2012-01-29 Being Authorized

BEING AUTHORIZED

Scriptures:     Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Mark 1:21-28

             As we move through the season of Epiphany and begin to head for Lent, the Lectionary is taking us for a few Sundays into the early part of the Gospel of Mark – which, as you know, was the first of the four Gospels to be written.  I’ve always had a certain fondness for Mark.  For one thing, it’s short – a good book to recommend to people for them to read a chapter at a time during Lent, or other times, for that matter.  Some years ago I heard the marvelous British actor Alec McCowen give a dramatic reading of the whole of St. Mark’s Gospel, which he started doing in the 1970s, and which the New York Times reviewer called  “a performance as revelation.  Without theatrics, he tells the story of Christ as recounted by Mark. Though Mr. McCowen has given this solo performance innumerable times in the last two decades, his actor’s art has kept his delivery extraordinarily fresh.  The story is told every time as if for the first time.”  That’s really the key to our encounter with Mark:  to hear these words as though they were filling our lives for the first time.

            But then – right there in the first chapter of Mark – we run into this story about meeting “a man with an unclean spirit” in the Synagogue at Capernaum, and we don’t really know what to do with it.  Smacks of The Exorcist and demonic possession and Linda Blair’s head spinning around with green pea soup spewing out, doesn’t it?  Think what it would look like, by the way, if The Exorcist were being made into a movie today with all the CGI technology we have available to us (that stands for Computer Graphics Imagery) – every year it takes just that much more to astonish us.  We might actually see the demon inside of her in order for the movie-makers to try to scare us all the more.  Frankly, I was frightened enough by the original Exorcist.  (And speaking of being frightened, I was tempted here to use as an example of a man with an unclean spirit the experience we had with the young man who came into the church last week and started excoriating us for the sinners we are – but that probably wouldn’t be completely fair to him, and would have been something of a cheap shot.  If you weren’t here last week, ask somebody about it afterwards at coffee hour.)  No, it would be much more comfortable to move back earlier into this first chapter of Mark and deal with the baptism of Jesus or the temptation of Jesus or those marvelous words that proclaim the good news of God:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  But the Lectionary isn’t going to let us off that easily.

            David Lose, a professor of preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, begins his exposition of this passage with the same non-plussedness I’ve just expressed:  “Tell me the truth:  don’t you just dread exorcism stories?  I mean, if there’s one kind of biblical story we have a hard time relating to, it’s got to be this one.  Miracle stories are hard enough in our post-Enlightenment, scientific age, but at least we have experience with longing for healing or a desire to feed those who are hungry.  But demon-possession?  This is simply beyond the experience and imagination of most of us.”  Lose also goes on to note that this is the first miracle story told in Mark, and “firsts” in any narrative usually aren’t there by accident.  So, what is going on here?  What does Mark want us to understand about Jesus – and then about ourselves?

            Mark is using a story about demon-possession to demonstrate the authority of Jesus and how he exercises that authority in his teaching.  This story does follow quite naturally from those important aspects at the beginning of Mark that I recounted a moment ago.  David Lose again:  “So maybe we could boil down the first chapter of Mark leading up to this story this way:  Jesus has been baptized, tempted in the wilderness, and now comes to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom of God on earth, and he does this by opposing the forces of evil which would rob the children of God of all that God hopes and intends for them.”  What the demon (or unclean spirit) represents is all of those forces that are opposed to God’s will – those forces that tear down rather than build up, those forces that disparage rather than encourage, those forces that curse rather than bless – forces that Paul in his letters would call “principalities and powers”.  And these are forces we can recognize in ourselves:  we get possessed by anger and jealousy and fear and despair, and there are times when we let these rule us and cause us to tear down and disparage and curse.  There are unclean spirits in us that we need to recognize.  Part of the point of this story is to help us in recognizing what it is that possesses us – whether those are as potent as addictions or as subtle as a prejudice that we didn’t even know we had.  And Jesus is there to help us do this.

            But in order to so help us he must do so as one who has authority.  And this is an authority that comes from the integrity and wisdom of his person.  He is here demonstrating how his authority stems from his power.  John J. Pilch gives us some helpful background in order for us to understand what is happening here:  “Our ancestors in faith,” he writes, “believed that spirits were more powerful than human beings but less powerful than God.”  So, in expelling the demon, Jesus proved that he possessed “powers stronger than those of ordinary human beings.”  Today, we try to find scientific explanations for what happened. In fact, Pilch suggests that our “Western tendency to rationalize the ancient understanding of spirits is rooted in the fact that Westerners have much more power over their lives and circumstances than the ancients believed they had.”  That may be true, but do we really have that much more understanding?  That wonderful preacher Fred Craddock once wryly observed that “not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.”

            So, “just then” (Mark loves to use this little phrase to set up his narrative) a man comes into the synagogue with an unclean spirit.  Note a couple of important points here.  First, the demonic was not particularly put off by or afraid of being in a synagogue.  Evil is not unknown in a church or any holy site; it is endemic throughout the world and may be anywhere.  (One of my current favorite TV shows is “Fringe” on Friday nights, and its story arc right now has to do with evil shape-shifters, which means that they can become anyone – even those people nearest to you.  How do you root out evil when it is as familiar as your closest co-worker?)  Second, before Jesus can say or do a thing related to the man, he (or rather, the spirit within him) recognizes Jesus and names him:  “the Holy One of God.”  William J. Abraham says, “It is as if radical evil has a way of immediately discerning the presence of good.”  Moreover, naming someone is an important way to gain power over that person – recall the seminal story in Exodus where Moses demands to know the name of God.  The demon thinks that by naming Jesus as “the Holy One of God” he will be able to silence him.  But Jesus turns the tables on him:  “’Be silent, and come out of him!’”  Thus Jesus rebukes him, draws the spirit out of him, and sends him on his way.  We know nothing more about this man throughout the rest of Mark’s Gospel.

            Mark is here contrasting the demonic spirit which recognized Jesus’ authority immediately with the members of the synagogue who, according to the verse just before this one, “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority…..”  As over-against Matthew’s Gospel, which has Jesus using a lot of words for his teaching (think:  Sermon on the Mount), Mark’s Jesus takes action in order to show where his authority is coming from.  And it works!  The members of the synagogue are even more amazed, and they ask themselves, “What is this?  A new teaching – with authority!”  The man with the unclean spirit may never be heard of again, but “At once [another favorite Markan locution] his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.”

            But is this really such a new teaching?  No, of course not – it continues the long tradition of faith known to the Hebrews – and to us.  Our other reading today from Deuteronomy speaks of the prophets lifted up in God’s name who come with a promise.  Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise; the scribes as yet just don’t quite get it.  And so Jesus must continue to demonstrate to these religious leaders – and to us – from where his authority comes.  He must continue to act.  As Kate Huey notes, “in Mark, we see actions, powerful, dramatic ones that proclaim just as surely that the promises of God are true, the promises of old that are new in the person of Jesus.  And those promises are about justice and healing, which Jesus demonstrates here in deeds of great wonder and words of both authority and power.”

            Stephen Hultgren, Assistant Professor of Theology at Fordham University, pinpoints the nature of how Jesus functions:  “In a worldly sense, Jesus did not have any power at all.  He was not a worldly king with political or military power. He was not of the priests, who had the power in Roman Judea.  He was not even a scribe with the authority of Jewish tradition.  The only authority he had was the supreme confidence that what he did and said was God’s will and God’s truth. His authority lay in the sheer power of his words and in the example of his deeds. His authority lay in his living as God’s servant.  Jesus used his authority not to obtain power for himself but to serve humanity.”

            The key to this authority and power is found in the person of Jesus, not just in his words and deeds.  Jesus was called a rabbi – which means “teacher” – but as our text says he taught “not as the scribes”.  His authority as teacher came not from laying down rules to be obeyed or by following certain established procedures, but it came from the aura of his integrity and personhood – who he was.  I know I’ve told you this story before, but it fits so perfectly here I have to tell it again:  the single most powerful religious television program I have ever seen was a one-on-one interview by Malcolm Muggeridge of Mother Teresa.  It violated all of TV’s norms:  it was a one-camera shoot; it was just talking heads; what was being said wasn’t all that remarkable.  But the personal integrity and authority of this humble nun came through that camera’s lens in a most astonishing way – similarly to the astonishment those scribes felt at this supposedly “new” teaching they were hearing. 

John Indemark says, “The teachings and authority of Jesus cannot be measured solely by how they conform to expectations related in scripture or to Israel’s developing expectations of the Messiah.  Faith depends, in the final analysis, on a decision made about the person of Jesus.  Biblical scholars say all of the blessings pronounced by Jesus in the New Testament have Old Testament precedents with only one exception:  ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’.  The person of Jesus is the crux of faith’s decision.

            “In the Gospels, accepting Jesus’ teaching involves an acceptance of Jesus’ authority. That helps explain why Christian discipleship involves a commitment of trust in the person of Jesus beyond mere assent to this doctrine or that theory of biblical inspiration.  And to make such a commitment, you have to decide about Christ’s authority.”

            We who are here, presumably, have made such a decision about Jesus’ authority for us.  He is the author of our faith.  I like the fact that the word “author” has such affinity with “authority”, because it helps us to see how what Jesus writes on us gets translated into lives lived for the Kingdom.  John Indemark, again, asks:  “And what of us?  How do others see Christ’s authority at work in us?  Do persons see the authority of our faith merely in the words we pronounce and the creeds we declare and the denominational trappings we carry – or is our authority, like that of Christ, rooted in our identity and experience?”

            Jesus the Christ shares his authority with us in order that we might be his hands and feet in the world, as we talked about last week.  Jesus authorizes us to be on mission for him.  Make us many plays-on-words as you like out of that authorizes – we have been written on (“authored”); we have been given power and permission (“authority”); we have been shown how to live our lives in order for Jesus to shine through them (“authenticity”); we have been given a calling to become disciples.  It’s always a bit dangerous, I know, to talk about power in this context, but Jesus’ power is in order to do the works of healing that lead to justice.  I like the way philosopher Blaise Pascal ties these together in his little epigram:  “Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.”  Words spoken in the name of Jesus have power – that’s why there are such things as sermons!  But even more than my words up here are the words – and more importantly, deeds – that you offer each day of your lives to those around you.  Take the authority that Jesus gives you and offer it through the integrity of your own authentic lives, as you witness for him throughout the world.

 

 

Amen.                       

                                                 Dave Pomeroy                     

                                                First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ

                                                Las Vegas, NV

                                                January 29, 2012