In essence, Jesus asks them, "Does your way of being in this world resemble the gracious, nurturing power of God or the coercive, destructive power of the emperor?" It's a question that Jesus is still asking us.
The duke does understand that, though this play may be, as his betrothed Hippolyta says, "the silliest stuff" he ever heard, it lies within the power of a gracious audience to improve it, for the best of actors "are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them".
Jost added, "President Bush was famously a very warm and gracious man who understood the power in being able to laugh at yourself".
But humiliation has a terrible power, and every gracious gesture on stage is the unspoken (though not unsung) reminder that this township is victim of the terrible humiliation of apartheid.
The Assads really seem to believe that they are the perfect couple, the dashing man of power and his beautiful and gracious first lady.
An area that was unloved and unused by a city gracious enough to leave it on the power grid was thriving.
As a manager, she cuts a figure not unlike that of the teen-age monarch in the 2009 film "The Young Victoria," gracious and vulnerable but also, given her position of power, a bit terrifying.
And when she gets there, she too can do absolutely nothing with that power, other than keep it shiny by being gracious on all occasions.
It also believes that baptism is the "doorway to the sanctified life" defined as "a gift of the gracious presence of the Holy Spirit, a yielding to the Spirit's power, a deepening of our love for God and neighbor".
"Competition for power involves losers and winners and it's rare to find gracious losers," he said.
