Clothed with Power (Luke 24:44-53)

Clothed with Power

06.01.25

Luke 24:44-53

By Pastor Mike Conner

Here at the end of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus promises power to the disciples, to the Church: “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49). Those were the instructions given to the disciples right before Jesus ascended into heaven. They were told to wait together for a clear manifestation of power, some forceful experience that would catch them up and initiate their work as witnesses.

Clothed with power – that is the literal meaning of this Greek phrase. To wear power as one would wear a shirt. The disciples will not be the source of it – it’s something that will be put on them – but as their ‘uniform,’ power of a certain kind will distinguish them out in the wider world.

I like what the First Nations Version of the New Testament, translating the original languages into an indigenous worldview, does with these words: “I send to you the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. He will dress you in my regalia, with power coming down from the spirit-world above.”1

Regalia – the church dressed in the ceremonial clothes of Jesus, to be how he was and do what he did. In Ephesians ,6 Paul writes, “[B]e strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength” (Eph 6:10). Cleary, part of Christian spirituality and ministry is this expectation that you and I will receive power from God and do something with it.

Ah, but power is one of the stickiest of subjects for Christians in our time and place, which is to say for American Christians in the 21st century – because many of us crave it. Or we misunderstand its true location and purpose. It’s easy to make a real mess of it – power – and with catastrophic consequences to both the public credibility of the Gospel and the well-being of those who lack social power.

There’s a song by the English pop rock band Tears for Fears called “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” That’s the idea. If only Christians could ascend to the highest levels of political, military, and economic power. If only followers of Jesus could be in control, tugging on the levers of policy and funding. If only we could consolidate power, manage it from the top down, shape the world to our liking.

Yet Paul says, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:1). If the pattern of this world is one where everybody wants to rule it, what does it mean to resist that while still receiving our inheritance, our birthright, as people clothed with Gospel power?

What is power, what is it for, and if we find ourselves lacking it, how can we put ourselves in a position to receive it?

Martin Luther King Jr. defined power as “the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.” When we have the resources to achieve a purpose, to shift the needle on how we and others experience our lives and the world around us, what is possible and available to us, then we have power. Of course, our purpose might be in line with God’s goodness or it might run counter to it. But insofar as we have the means to move forward in it, we are empowered.

In his New Testament letters, Paul reference power often. As he traveled around the Mediterranean world sharing the message of Christ with many different people for the first time, he face a lot of pressure to validate himself as trustworthy and legitimate, not only to these people born and raised outside Jewish culture but also to the other apostles who struggled sometimes to think beyond their home culture and allegiance. Rather than point to himself, Paul consistently points to the power that God manifested through Paul’s presence.

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” he writes in 1 Corinthians 2. “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (vv. 2-5). He puts it as bluntly as possible later in the letter: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (4:20).

Paul had the power to achieve his purpose; that’s what legitimized his ministry. It wasn’t all talk. It wasn’t natural charisma or good marketing or funding from deep pockets or state-sponsorship operating in the shadows. It was power. But what exactly was Paul pointing to when he referenced this power? What kind of power does Jesus give us? What is it for? What’s the purpose that Jesus empowers us with his Spirit to achieve?

The risen Christ led his disciples a couple miles away from Jerusalem, away from the center of political and religious power in their culture. He took them to a humble town called Bethany, where he had some friendships with people like Simon the Leber and the siblings Mary, Marth, and Lazarus. Bethany had been his place of retreat and refuge in the days leading up to his crucifixion. It was a place he knew and loved, away from the clamor of commerce, the great temples and barracks and walls that signify political power.

In Hebrew, Bethany means “House of Affliction” or “House of Poverty.” And it was while standing among the people in the house of affliction that Jesus opened his arms in blessing, promised Holy Spirit power, and ascended into heaven. The placement of this story tells us as much as anything. Jesus’ power was always exercised for the sake of those on the margins, who live in the shadows of earthly domination and political prowess, who are weary and heavily burdened, oppressed, neglected, and afraid. The disciples would have to carry the promise and expectation of power back into the city knowing that the promise was given there with great thrones in view, but was promised in the presence of ordinary people living in the house of poverty.

But lets also look at Jesus’ ministry and what power meant for him. After his baptism and temptation, Luke tells us that Jesus returned to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit” (4:14). People were amazed at the power and authority of his word (4:36), specifically because with a word he was able to drive out evil spirits from people possessed by them. Luke says that “the power of the Lord was with him to heal” (5:17), and wherever Jesus went people tried to reach out and touch him, because power was going out from him, emanating from him (6:19).

The power to heal – that is what power in the kingdom of God is. And healing takes many forms. In Jesus’ context, people were most frequently healed of physical diseases that came with social and religious penalties: demon possession, seizures, leprosy, the inability to see or hear or walk.

And those acts of physical healing brought about social and religious healing as well. Jesus restored the people he healed not only to their own bodies but also to their neighborhoods and synagogues and communities. Their sins were forgiven; they were no longer ritually unclean. They could participate in life again.

More specifically, this power to heal is the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness, at its root, means release. Release from literal bondage or imprisonment, and also, in a legal sense, the wiping clean of a record. Forgiveness is letting go of our need to be in control, to be right, to hold something against someone else.

In Christ, God has forgiven our sins. God has released us from our worst selves, our worst moments on our worst days. God does not want us to be bound in egoic compulsions that stunt our joy and connection. God does not want us to be perpetually stymied by financial debt. God does not want us to be locked in our despair or our loneliness. God does not want our criminal record, our addiction, our status or ability or shame to determine our destiny. The power to bind was crucified with Christ; he defeated it. He forgives us, and calls us to be a people of forgiveness. We are given power to get free and to help bring others into freedom. This is not power over but power under. It is the power to lift others up.

Recently there was a prayer breakfast hosted at the White House by the Secretary of Defense. At that service, a preacher said this:

“Our Lord, Jesus said in Matthew 10, not a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from my heavenly Father. If our Lord is sovereign, even over the sparrows’ fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles, including strategy meetings and war room debriefings. Jesus has the final say over all of it. …Lord, may this become a place where Christians come together to do just this, and we see you move in power, not just through the Pentagon, but through our nation’s capital and down throughout this great nation.”2

This is a completely different vision of power than Jesus’ vision. One that is tied to absolute sovereignty, that relishes the idea that God keeps falling bombs front of mind. This is a vision of power working from the top down, from the center out – with people who have access to votes and weapons and money and policy determining whose worthy of safety and security, and who’s an enemy or at least collateral damage. Power over. Power that forces its way. Power that clings and consolidates. Power that can only express itself in the language of domination and death. This is what the church of Jesus Christ exposes as folly and madness when it exercises power in suffering love that sets others free. This is the fantasy that has to die in us as we receive Christ’s blessing and promise in the House of Affliction and Poverty.

Take a moment to consider a few things.

What kind of power do you want? Is it power over or power under?

Do you experience yourself as clothed in God’s power, as an agent of power, dressed in Christ’s regalia

Do we experience this congregation as a place where power is present and working? Are we getting free here – free of our self-loathing or self-righteousness, free of our partisan aspirations and our hatred, free of our debts and our past mistake?

Do we sense that power surrounds us, flows between us, overcoming what we think is impossible, unleashing joy?

Do you experience freedom to love boldly, gently, persistently in how you think and act and speak and suffer?

If we’d answer, yes – thanks be to God!

If we’d answer, no – then Jesus tells us what we need to do.

Luke tells us what the disciples did as they waited for the Spirit to come and clothe them with power. They received Jesus’ blessing, and they worshipped together with joy. Jesus’ last gesture in the Gospel of Luke is the gesture of blessing. He opens his pierced hands to them, and as he blesses them, he ascends into heaven. They – and we – abide in his unending blessing. We have to take this blessing to heart, to feel in our depths how much he loves us, how far he came for us, how much he endured to bring us into his glory.

“Beloved” – that’s the name he gives us. And as we relish that name together, bask in it together, experience the joy of it together, we will ready ourselves for his power of forgiveness. Jesus sent the Spirit upon a room full of people who were praying.

It’s easy, perhaps, for us to point out the abuses of power by Christians in our context while remaining stuck in a disempowered state of mind. But the truth is that God’s power envelopes us right here, right now. “Today is the day of salvation.”

Jesus gave us the Spirit so that we might continue his ministry among the poor and poor in spirit. Even in the smallest of acts – a smile, a meal delivered, a visit made, a gift given, a preference relinquished, a beauty named, an invitation offered, an insult or misunderstanding let alone – even in these small acts of freedom, we exercise the power of God release kindness into the world.

May God clothe us with power. Not like body armor… not like a suit and tie… not like a bumper-sticker emblazoned T-shirt. No, more like the simple, broken in clothes you’d put on to help your neighbor weed her yard or tidy up her garage or sit on her porch and listen to her story. May we be empowered to be free and set free, to lift up, to love.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

1 First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 163.

2 https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/hegseth-pentagon-christian-prayer-service