Podcast of "The Proper Use of Authority" (MP3)
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts
be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
One of the things our passage today
deals with is authority. You have no idea how many times my mind has rolled
that little piece of truth around on the way to this message. In truth I’m
still working that one out and I’m not getting very far as I do it. I don’t
have any problem with Christ and his authority; I’m having a time with the
scribes, the teachers of the law, and their authority.
Mark’s passage tells us that on the
Sabbath Jesus came to the Synagogue and began to teach. By the way, I love the
word “synagogue” because it means “gathering place.”[1] It
comes from a verb that means “to cause to come together.”[2] As
a building the synagogue was the place where the people were gathered, gathered
together to be the Lord’s people.
So let’s imagine the people
gathered together in the gathering place. They have come to worship. They’ll
sing a hymn, hear scripture, hear interpretation, and thank God the Super Bowl
is next week, not this one, because we aren’t ready for the party yet.
On a normal Sabbath Day the
resident scribe would take the lead in interpreting the scripture. On this day
Jesus went in and began to teach. This will eventually bring Jesus into
conflict with the scribes and today looks like a good day for that to start in
Mark’s gospel. This is the first time Jesus and the religious leaders meet in
the synagogue.
The people declare in amazement
that Jesus teaches like one who has authority, not like the teachers of the
law. Looking at this a little deeper, the people see that Jesus has authority.
The people recognize his authority in his presence, demeanor, and words.
For a moment though, I want to turn
a sympathetic eye to the Scribes. The people say Jesus taught as one with
authority, not like a teacher of the law; but the Scribes had authority too. They
had the authority to teach the law. They had the authority to teach in the
synagogue.
During the exile, when all the
nation of Israel had was the
Law, it was the Scribes who kept and interpreted the law.[3]
They were also responsible for preserving the Old Testament scriptures along
with the foundations of the Jewish religion and the some of the foundations of
what would become the Christian religion. Note that I say religion and not
faith. They were responsible not for the faith per se but how the faith was
practiced.
For this, we need to give the
Scribes credit where credit is due. By their authority, by their work, they
helped maintain the foundations of the way the faith was celebrated.
Unfortunately one of the Scribes overriding
interests was more about maintaining the legal and social structures of the
temple and synagogue than it was about defending the text. At this point, it
might be easy to say that they overstepped the bounds of their authority; but since
one of the sources of their authority was from the temple elite, they did act
within the bounds of their authority.
So again, Jesus comes into the
synagogue and teaches with authority. The question is asked time and time again
is “What is the source of your authority?” In Mark’s gospel when the Chief
Priests, scribes, and elders ask Jesus this very question, he didn’t answer
them.[4] If
they wouldn’t tell him the source of John’s baptism he wasn’t going to tell
them the source of his authority. The good news for us is that the text of Mark’s
gospel begins by answering this question for us. It begins declaring Jesus the
Christ, the Son of God.
What I’m getting at here, in a
roundabout way, is that the Scribes taught with the authority that was theirs.
Yes, they did overextend themselves when they put the law above the Word, but
by their historical and social position they had that authority.
The authority Jesus brings into the
synagogue is something no one had ever seen before. In Jesus, even though they
really didn’t know what they were seeing, the gathered people of God saw the Lord’s
Messiah at work. They saw someone with authority that they had never witnessed.
They saw the Son of God teaching with all of his authority.
They had seen something special and
they knew it. Even if they didn’t know exactly what they had seen, they did
know they had seen something special. This is before the evil spirit was
exercised from the man.
That too must have been a sight.
The evil spirit bears witness to his authority and recognizes who Jesus is. “What
do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Then he
drops the big bomb of truth in the synagogue. “I know who you are—the Holy One
of God!”
Here’s something kind of scary; at
this time, not everyone who recognized Jesus of Nazareth knew he was the Holy
one of God, but the evil spirit did. Something even scarier is that in this
world today where people do not recognize Jesus of Nazareth, the evil spirits
can. Back to the gospel…
This is when Jesus exercises the
spirit from the man. The people were so amazed they asked each other what just
happened. They see yet another side of the word in action, the word taking a
man from anguish to new life. The authority of Jesus over natural and
supernatural forces is dramatic. His authority is seen and the news began to
spread.
Let’s face it, the authority of the
scribes, whether ancient or modern, pales next to the presence of the Lord. I
want to say that one more time, the authority of the scribes, whether ancient or
modern, pales next to the presence of the Lord.
So what does this mean for us who
are disciples of the Triune God? What does this mean to us? The Presbyterian
Church’s Book of Confessions[5] says
quite a few things about us and authority.
The Scot’s Confession reminds the
world that “empires, kingdoms, dominions, and cities are appointed and ordained
by God; the powers and authorities in them, emperors in empires, kings in their
realms, dukes and princes in their dominions, and magistrates in cities, are
ordained by God’s holy ordinance for the manifestation of his own glory and for
the good and well being of all men.”[6]
In short, God gives authority to
governments to do the Lord’s work for the good and well being of everyone. The
Westminster Confession of Faith also teaches governments are ordained by God to
do this work on Earth.[7]
The Second Helvetic Confession also
warns ministers “remembering the words of the Lord: ‘Let the leader among you
become as one who serves’ (Luke 22:26), they kept themselves in humility, and
by mutual services they helped one another in the governing and preserving of
the Church.”[8]
In an English that makes a little
better sense to us, this Confession affirms that ministers have an authority,
but their authority is from the Christ who came to serve, not to be served.
The Confessions also remind us “the apostle [Paul]
testifies that authority in the Church was given to him by the Lord for
building up and not for destroying.”
This Confession also simply tells
us Christ “has (as they say) all fulness [sic.] of power and sovereign
authority in the Church.”[9]
This is just a handful of the
forty-two[10]
instances of the word “authority” among the confessions of the Presbyterian
Church. In these uses whether it’s the magistrate’s authority over the city,
Christ’s authority over the church, or a minister’s authority over the flock;
Christ uses his authority to build up, not to destroy. As for the scribes,
well, their point of view was more limited. Yes they defended the faith, but
they defended their role in the society at the expense of the faith when the
need arose.
Of course, this is the way of life.
Unfortunately this is also the way of life in the church.
As I briefly mentioned last Sunday,
the PC(USA) is currently facing another move toward schism. Within the “Fellowship
of Presbyterians”[11] there
are congregations that are actively seeking to leave the PC(USA) to join the
Presbyterian Church in America
While the conversations are still
publically cordial, the Order and the PC(USA) have both budgeted to bring in
legal help should schism happen. While both parties might say I am mistaken
about schism talk, frankly to me it quacks like a duck.
We are also nationally in a
political season. The Republican Candidates have come out swinging on the
President and on one another. There is mud being slung that you won’t see at a
tractor pull. Let me add, mud is being swung by and at both Republicans and
Democrats. I pray from this we will find leaders and not as Shakespeare curses “a
pox on both of our houses.”[12]
As I have recently written on one of my weblogs, “It’s quit being about people
and is more about power more than ever, and that has completely bored me to
tears.”[13]
In his book “What Happened,”
President George W Bush’s former Press Secretary Scott McClellan wrote that
since the late 70’s American politics has grown to be less about use of power
and more about obtaining power.[14]
Our leaders have the authority to use their power, but do not because to offend
any voter bloc is to risk losing power. It’s better to curl up like a porcupine
than to risk doing anything at all.
Friends, here is what we have to
remember. First, Christ’s authority founded in integrity and living truth is
far beyond anything we could ever imagine. In this gospel reading alone Jesus
teaches with authority that frees a man from bondage. Christ frees us from
bondage too.
Second, Christ gives his authority
to civil and faith leaders to do his work, to build up and not to destroy.
Christ keeps sovereign power over his authority and what is given can be taken
away; but this does not change the fact that Christ not only gives this power
but wants to give this power to his people and to his church.
Finally, we should be amazed by
what God is doing in this world. By that I mean we should be amazed of the
great things God has done and is doing, not the mess created by the human hoarding
of power and failing to exercise authority.
This is the proper use of authority,
to build up not to tear down. Remember Paul’s words to the Corinthians,
“Knowledge puffs up but love builds us. The man who thinks he knows something
does not yet know as he ought to know.”
Now for the worst revelation: Like
the scribes, people on this earth exercise authority in what they believe the
best way they know how. I believe this is true of people in politics and in the
church. I believe this is true of conservatives and liberals.
I do not believe Americans and
Christians wake every morning, stretch, and say out loud “How can I make my
opponent’s life miserable today? How can I make my fellow citizen’s and fellow
Presbyterian’s way more difficult?” I think sociopaths think like this, but mentally
healthy people do not. Unfortunately, when people exercise authority or don’t,
there are some who believe this is exactly how we are acting, on purpose.
The time for “us and them” is gone.
As the musician Kenny Loggins once said, “Ain’t no way we can ever be
strong/Worrying about who’s right and who’s wrong.”[15]
It is important for the church to know that only Christ is right, by the very
nature of sin everybody else isn’t. We hold ourselves to be a Christian nation,
and as such we must again acknowledge the way sin permeates everything. From
there, we must not despair what Calvin calls our totally deprived nature; we
must hold to our only hope in Christ. Not in the church, government, and social
structures we create; even those we create in the name of Christ. Our only hope
is in Christ.
As I was working on the beginning
then, I’m still working on the ending now, but I’m alright with that. We have
been gathered together, we have been assembled to do Christ’s work. It is up to
us to know that he alone has the authority. It is up to us to know that he alone
is our hope. It is up to us to seek his authority to continue his work in this
world. When we do, the people will be amazed not by the rancor of our
discourse, but by the power of our Lord.
[1] sunagwgh,, “A Greek-English Lexicon of the
New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.” Third
Edition. Entry #7008. Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker based on
Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen
Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland
and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English editions by
W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker. Chicago : University of Chicago
[3]
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.
[4] Mark 11:27-33
[5] The
Constitution of the PC(USA Louisville , KY : Geneva
[6] BOC 3.24
[7] 6.130
[8] 5.160
[9] 5.131
[10]
Honestly, didn’t make that number up. Douglas Adams fans are smiling widely.
[11] For
more details see www.fellowship-pres.org/evangelical-covenant-order/
[12]
Paraphrase from Romeo and Juliet
[13] Bored
by Politicos, http://fatmaninthebathtub02.blogspot.com/2012/01/bored-by-politicos.html
[14]
McClellan, Scott, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington 's Culture of Deception” New York
[15]
Loggins, Kenny and Page, Richard. “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong.” From the album
“This Is It!” Milk Money Music and Almo Music Corp and Pa-Giz Music, 1979.
No comments:
Post a Comment