Mark 1: 21-28
Why me? It was my senior year in college and early during my six month internship with the National Council of Churches: Farm Worker Ministry. During my first week, I accompanied a group of farm workers at a picket and boycott line at a grocery store.
After we arrived on the morning on the first day, the police come to see what was going on and to my surprise, I was the first person they came to interview. Here I was, not knowing really what was going with a camera around my neck ready to take pictures and small notebook in my hand to take notes. The reason the police came to me first to ask questions, I came to believe, was they thought that I was in charge. Why me? It was probably the fact that I was the only white person among twenty or so Mexican-Americans. They thought I was in charge!
That experience is a subtle example of many things, racism being one, but there was something more that can be termed and called “authority.” Among a group of farm workers, I was assumed to have some authority, granted it was probably because I was white, yet authority nonetheless.
What is authority? Yesterday, after a meeting at the Japanese church a group of us looked at this passage in our Japanese Bibles. In the Japanese, authority is translated from the biblical Greek into “ken’I” --- 権威. In Japanese “ken’i” has the strong connotation of political authority. That led to an interesting discussion. So, what is our image of authority?
Let us take that question back to Capernaum, to today's reading from the gospel of Mark: “They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law."
Why did people sense authority in Jesus' teaching? How did they recognize his authority? Did he wear that era’s clothing, comparable to our rumpled suit and tie with a pipe in one hand? What was so convincing about Jesus? Well, Mark says that it was “his teaching.” What is this teaching that so astonished Jesus' hearers?
We don't know. Not a word of Jesus' specific teaching is remembered here from Capernaum. Whatever it was that so astonished people was not written down for us to hear. You may rightly object that Jesus' teaching is remembered in other places.
Yet, it is rather odd that in Mark's gospel, where Jesus is called "Rabbi” or “Teacher” over and over again --- by disciples, by the crowd, by Pharisees --- very few of Jesus' teachings are remembered. For example, in Mark, there is no Sermon on the Mount as in Matthew. Nor for example, can we find many parables compared to Luke. Instead, the focus of Mark is that Jesus taught “them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.”
That, too, is rather odd. For authority seems to be precisely what the teachers of the law had! The teachers of the law could claim the authority of words, --- Gods! --- passed down through many generations. That authority was not in how they carried themselves, or that they were wealthy. Rather the teachers of the law had the authority of God’s words, centuries old, from the time of Moses. Furthermore, these teachers had the prestige of education --- PhD’s --- and a power because their words had an impact on the culture and society.
But the way Jesus taught surpassed all these teachers’ claims. Somehow Jesus was more compelling, more authentic to those who heard him. What sort of authority was this?
The clue may come in the interruption for suddenly our story is broken up. Perhaps in the middle of the lecture, we hear what is described as wild voice, disruptive, and disjointed. “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are?the Holy One of God!” Our modern sensibility would suggest that he had schizophrenia, or possibly --- if we note the plural form --- had a multiple-personality disorder. Jesus confronts the man, or rather the voice: “Be quiet! Come out of him!” And the evil spirit, crying with a loud shriek, came out.1
Interestingly enough, over and over in Mark's gospel it is the demons who know who Jesus is. Those who were evil are the ones who called him the “Holy One” whereas those who should have known, those who were “sane,” put him to death. And when Jesus died, it was a centurion solider, an outsider, who proclaimed, “Truly this was the Son of God!”2
Where does that leave us, we who are struggling to understand his authority? Obviously it is not the authority vested in a political leader, not an authority that comes by holding a gun at someone unarmed. It is not an authority that comes with size, or sex, or color, or wealth or education or anything else. Rather, in Mark's gospel Jesus himself is the content of the teaching. The authority is not in particular speeches, or words, but in his particular life.
Jesus lived as one who had authority, an authority radically different from that of teachers. As Pastor Barbara Lundblad puts it, “To understand this authority we must not only listen, we must also look.”3 Jesus’ authority is a derived authority for it comes directly from God. That is why evil trembled because it is not a power from anything on earth, but an authority derived from God. And it’s this divine weight that we see unfold in the gospel of Mark. In a way, it is similar to what some students who may say “Don’t take the course --- take the teacher.” The students are reasoning that if they have a good teacher teaching a bad subject that is more worthwhile than a lousy teacher ruining a good subject.
Where does that leave us? As Christians, followers of this teacher Jesus, we are part of and are given that divine authority as well.
What does that mean? In the 1970’s, a University of Chicago professor, Dr. Don Browning, wrote a book called, The Moral Context of Pastoral Care.4 It was intended for ministers and counselors on how to help people with problems.
Browning argued that when we talk about human problems, too many of us reduce their causes to be psychological; all human pain become problems of psychological maladjustment, or chemical imbalance in the brain, or experiences as infants.
Yet, Browning says, there are many human problems, which are more cognitive than physical or emotional, meaning it’s more a matter of not knowing rather than not feeling well. For example, some people are in pain because they are confused. Modern life is so chaotic and confusing, that a person may be miserable, although emotionally and physically they may “feel” fine.
Browning suggested that too many pastors and Christians in general have made the mistake of seeing problems in a medical model, and seeking a physician. Browning says instead we should take as our model the rabbi, Jesus. Jesus the teacher healed that man in our gospel not as a doctor would heal a sick person; rather Jesus silenced the raging spirits and taught the doubting assembly.
Within the grace of the Holy Spirit, we work as disciples in living out God’s grace in Jesus who had undisputed authority to speak for God. The authority of Jesus moves us toward healing not as doctors necessarily but as moral agents. What are some examples of that kind of authority? We have the gospels, examples of Jesus, as the authority over sin, death and the power of the devil, to help us.
One is that we are people of inclusion rather than exclusion. Those invited into Jesus' life included tax collectors and sinners, poor widows, prostitutes, little children. All of these Jesus called models of the Kingdom of God and models of faith. We must, therefore, be suspicious of any kind of other authority which moves toward dividing, excluding and separating.
Jesus' authority also valued persons over rules or traditions. Jesus pointed out that the religious leaders too often valued Sabbath laws and other written traditions more than people. Rather, Jesus said these laws were meant to serve the people. The implication is that as moral agents of Jesus Christ, we are at times to value the needs of people over always keeping rules or traditions.
Those were two examples. Of course, our human understanding is not the same as God's. That is why Jesus' authority cannot be contained on a button. This authority cannot be reduced to a slogan, a tract or a well written book. Nor is this authority a simple word to hurl at our opponents. Jesus showed God’s derived authority in the substance of his teaching, his life. May we grow in the authority of Jesus as we confront evil and share the good news. Amen.
1 Vs. 24 - 26
2 Mark 15: 39
3 Day1 :: A New Kind of Authority by The Rev. Dr. Barbara K. Lundblad February 2, 1997
4 Browning, Don. The Moral Context of Pastoral Care. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1976