Turning over tables and disrupting power

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Kathy Escobar, the author of “Turning Over Tables: A Lenten Call for Disrupting Power,” a book published last week by Westminster John Knox Press, notes that “everything Jesus did was challenging systems of privilege and oppression.”

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“Most of our systems are built on unhealthy power,” Escobar told Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” in an episode that can he heard here. “That’s what Jesus was challenging and came in to call out, because the religious system and the powers of empire were so strong, and people of faith were following those systems.”

Especially in the leadup to Holy Week, “We want a certain kind of king, the kind that’s not reflective at all in the kind of king Jesus embodied,” she said. “Almost every story led to challenging the status quo, which is almost always committed to unhealthy power.”

Catoe wondered: In our politically polarized time, how do we have deep conversations about what it means to be a follower of Jesus? “Lent seems to be a great time to think about that,” he said.

“Any season is great, but the reason I love Lent is it’s a time for deeper personal reflection,” Escobar said. “I lived in a system where leaders led in a big and powerful way. They tended to be male and had a lot of charisma. They offered promises of certainty and protection, and promised to be different from anybody else. I lived in that system for a long time.”

But “in practice, I’ve always worked in the margins,” she said. “When you work and live alongside people on the underside of power, it changes your perspective about power … The hardest part is, we want things to be super clear and certain, and that’s not how Jesus did anything. He broke so many norms.”

“Lent,” Escobar said, “is a season of that more intentional transformation.”
Asked by Doong how we can “redefine our understanding of power,” Escobar defined power as “the ability to influence through position, value, voice and resources. Everybody has that, depending on the culture that accepts that and honors that. I think of power on a spectrum.”

For example: In a 12-step meeting, everyone sits in a circle. “There is no one leader,” she said. There is shared experience, strength in hope and shared humanity. “A principle in recovery is right-sizing ourselves in the story,” Escobar said. “In a lot of bad Christian theology, we make ourselves too big or too small.”
“Power is not like pie,” Escobar said. “In the ways of the kingdom, power is a lot more like loaves and fishes. It really does multiply. The more we share it — the more other people get it — the more there is.”

In the early church, the Christian community was not only underground, it was countercultural, Escobar said.

“We should be leading the way on embodying systems that look radically different from culture,” she said, adding, “It’s hard to untangle. Little pockets of love and freedom, justice and connection are super underrated, and people don’t really like it that much.”

“Jesus called people with certain power and privilege to mix it up a little, and most people hated it,” she said. It’s our work “to build communities that can talk about this stuff.” Our message can be, “I really want to do this with you because I don’t want to live apart from my brothers and sisters in this world.”

Especially in the current political environment, “We are the ones who aren’t supposed to be aligned with this kind of power. We should be the ones who are aligned with caring for the most vulnerable in our communities — children and immigrants,” Escobar said. The power we exercise “has to come from underneath — from the vulnerable, from something underground, which was always Jesus’ way.”

“Our response will have to be to make it as OK as we can for each other,” she said. “It’s about looking at the human experience in a society that’s afraid.”
The culture has changed, and our “old tricks” for getting people to join us for worship won’t work, Escobar said. “‘Let’s do it our way’ is a power thing also, and it’s a misuse of power.” Instead, we ought to be “submitting to the margins and letting the margins lead us. The juice is in the collaborations, cultivating webs and connections that work together,” putting us “with people we otherwise wouldn’t be with.”

“We’re going to have to build webs and grab wisdom from places we might not be comfortable with because it wasn’t Christian enough, but actually embodies Christian thoughts and culture and values in a really powerful way. It just came from a different source,” she said.

In a previous book published by Westminster John Knox Press, “Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World,” Escobar offered up 10 practices to help people live their faith through real action. Now she’s ready to add an 11th practice: paradoxy, “our ability to hold multiple truths, multiple perspectives within us at the same time. God’s paradoxical,” she said. It’s “our binary way that got us into this mess, and there are people and systems that can press that out.”

“It takes a lifetime of practice, because inside us is a desire to squeeze out what’s not comfortable,” she said. One answer is “to have a faith that’s wide and expansive, which I really do think is what Jesus was getting at. We don’t do that with our rational brain.”

“I’m dreaming of a non-binary world were we’re not in this camp or this other camp.”

Catoe thanked Escobar for appearing on the podcast. “The best part of our job,” he said, “is to talk to people like you and get these ideas out.”