A Safety that Lasts

In this week’s Faith at Work sermon, Pastor Harry Jarrett reflects on John 14 and Acts 7 to ask one of the questions many of us carry quietly into worship: Am I going to be okay?

Jesus does not answer that question by promising that nothing painful will happen. Stephen’s story makes that clear. As the stones are coming toward him, Stephen is not temporally safe. Yet he sees heaven opened, sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and finds a kind of freedom that even violence cannot touch.

This episode explores the difference between temporal safety and timeless safety. Temporal safety is what we usually mean when we pray for protection: keep danger away, keep illness away, keep conflict away, keep the people we love safe. Those are honest prayers. But the gospel offers something deeper than temporary protection. It offers the abiding presence of Christ at every waypoint in the journey.

Drawing on John 14, Acts 7, Richard Rohr’s contemplative wisdom, and the prayer traditionally known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate, Pastor Harry invites us to trust that God’s safety is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of the One who has gone through suffering, death, and resurrection and remains with us still.

Listen, subscribe, and join the conversation. Like, share, and comment wherever you listen. You can also follow along at Pastor Harry’s Substack, learn more about Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren at pleasantvalleyalive.org, and find online discussion and study guides at discipleship.pleasantvalleyalive.org.

Reflecting on Power with instead of Power Over

I have been thinking about power this week, after my conversation with Millard. He told me yesterday that we didn’t get to everything he wanted to discuss last time, so I imagine we’ll be back to this topic soon. Most of us don’t imagine ourselves as powerful. We know powerful people. We know people with titles, influence, money, authority, or control. We know people whose decisions shape institutions and whose words seem to carry more weight than ours. But most of us, at least most of the time, do not walk around thinking, “I have power.”

In this week’s episode of Faith in Process, I sat down with Millard Driver for one of those wonderfully wandering conversations that somehow begins in one place and ends up touching almost everything. We talked about power, responsibility, faith, parenting, government, teaching, addiction recovery, forgiveness, abuse, Spider Man, Cocaine Bear, and the image of God revealed in Jesus. It was exactly the kind of conversation that led me to start this podcast in the first place.

When I was interviewing to become pastor at Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren, Millard and Frieda invited me to their home. We sat on the porch, looked out over the sheep, and Millard pulled out a sheet of paper filled with questions and topics he wanted to discuss. That was my introduction to Millard. I quickly learned that lunch with him would rarely be small talk. He would bring questions. He would recommend books. He would tell me what podcast I needed to hear. Then we would talk for a long time.

At some point, I realized that what we were doing over lunch was very much like the podcasts I enjoyed listening to. It was honest conversation between people trying to make sense of faith, life, theology, and the world around us. Faith in Process grew out of those conversations. So it felt right that Millard would be a regular on the podcast. This time he helped us think together about something as big, complicated, and unavoidable as power.

Millard began by talking about the Celtic Christian idea of a “soul friend.” He said everyone ought to have at least one. A soul friend is someone with whom you can have the real conversation. Not the polite version. Not the shallow version. The real one. The kind of conversation where you can say what you think, ask what you fear, disagree honestly, and still remain friends. I think that kind of friendship is itself a form of power, not power over another person, but power with another person. It is the shared power of trust.

That became one of the major distinctions in our conversation: power over and power with.

Power over is the kind of power most of us notice first. It is authority. It is control. It is the ability to make something happen because we have the position, the role, the law, the leverage, or the force to make it happen. Sometimes that kind of power is necessary. We talked about speed limits, for example. A community gives the state authority to set rules for the common good. If someone drives recklessly, there are consequences. That is power over, and in that case it can be used to protect life.

But power over can so easily become dangerous. It becomes dangerous when it serves the one who has the power at the expense of the one who does not. It becomes dangerous when it is coercive, manipulative, self-serving, or abusive. It becomes dangerous when it forgets the humanity of the person on the other side. It becomes dangerous when the question is no longer, “What serves the good of the other?” but “How can I get what I want?”

That is where the conversation became theological for me. Millard said his interest in power has to do with his image of God. That line has stayed with me. Our understanding of power is always connected to our understanding of God. If we imagine God primarily as the one who controls, dominates, punishes, and coerces, then we may be tempted to believe that divine power looks like force. But if we look at Jesus, we see something different.

In Jesus, power looks like healing. Power looks like washing feet. Power looks like telling the truth without destroying the person who needs to hear it. Power looks like forgiving from the cross. Power looks like refusing to answer violence with violence. Power looks like love that persuades rather than coerces. Power looks like an invitation, not domination.

That does not mean Jesus is weak. It means Jesus reveals a different kind of strength.

This matters because we are created in the image of God. If God’s power is revealed most clearly in Jesus, then our use of power is meant to be shaped by Jesus, too. We all carry power because we all carry the image of God. The question is not whether we have power. The question is how we will use the power we have.

That may be the most important sentence I took from the conversation: we all have power.

Some of us have power because of our job. Some have power because of age, gender, race, education, income, family position, personality, experience, or reputation. Some have power because they can speak easily in a room. Some have power because others trust them. Some have power because they have survived something and can now help another person survive it too. Some have power because they know how systems work. Some have power because they have learned how to listen.

And some people who feel powerless still have more agency than they realize.

That does not mean everyone has equal power. They do not. It does not mean systems of abuse, injustice, racism, sexism, poverty, or coercion are imaginary. They are not. It does not mean we should tell harmed people, “You have power, so just fix it.” That would be cruel. But it does mean that one of the most loving things we can sometimes do is come alongside someone and say, “You are not nothing. You are not alone. You are not without value. You are not without voice. You have power, and we will help you find a safe way to use it.”

During the conversation, someone brought up a hypothetical situation involving a professor abusing power over a student. That shifted the tone of the room. It should have. There are some uses of power that are not merely unfortunate or complicated. They are wrong. When a person uses their position to manipulate someone with less power for their own benefit, that is abuse. It is coercive. It is self-serving. It is a violation of trust.

In that moment, I found myself thinking less about abstract definitions and more about community. What does a faithful community do when someone is being manipulated, threatened, silenced, or harmed? We do not simply offer ideas. We create safety. We tell the truth. We protect the vulnerable. We help people know what resources exist. We stand with them so they are not alone. We use whatever power we have to interrupt the misuse of power.

That, I think, is one of the clearest callings of the church.

The church should be a community where power is named honestly. Pastors have power. Teachers have power. Parents have power. Longtime members have power. People with money have power. People with strong opinions have power. People who know the history of the congregation have power. People who control keys, calendars, kitchens, microphones, committees, and conversations have power. None of that is automatically bad. But all of it carries responsibility.

Unrecognized power is often the most dangerous kind. When we do not know we have power, we may use it carelessly. We may intimidate without meaning to. We may silence without noticing. We may assume our preferences are neutral. We may confuse our comfort with faithfulness. We may hurt people and then be shocked when they tell us they were hurt.

That is why awareness matters. It is why humility matters. It is why confession matters. It is why listening matters.

One of the lighter moments in the episode came when I compared irresponsible power to Cocaine Bear. I will admit that is not a metaphor I expected to use in Sunday school. But it worked, at least for me. The image is absurd, but memorable: a bear under the influence, crashing through the world, causing harm without any real awareness of what it is doing. That may be an extreme picture, but it raises a serious question. What happens when people with power are out of touch with themselves, their motives, their fears, their wounds, and their impact on others?

They may not intend harm. But they can still do harm.

That is where Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs entered the conversation. I had been listening to Rohr talk about contemplation and the true self. The contemplative life helps us stop trying to control everything. It helps us become less reactive, less manipulative, less driven by fear. It helps us see ourselves truthfully, which may be one of the first steps toward using power faithfully.

If I do not know what is happening inside me, I will likely use power poorly. If I am afraid, I may try to control. If I am insecure, I may try to dominate. If I am ashamed, I may try to shame someone else. If I am anxious, I may confuse urgency with wisdom. If I am wounded, I may wound. The spiritual life does not remove power from us. It teaches us how to hold power without letting it deform us.

That is why Jesus matters so much here.

Jesus does not simply teach us what to believe. Jesus shows us how to be human. He shows us how to live with power without turning it into domination. He shows us how to speak with authority without using that authority to crush people. He shows us how to confront evil without becoming evil. He shows us how to forgive without pretending harm does not matter. He shows us how to resist empire without becoming another version of empire.

The cross is the clearest picture of that kind of power. Rome used the cross as an instrument of terror. It was power over in its most brutal form. It was the empire saying, “This is what happens to people who challenge us.” And yet Jesus, from the cross, speaks forgiveness. He refuses to let Rome define the meaning of the moment. He does not answer violence with violence. He reveals a power that empire cannot understand and cannot finally defeat.

That is not weakness. That is the power of God.

So I am left with a question that feels both simple and searching: how do I use the power I have?

How do I use power as a pastor? How do I use power as a husband, father, friend, employer, landowner, writer, and person with a microphone? How do I use power when I am leading a meeting, preaching a sermon, writing an article, asking a question, making a decision, or telling a story? How do I use power when I am tired, anxious, disappointed, or afraid? How do I use power when I think I am right?

That last question may be the most dangerous one. Most of us do not misuse power because we wake up hoping to be villains. We misuse power because we believe we are right, or because we are scared, or because we think the ends justify the means, or because we have never stopped to consider what it feels like to be on the other side of us.

Faith invites us to stop and consider.

Not so we can deny our power, but so we can consecrate it. Not so we can pretend power is always bad, but so we can offer it to the way of Jesus. Not so we can become passive, but so we can become responsible. Not so we can avoid influence, but so our influence becomes loving, truthful, creative, and life-giving.

Power over asks, “How can I get the final word?”

Power with asks, “How can we seek the good together?”

Power over asks, “How can I make you do what I want?”

Power with asks, “How can I use what I have to help life flourish?”

Power over protects itself.

Power with makes room.

Power over coerces.

Power with invites.

Power over can build fear.

Power with can build trust.

I do not think I will ever be done processing this. Maybe that is why it belongs on Faith in Process. The goal is not to settle every question in thirty-six minutes. The goal is to become more honest, more aware, and more faithful as we ask the questions together.

We all have power.

The question is whether we will use it like Jesus.

Jesus as the Gate. What that is and what it is not.

The Honest Admission in the Text

John 10 is almost funny, if it weren’t so relatable. Jesus has just finished telling this vivid story about a shepherd, a sheepfold, a gatekeeper, thieves who climb the walls, and sheep who know their shepherd’s voice. It is a rich, layered image drawn from the everyday world of first-century Palestine. And then John writes: “They did not understand what he was telling them.”

Not the Pharisees. Not the crowd. Not the disciples. Nobody. They stood there with what I imagine were furrowed brows and sideways glances at each other, silently communicating: “Are you following this? Because I’m not.”

So, Jesus explains. He is the gate.

I want to suggest to you this morning that if we are being honest with ourselves, two thousand years later, with seminaries and commentaries and a whole industry of biblical scholarship behind us, I am not entirely sure we understand the story or the explanation either. We have heard this passage preached dozens of times. We know the vocabulary. We’ve seen the paintings. But I think we have misunderstood the strangest and most provocative thing Jesus says in this section: not that he is the shepherd, but that he is the gate.

That’s the claim I want to explore today.

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You Have to Understand the Sheep pen

To get anywhere with this, we have to go back to the physical reality Jesus is describing. Because Jesus is pulling his imagery from a scene that his listeners would have recognized instantly, the way you or I might recognize the image of a silo or a tractor.

A sheep pen in first-century Palestine was not a fancy structure. It was a rough stone enclosure, walls maybe four to six feet high, built without mortar, the stones just stacked and fitted together by hand. Along the top of those walls, shepherds would weave in sharp thornbushes, the ancient equivalent of barbed wire. The walls and the thorns together created a reasonably secure perimeter against animal predators and human thieves. But here is the thing: the sheep pen had no gate. Not a wooden gate hung on hinges, anyway. It had an opening, a gap in the wall, large enough for sheep to pass through single file. And that opening had no structural gate.

Instead, the gate was the shepherd.

At night, when the sheep were all counted and settled inside the pen, the shepherd would lie down across that opening. His body became a gate. If a wolf or a thief wanted access to those sheep, they had to go through him first. He was not metaphorically the gate. He was literally, physically, bodily the line of defense between safety and destruction.

And this was not unusual. A researcher traveling in the Middle East in the early twentieth century was shown a sheep pen by an Arab shepherd who was not a Christian and had never read the New Testament. The scholar noticed there was no gate on the pen’s opening and asked about it. The shepherd replied without hesitation: “I am the gate.” He lay across that threshold every night. His presence was the barrier. His body was the protection.

When Jesus says, “I am the gate for the sheep,” He is claiming the most physically present and personally costly form of protection imaginable. He is saying: I put myself between you and everything that wants to harm you. You come in and go out under my protection. My body is what stands between the flock and destruction.

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The Rewritten Parable, A Theopoetic Attempt

Let me try something. Let me retell John 10 with Jesus inserted as the gate, not just described as the gate, so we can better understand what he is claiming.

There is a place where the sheep sleep at night. The walls are stone and rough thorn, and the air smells like wool and dry grass. It is a simple place. It was never meant to be beautiful. It was only meant to be safe.

The opening in the wall has no door. But it is guarded.

Jesus is there. He has stretched himself across the threshold, his back against the stone, his eyes open in the dark. He is not a gate you can push or pull. He is not a gate you unlock with a key. He is a gate that you unlock through a relationship. He is a gate who breathes, who watches, who knows the sound of every sleeping animal inside. And every threat outside.

Do you feel the difference? The gate is not a theological concept. The gate is a person, present, bodily, awake in the dark, willing to take the hit if the wolf comes. He is there to keep the sheep safe and alive.

What the Church Has Usually Done with This Passage

The church has, for most of its history, taken this passage and used it primarily in one direction: as a statement of exclusivity. Jesus is the only gate. You must go through him. There is no other way into the pen. And there is truth in that. John 14:6 is a real verse. Jesus does claim to be the way, the truth, and the life. Exclusive claims are woven into the fabric of the gospel.

But that is not what Jesus is saying here. We have made the “gate” image almost entirely about who gets in and who doesn’t. We have used it as a kind of theological border control. A determinant for what religious system is the right one. And in doing that, I think we have misunderstood what Jesus was saying.

Notice what the gate does in this passage. Yes, it keeps certain things out. Thieves and bandits and predators cannot get in through the gate, because the gate is Jesus, and Jesus does not collaborate with destruction.

But the gate also opens. Deliberately. Repeatedly. To let the sheep go out and come back in. The language in verse 9 is essential to understanding: “They will come in and go out and find pasture.” In and out. In and out. The gate is not a one-way turnstile into a holding pen. Jesus is not describing a fence that keeps his people locked in or out. The gate is the threshold of a living rhythm for the sheep, who are, by the way, already sheep: safety at night, freedom and nourishment in the day, and the ability to return. The pen is not the only destination. The pasture is also a destination. The pen is just where you are safe while you sleep. And then you go out.

This is a parable about the safety of the flock, not a vision for controlling who is part of the flock. The gate does not convert non-sheep into sheep. It just protects the flock from death or abuse.

The Thieves and Bandits

Now we have to go somewhere uncomfortable.

Jesus says in verse 8: “All who have come before me are thieves and robbers.” And in verse 10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

We hear this and think of obvious villains. The Pharisees with whom Jesus was arguing. We picture the people who are obviously bad actors in this story.

The scholar who studies Ezekiel will recognize this immediately. In Ezekiel 34, God tears into the shepherds of Israel with some of the most scorching language in the entire Old Testament. These are not pagans or foreign oppressors. These are Israel’s own religious leaders. God says through Ezekiel: “You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool, and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.” They were feeding off the sheep rather than feeding and protecting them. They were using the position of shepherd as a vehicle for personal power and gain.

Jesus is standing in that same prophetic tradition when he speaks to the Pharisees in John 10. Some scholars go as far as to suggest that Jesus is referring not only to the Pharisees but to the “messianic pretenders” who came before, with, and will come after him in juxtaposition to Jesus being the true Messiah.

We have seen this too. It has happened across the entire sweep of Christian history, and it is happening today. We are living in a moment when story after story is breaking about religious leaders who used their platforms, their authority, and their spiritual power to exploit the very people they were supposed to protect. We have watched institutional churches cover up abuse rather than confront it. We have watched celebrity pastors surround themselves with people whose only function was to ensure the leader’s comfort and protect the leader’s reputation. We have seen people weaponize the language of spiritual authority to silence questions, isolate the vulnerable, and demand a loyalty that belongs only to God. We have even seen convincing messianic pretenders come our way. As Jesus said in Matthew 24:24, “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

These are the thieves and bandits climbing over the wall in the dark. These are the people who bypass the gate and charge admission. They turn the threshold of grace into a tollbooth. They decide who is in and who is out, not on the basis of the good shepherd’s way, but on the basis of their own preferences, purses, politics, and power structures.

And the sheep suffer for it. Many of them still carry the wounds.

Conclusion

This is why it matters so much that we understand what Jesus means when he says, “I am the gate.” And for me, it is not what I have always heard. It is not a statement about who is in and who is out. It is a promise of safety and an abundant life for all interested followers.

There is one more layer here that I don’t want to rush past, because it connects directly to Easter, which we just came through, and to what we believe about the resurrection.

If the shepherd’s body is the gate, if Jesus literally, physically places himself between the flock and destruction, then the cross is the ultimate expression of what it means to be the gate. To put one’s life at risk for those in one’s care.

When Jesus died on the cross as the gate, he was not simply paying for the sheep’s sins. He was absorbing the full weight of everything seeking to destroy the sheep. The thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy had to go through him. And he let it. He took it. He stood in the gap, bodily, and held the line. And it killed him.

And then, the resurrection. The gate that was attacked on Good Friday was re-established on Easter Sunday. Not just re-established in this realm. But re-established in a way that death itself cannot control. The gate held. The gate survived. The gate opened a way for the sheep to enter the pasture of abundant life.

When Jesus said I am the gate, he was saying I am here to keep you safe, you can trust me, and I am not here to pen you up; I am here to set you free.

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Power With: Faith, Responsibility, and the Way of Jesus

In this episode of Faith in Process, Pastor Harry Jarrett sits down with Millard Driver for a freeform conversation about power, responsibility, and the image of God. The conversation begins with the story behind the podcast itself: a friendship formed through lunch conversations, honest questions, and what Millard calls the gift of having a “soul friend.” From there, Harry and Millard explore what power is, whether it is neutral, and how every person carries some measure of power, whether they recognize it or not.

Together with the Sunday school class at Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren, they wrestle with the difference between power over and power with. Is power over always harmful, or can it serve the common good? How do we know when power becomes coercive, self serving, or abusive? What does it mean to use power in ways that are persuasive, loving, creative, and faithful to the way of Jesus?

The conversation moves through examples from government, parenting, teaching, addiction recovery, incarceration, abuse, forgiveness, and even Spider Man and Cocaine Bear. Along the way, the episode keeps returning to a deeply Christian question: if we are created in the image of God, how are we called to use the power we have?

Run of Show

00:00:08 Welcome to Faith in Process

00:00:35 How the podcast began through conversations with Millard

00:03:21 Introducing the topic: power

00:03:45 Soul friends, Celtic Christianity, and the gift of honest conversation

00:05:09 Lonnie Yoder’s earlier comments on power

00:06:19 Defining power as capacity, ability, authority, influence, and control

00:08:15 Government, democracy, and power for the common good

00:09:32 Power over, power with, and who gets the final word

00:12:23 Millard connects the topic of power to his image of God

00:13:26 Created in the image of God and created with intrinsic power

00:15:03 Old Testament images of God, Jesus, and the God revealed in persuasive love

00:17:44 Class discussion begins

00:18:00 Parenting as an example of power used for good or harm

00:18:38 Asking whether power serves the good of the other

00:20:49 Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, contemplation, and the true self

00:23:03 Lonnie Yoder’s classroom example: the professor as the most powerful person in the room

00:24:21 Spider Man and “with great power comes great responsibility”

00:24:29 Everyone has power, whether they realize it or not

00:25:01 Richard Rohr, prison, freedom, and agency

00:26:39 Corrie ten Boom, Desmond Tutu, Jesus, and forgiveness as a form of power

00:27:27 Alcoholics Anonymous and the power of example

00:28:33 Why recognizing our power creates responsibility

00:29:01 Cocaine Bear as an image of unrecognized, destructive power

00:31:10 Abuse of power in academic settings

00:32:45 Helping people recognize they are not powerless

00:34:54 Safe community, shame, fear, and the courage to bring harm to light

00:35:31 Closing the conversation

00:36:10 Outro: continuing the conversation about power dynamics

Resource Guide

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
Harry mentions listening to Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs while reflecting on contemplation, the true self, and our tendency to manipulate other people or the world around us. The Center for Action and Contemplation describes the book as one of Rohr’s best known works on contemplative prayer and seeing through God.

Anam Cara and the Celtic idea of the “soul friend”
Millard refers to a Celtic Christian idea that everyone should have at least one “soul friend.” The Irish phrase often associated with this idea is anam cara, meaning soul friend. This as a kind of spiritual friendship where honest conversation, disagreement, prayer, and companionship can deepen faith.

Spider Man and “with great power comes great responsibility”
The class jokes that all good theology comes from Marvel comics after someone quotes the famous Spider Man line. The phrase is closely associated with Uncle Ben and has even been cited by Justice Elena Kagan in a 2015 Supreme Court opinion involving Marvel.

Corrie ten Boom and forgiveness
A class participant names Corrie ten Boom as an example of forgiveness in the face of great harm. Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who helped Jews escape the Nazis and later survived Ravensbrück concentration camp, became widely known for her witness to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Desmond Tutu and restorative justice
Desmond Tutu is mentioned as another example of forgiveness and power. Tutu chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a process that sought to confront apartheid’s harms through truth telling, accountability, and the possibility of reconciliation.

Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act
Millard uses environmental law as an example of public power used for the common good. The EPA notes that the basic structure of the Clean Air Act was established in 1970, with major revisions in 1977 and 1990, while the Clean Water Act took shape through major 1972 amendments to earlier federal water pollution law.

Cocaine Bear
Harry uses Cocaine Bear as a humorous image of unrecognized and destructive power. The real story involved a black bear that died in Georgia in 1985 after ingesting cocaine connected to drug smuggling. The later movie takes significant creative liberties with that event.