Lord Acton wrote profound words to a professor of history and theology and scholar of the medieval papacy named Mandell Creighton at Cambridge in 1887. One line in that letter is remembered and quotable by most everyone: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The next sentence is unfortunately not as well known. Perhaps it should be. “Great men are almost always bad men.”
Lord Acton goes a long way in helping me understand some of the most confusing words I believe St. Paul ever wrote. They are found in the Second Letter to the Corinthians.
[Christ] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (vv.9-10)
Now, I confess, I prefer power to weakness. But when I think about it, I have to admit that power, as fun as one would think it is, has not generally served me well. Indeed the worst things that have happened to me in life happened at the pinnacle of power. The details of that are not important in the present context. What does matter is that I know from personal experience, which is about the only way adults learn, that the things Paul mentions—insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities—in the end mean nothing. What matters, indeed all that matters, is the presence of Christ. And although I regret this is how God made the world, I have found that the presence of Christ is easier to experience from a position of weakness than one of power. I think it is because power tends to make us too full of ourselves for Christ to be able to get in. Maybe it’s because power hides our needs even from ourselves.
A priest I very much admire, who had his own share of calamities, once told a story I continue to reflect on. It was a story of a young man who was visited by Jesus and asked to come out and play. The young man was too busy to accept the invitation, pursuing no doubt the trappings of power, probably in his mind the power to do good. My priest friend was making a point about what is really important in life, and it certainly isn’t power, something it took me a long time to figure out. In fact, power tends to get in the way.
Tom ended his story on a personal note with words directed to me.
Sometimes people will say, “Thank God, Stacy’s here; now everything will be alright.” It means nothing. Other times people will say, “It’s all Stacy’s fault; we need to get rid of him.” It means nothing. What does mean something is taking time to play with someone who loves you.
That’s where Jesus comes into this story. Jesus is inviting us, especially me, to play, just as he invited the people of his hometown to play in the gospel for this week (Mark 6:1-13). They turned him down. I wonder if it is because he somehow, maybe just inherently, threatened to disturb their power, illusory though it probably was. They responded, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (v. 3) In other words, “Who does he think he is?” Mark concludes, “And they took offense at him.” Power can do that to you. Weakness is generally immune.
There is one detail about Lord Acton and Mandell Creighton I glossed over. Creighton was not only a Cambridge professor. He was a priest of the Church of England, and he went on from Cambridge to be Bishop of Peterborough and eventually Bishop of London. It doesn’t get much more powerful in church circles than that. It doesn’t get much more ecclesiastically great than that. It makes one wonder why Lord Acton addressed his words to whom he did. I hope Bishop Creighton heard them, especially the line that followed the one we all remember.
Agape,
+Stacy
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Love Must Act