Advent: The Relinquishing Power

"And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road."  (Matt 2:12)

"Religion acquires influence when it relinquishes power.  It is then that it takes its place, not among rulers but among the ruled, not in the palaces of power but in the real lives of ordinary men and women who become extraordinary when brushed by the wings of eternity.  It becomes the voice of the voiceless, the conscience of the community, the perennial reminder that there are moral limits of power and that the task of the state is to serve the people, not the people the state ... to paraphrase Kierkegaard: 'when a king dies his power ends. When a prophet dies, his influence begins.' When religion divests itself of power, it is freed from the burden of rearranging the deckchairs on the ship of state and returns to its real task: changing lives ...  When religion becomes an earthquake, a whirlwind, a fire, it can no longer hear the still, small voice of God summoning us to freedom."  -- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence (236-237)

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