"Detoxing Our Souls"
The Toxin of Control
Luke 4:1-13 (part 4)

One of the great things about going on a retreat for a few days is the ability to catch up
on some much needed reading, and even do a little bit of pleasure reading as well.  
One of the books I began reading is the story of Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine
Chapel in the early part of 16th century, as told in Ross King’s Michelangelo And The
Pope’s Ceiling.  The man who commissioned this momentous art project was Pope
Julius the Second, sometimes known as the Warrior Pope, because of his propensity to
wage papal wars on the surrounding city states not directly under Vatican control and
his deep desire to kick the French out of Italy.  Sometimes he would lead the papal
forces into battle himself, especially when he was younger, and this reputation for blood
and political intrigue earned him a bleak reputation among some, especially a young
German monk named Martin Luther, who made his one and only trip to Rome, right
during the time when Michelangelo was painting the towering fresco ceilings of the
Sistine Chapel.














And yet, it also must be said that Julius spurred on an artistic renaissance in the Rome
of his day, despite all of his repugnant traits, and while Michelangelo was breaking his
back painting the enormous ceilings of the chapel, another great artist, Raphael, a man
with greater social skills than the man on the scaffold of the chapel, and probably as
much talent, was painting some of his greatest work in the bedroom walls of the
Vatican.  Bramanate, the Pope’s chief architect for this Roman renaissance, was a
highly directive taskmaster, to the point of sometimes dictating the “how” and “what” of
the paintings, but Michelangelo would and could not stand this kind of oversight—he
was not going to be told how to paint, and beyond the basics, what to paint.  In order to
make sure he wouldn’t be getting any memos from Bramante, or even the Pope, he hid
the parts of the ceiling he was working on with a huge canvas, so that literally only he
and his assistants would have access to the artwork.  One night, legend has it, he
caught the Pope trying to sneak in and climb the scaffolding to get a sneak peek, and
objects were thrown, and fits were had, and Michelangelo stayed out the Pope’s way for
a few weeks after that unfortunate incident.  

But that was how Pope Julius the Second did things—he was obsessed with control and
power and the acquisition of yet more places to control and manage.  His wars, his
seemingly endless wars against Bologna, Venice, the French—he wanted to be in
command of more places than simply Rome—the whole of Italy should have been
under Papal control, at least that is what he believed.  He may have been more patient
with artistic types like Michelangelo and Raphael, but even down to art on the ceilings,
he wanted to be in command of it all—in our day and age, we would call him an
ambitious micro-manager, but, to Michelangelo’s credit, owing to his powerful sense of
who he was as an artist, and his sense of self, as least when it came to his work, he
was able to draw the line, and set boundaries on Julius’s endless need to be in control
of everything, even over that which he had legitimate right to concerned about.  And
Julius, to his credit as well, knew when to step back and let go of some of that control,
especially to his talented artists.   That lesson is always the hardest thing, isn’t it?  
Knowing when to let go of control, when to let go of what needs to be released, and
knowing what is ours to manage and what isn’t ours to manage.  I think micromanagers
like Julius—sometimes like me, sometimes like you—we think we can control the chaos
within us if we can control the chaos outside of us, if we can manage other people’s
kingdoms, other people’s lives.  

But we know that isn’t the case—has it ever really worked for us or them, this attempt to
manage others, to tell them what to do, to rescue them over and over again—and who
are we rescuing, really, in our attempts to constantly set others upon the straight and
narrow, so to speak?  That temptation is huge, when people hand us control over their
lives, or we decide we’re going to take that control, via Julius’s method, and it’s
something that even Jesus, the Christ, gets tempted with in the desert.  Even Christ
gets offered the toxin of control, control of everything outside himself—our very
different reading of Luke 4 from the One Community, a progressive Christian
movement in Britain, has the voice of Satan becoming an inner voice that tempts Christ
to take the power offered him: All this could easily be mine. I just have to be cunning,
and gain the support of the right people.” And the “this” that is being talked about is all
the kingdoms of the world, the places like Venice and Bologna, and even the kingdom
of our children’s lives, or our spouses world, or our bosses seeming incompetence, or
wherever.  Satan, or that inner voice within us that acts like a demonic force, it tempts
us to march of out of the gate of self in order to manage and control other selves in this
world, and, like Julius, we march out of personal Rome, armies beside us, thinking our
kingdom surely must consist of more than the walls of our personal Vaticans.  In our
effort to quell the chaos inside, we go outside and attempt to conquer the kingdoms of
other selves, whose lives may be in chaos as well, but whose potential for defeat seems
easier than conquering our own personal chaos within.   

But has that ever worked, really?  I mean, I think there is a reason Jesus needed to
experience this particular temptation, this temptation to control, to manage, to acquire
and dominate others.  This is a most human of temptations, just like the instinct to
worship other things than what God is, as we explored in this church the last couple of
weeks.  Christ must pass this test.  He must not fall to this temptation, because it is one
we know too well, whether it is the temptation to control other countries, other places, or
the temptation to control other people, to manage their lives, to tell them what to do and
how to do it.  Every empire has eventually lost control of what it first thought it had
conquered and vanquished, and every person has eventually lost control of the other
they thought they had straightened out and set on the right road.  And I think Jesus
knows this and that is why he turns down the poison, the toxin that would have
corrupted his soul, even if the toxin is taken in order to do good by others, even if he
had decided to take up Satan’s offer to control the lives of others with the idea that he
would do the best by them.  What ruler hasn’t justified their attempt to take control of
their country by saying he or she was doing it for the sake of the people, to end the
chaos, and then find themselves being the instrument of even greater chaos?  So too
with the lives, the other people we try to manage and control, sometimes unthinkingly
so.  We cannot make it all better, we cannot contain the chaos of others, and we
cannot heal the wounds of others, no matter our good intentions, no matter our desire
to make their pain go away.  

But its not their pain we’re really dealing with, is it, when we try to make everything
better for them, for others?  It’s our pain; it’s our unease with the pain of others, pain
that reminds so much of our own deep pain, pain that we are unwilling to deal with
directly.  Yet, some pain, some hurt, some grief, is inevitable if we are going to live in
this world, if we are going to choose to love, to hope, to believe, because in those
choices there are the inevitable losses, the inevitable hopelessness, the inevitable
doubt.  To love is to accept the inevitability of loss, loss of this loved one in this world or
to the next world.  To choose to be in Christian community is to be loved, but it is also
the choice to be challenged, to be disagreed with, to be hurt by those you love and are
loved by—I’ve always said that if you’re not prepared to have your heart broken, the
church, any church, is not the place for you.  The disciples knew that truth when they
followed Jesus, they took on the possibility of hurt, or they thought they knew that truth,
and then Jesus just kept allowing them to get hurt, hurt by each other, hurt by him, hurt
by the circumstances, hurt by their disappointment in him, and by what he did and did
not do to keep them safe.  

And what he did not do, so often, was to control them, to manage them, to make sure
they never got hurt.  He didn’t given into their pain, to their disappointment, even at the
end, when he choose a way of peace to the cross, instead of a way military revolt,
where the gutters of Jerusalem would have run deep with blood of his disciples.  He
decided to choose a different path, different from the kings and rulers of this world, who
think if you give them more control, more power, they can make it all better, for all of
us—leftist dictators and fascist strongmen fall for this lie every time, and so do we.  
Christ looks over the kingdoms of this world, the empires of humankind, and the
empires of self that we each control for ourselves, and he says “No.  My dominion, my
kingdom will not be like these kingdoms—controlling, calculating, drenched with a lust
for more power, more kingdoms, more selves to control and manage.”  It is a stark
moment, high on that mountain, the wind whipping through his robe, the choice he
makes in that moment, with that voice, that demonic voice, in his ear, tempting him to
do as all others who have gone before him have done, which is to make this world, or
the lives of others, better, at the point of the sword, or, on a more personal level,
through emotional or even spiritual manipulation.  It never works, and it never will be,
this attempt to control others, to manage them, to tell them how and what to do,
because what we want so desperately to control is not “out there”—its in here, inside of
us.  

But that kingdom, the kingdom within us, the dominion of self, that place that is so hard
to control, to manage, to rule—that is the kingdom that is really hard to bring peace to,
isn’t it?  And yet, it’s the only place where we really are asked to rule, where we are
asked to control and manage and improve, to make whole.  Its not that we aren’t asked
to do right by this world, right by others, right by people half way across the globe—but
we can’t do right be them if we haven’t done right by ourselves, if we haven’t paid
attention to the kingdom of God within ourselves.  Again, on this retreat, I had a chance
to catch up on some much needed reading, and one of those books is Peter’s Steinke
latest work, someone whom I’ve worked with in another setting, and who later trained
me in his ideas about Healthy Congregations, something we’ll explore next fall,
hopefully.  The great thing about reading Dr. Steinke is that he always reminds me of
what my role in any situation is, and what the role of any leader is, which is to
constantly be aware of myself in the midst of anxious times, especially within the
congregation.  To lead others, we must begin within, controlling our own personal
anxiety so that it doesn’t spill into the life the congregation, or wherever.  For me to
help lead this congregation beside all of you, I’ve, ironically enough, got to first focus
within, to keep checking in with myself, to see where my personal anxiety is, and to
constantly be aware that my own anxiety may unduly infect all of us.  And so it is with
any leader and any member of this congregation—it is the empire of self that we are
asked to attend to, not to each other’s personal empire.  That’s a hard thing to do, of
course, but Christ struggled with it as well, this unrue idea that leadership and
wholeness and justice and goodness begin on the outside of us, rather than the inside
of us—the temptation in the desert is all about that struggle.      

Now, don’t get me wrong—this is not about selfishness—it not about being self
centered and not caring for each other, and supporting each other and helping each
other.  It is, however, about knowing that the place to begin to do those important
things is not “out there,” managing, controlling, telling others how they should or
shouldn’t be do something, or even trying to manage other people’s deep pain, or to
make it all better.  Christ didn’t stop the pain for his disciples, especially those last
hours in Jerusalem—what he offered was food for the journey, spiritual food to get
them through the coming hours of inevitable disappointment and suffering.  When
Christ was offered the empires of the world, and control over everything, including us,
control even over our empires of self, he said “No.  That’s been done before and it has
never worked.  Instead of power and control and coercion, love will be at center of what
I am doing in this world.  It will not be control over, but control with and within.  And love
means changing the world from within, one person at a time.  Justice begins within, first,
and then it spreads out from within us, changing us, changing our actions, and then
changing the world.”  

Its hard, you know, not to be Julius the Second, but, of course, the Warrior Pope failed
terribly—his attempts to manage the world outside of himself, the world outside of
Rome, ended badly, as it always does, and the collateral damage to those around him
was horrific, as it usually with us, when we try do what he does, manage and control
and coerce those around us.  Christ knew that truth in the desert, I think, with that
hunger gnawing at his stomach, even then he knew the choice before him.  It was the
empire within him that needed to be conquered, not the kingdoms of this world—if he
had chosen Satan’s option, surely Christ would have been just another failed ruler in
the scrap heap of  history, thinking he could impose goodness from the outside.  
Letting go of our need to control, to manage, to make everything alright—and focus on
the only empire we are given permission to rule, the one within, surely we will see what
he saw in that desert during those forty days, that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of
Heaven first begins here, right here, within us, and then, as Christ did, we can quote
the words he proclaimed to his hometown at Nazareth, right after his temptation in the
desert:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good
news to the poor.   He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favor.  Amen.

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