting go. The assumption is that I won't be here forever for my daughters, and that even if I live to be 110, they can still be fully empowered, self-initiating adults - and, God willing, Christ-honoring, and generously committed to empower others.

I grew up in a home with a sister with spina bifida and severe scoliosis. Though doctors at Children's Hospital in Seattle were able to offset some of the risks and dysfunctions with fifteen major spinal surgeries in eighteen years, the amazing thing was watching how normal her life was in our midst. My parents were determined to raise a fully empowered, self-initiating adult. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, etc, etc, from UW, and number one in the law school. She spent her life advocating for the disabled (ramps and elevators). She spends her life trying to empower people who often don't have the strength to lift their own hands or to hold up their own heads. Someone has to help them hold up their heads.

All this to say that Jesus taught backward and upside down principles and strategies for handling power. If we cling to it and wield it heavily, it will kill us and harm others. If we handle it lightly and generously, it feeds people, strengthens people, frees people and spreads dignity from top to bottom and even shore to shore.

These truths were even evident to our founding fathers in relationship even to government. Heavy government steals freedom and every healthy instinct toward self-initiation. A lighter, freer system empowers people. It all works great as long as the citizenry has a set of core ethics about responsibility to community and about empowering one another in a context of mutuality. It falls apart when people use their empowerment to horde and set up power-mongering fiefdoms, where the powerful get more powerful and the powerless more dependent. Then government, in the classic pendulum of politics, has to get heavy again to enforce something more egalitarian (more equal) and we lose freedoms. Unless, of course, our souls are transformed and we learn to handle power in freehanded ways. Perhaps if we could learn, and teach, and model the ethic of Christ, we could have a free and light government that trusts more, meddles less and relinquishes the impulse to enforce things like generosity by taxation. In other words, if powerful people handled power well, political entities could relax their policing.

That's a long rabbit hole…but all this to say that Jesus is brilliant; which is sort of like saying that the sun is hot. More than a power broker, Jesus is a power breaker. He says that the greatest is the least, or (22:26) like the youngest. The one who rules like the one who serves.

Not that servants never lead. Jesus did, obviously. Sometimes the greatest act of servanthood is to sit in the seat of authority. Leading is hard and heavy work. It's treacherous ground, full of temptations and ego issues and subject to many criticisms. It's not a seat for fearful people, who don't know how to relinquish control. It's not a seat for selfish people who don't know how to share. The best leaders sit lightly and spread the power all around. The best leaders get the ball around, authorize others to have a real share in the work, and walk away ready to get a good night's sleep. Why? Because we're responsible to our roles, but not responsible for the whole thing. What's a leader's role? To get rid of the ball quickly and put it in the hands of people who can make plays.

But that's ridiculous, says the power monger. I don't trust people that much. [They disappoint. They don't do it may way. They aren't reliable. God might be silly and idealistic enough to empower people to be full partners in kingdom building, but I'm a realist. Why give to others what I can do myself! I don't trust people that much!] Yes, and that may be why we have a hard time getting and keeping good people. And that may be why we take sleeping pills and antacids like candy. And that may explain why our spouses feel devalued and our children feel desperate. It might even explain why God feels distant.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, the ultimate act of Christlikeness and the healthiest way to handle the hot potato of power is to relinquish the control of outcomes and to give that power back to God. For the sake of freedom, God will let us control and worry and scramble to micromanage outcomes. But in love, God invites us to give all of that back to Him. To let go, loosen our grips and find peace. To believe that our lives, our loved ones, our cares are in good hands.

But I don't trust God that much!

Yes. Yes. I know. God knows.

At the hardest moment of anguishing, relinquishment, Christ had to trust his father to make good out of his pending death. Christlikeness means learning to relinquish.