With Authority

Sunday, January 29
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Focus Theme
With Authority

Weekly Prayer
Holy and awesome God, your Son’s authority is found in integrity and living truth, not the assertion of power over others. Open our imaginations to new dimensions of your love, and heal us of all that severs us from you and one another, that we may grow into the vision you unfold before us. Amen.

Focus Reading
Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teachingó-with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

All Readings For This Sunday
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Focus Questions

1. How would most churches react to a visitor who can heal? Does healing belong solely in medical settings?

2. What are the “unclean spirits” that hold many people in bondage today?

3. What are some of the ways in which we want change without being willing to be changed ourselves?

4. Could it be that in disruptions that disturb us the spirit of Jesus is at work, seeking to bring healing?

5. How might “disruptions” help us to know Jesus? Can we see through them?

Reflection
by Kate Huey

There was once a commercial on television that showed a woman standing right behind a rhinoceros, as if she could reach out and touch it (probably not a good idea). I remember reading some years ago that computer technology was about to transform our perceptions of reality, at least on the screen, by its ability to create just such an effect, that is, a woman standing right next to a rhinoceros. We’ve forgotten the days when “special effects” often looked silly, because today amazing things routinely appear to happen on the screen, right before our eyes, although it takes more to amaze us each year.  

At the same time, scientific progress has made us more skeptical of the reality we actually encounter, and the stories that we hear. We may go along with the fun when we watch the cold medicine make the rhino disappear (after all, we get the point), but when we read a story like today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark, we’re tempted to dismiss it because, well, who really believes in possession by spirits anymore? Perhaps, way down deep, we do believe in, and fear, “evil spirits” a little bit, or Hollywood wouldn’t employ those technical advances so profitably in the occasional movie about exorcism. In any case, we’re uncomfortable with this brief but powerful story that begins the public ministry of Jesus. Many of us think that people long ago mistook seizures for demon possession, so we’re not sure what to think when Mark says that Jesus expels an “unclean spirit” from a person. In any case, for all of our scientific sophistication, Fred Craddock has wisely observed that “not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.”

Today’s text is actually a story within a story, and it all holds together, as so often happens in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus, faithfully attending synagogue on the Sabbath, started off by teaching those gathered–religious experts and the people gathered around them–in a way that was so impressive that it conveyed authority. We might say that it carried “weight.” Mark, unlike Matthew (think of the Sermon on the Mount), doesn’t tell us what Jesus said, but seems to care more about telling us just how powerfully he taught.

The word “authority,” of course, has more than one meaning. Even a corrupt judge or police officer has “authority,” but the simplest, poorest person in the world can speak with a different kind of authority if they embody wisdom and integrity that others find compelling. Each one holds a different kind of power, one from the outside, and one from within. Perhaps the scribes sounded authoritative because they could cite chapter and verse, so to speak, of the scriptures (our chapter and verse numbers were added later), but that, after all, was their job. Scholars and preachers today back up what they say in much the same way, citing scripture and the scholarship that surrounds it. When Jesus, this carpenter from dusty little Nazareth, walked into the synagogue and spoke in a way that “astounded” the people, more than one person must have sensed trouble brewing. Who is this man, where did he go to school, and who gave him the right to speak this way? What are his credentials? We don’t know whether the strong reaction was positive or mixed; perhaps some loved what they heard, and others were disturbed by it. In any case, it was no ordinary “Sunday in church.” And “just then” (Mark loves that expression), things got even more extraordinary, when Jesus’ teaching in words became teaching in action.

It’s much easier to picture Jesus there, in the midst of an excellent bible study, than it is to imagine what happened next. A man tortured by, in bondage to, an “unclean spirit” emerged in the crowd, in the midst of the commotion over Jesus’ power-filled teaching. While others were full of questions about Jesus, this evil spirit was the only one who recognized who he actually was. Going back to the very first verse of the Gospel, we remember that Jesus is “the Son of God,” and the unclean spirit claimed to know that he was “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.” Jesus commanded the spirit to be quiet (perhaps to protect his identity so early in his ministry?) and then expelled it from the man, freeing him from a terrible bondage. We don’t hear any more about this man, but the whole region soon heard all about what happened to him. Jesus had backed up his words, and his powerful preaching, with an action that illustrated what he was about.

What about that unclean spirit? John J. Pilch provides helpful background: “Our ancestors in faith,” he writes, “believed that spirits were more powerful than human beings but less powerful than God.” 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.” We also know far less than we think we do, and understand even less than that. 

So there is more than one fruitful way to approach this text. Dianne Bergant provides a poignant reflection on the demons that hold us in bondage: “We are caught in dysfunction and sin, and try as we may, we do not seem able to rid ourselves of their shackles. We live in the midst of the battle between good and evil, the struggle of human finitude and failure. We may begin with good intentions, but we are so often sidetracked or derailed along the way. We are plunged into the throes of human suffering and pain, and there seems to be no escape from it….The demonic seduces us in more ways than we can count, and we are often caught in its web before we recognize what has happened.” The world, including the church-going, faithfully believing world, stands in need of God’s liberating touch, and longs for what can “really satisfy the desires of the human heart,” Bergant writes. We’re probably no more able to recognize that gift when we encounter it than the people in the synagogue were all those years ago. Bergant suggests that our “[f]ailure to comprehend Jesus’ true identity probably stems from mistaken expectations. We may be able to admit that we want and need a savior, but we may not always grasp the implications of this desire.” Like our ancestors in faith, we find ourselves asking more questions about this Jesus, who he is, and what that means in our lives. Are we truly willing to follow him?

Much is written about the scribes in this story, and the conflict set up between Jesus and the religious authorities here, right from the very beginning, a conflict that will lead to his death. However, many readers of the Gospel over the years have gone further, setting this conflict up as good v. evil, with the synagogue as evil, the teachings of the scribes as formal and dry, and their preaching style as well. Unfortunately, this interpretation contributes to a dangerous misunderstanding and prejudice against the Jewish people and their faith. In fact, Gerald Caron suggests that we must not “ignore or simply dismiss Mark’s polemic against the religious (Jewish) authorities. Such polemic may seem innocuous to many, but after Auschwitz, any sort of (Christian) stereotyping of individuals or categories of people of Jewish origin, has the potential of perpetuating a teaching that all Churches have now decisively rejected. In this respect, Mark’s characterization of the scribes as having no ‘real’ authority and his use of ‘their’ synagogues create a picture of the Jewish institution and their authorities (together with the Pharisees) that has left its mark in Christian consciousness.”

Jesus embodies the ancient hope of his people

But there is another problem with such an interpretation: this “new” teaching is actually quite old, even if it is embodied in a dramatically new way in the teacher. Jesus is not a departure from the hope and faith of the Jewish people. Richard Swanson makes a winsome claim about the translation of “Jesus of Nazareth” as “Jesus Netzer,” which, in Hebrew, “refers to a sprout or a shoot of a plant,” like “the shoot ‘out of the stump of Jesse,'” and God’s ancient promise of “a new beginning, an anointed leader who would begin it all again as a new David.” Swanson traces a line from Jesus back through John to the prophets themselves, all rooted in the deepest hope and faith of the Jewish people: “John appears in Mark’s story as a native growth, erupting out of old, reliable tradition and expectation. People (including Jesus) went out to John because their faith (and their faithfulness) led them to expect that God would work something larger and more life-giving in a world that was distorted by dangerous foreign powers and those that consort with them. In Mark’s story, the most likely interpretation puts Jesus in the synagogue, teaching, because that would have been the place he would have found other people ready to hear that God’s dominion was ‘so close.'” Where do we find the ones most “ready to hear that God’s dominion” is close at hand?

Yes, there was conflict, and Jesus challenged the religious authorities on many occasions (as he challenges us today, in church leadership). However, he didn’t represent a departure from the promise: “Mark’s description of what Jesus is doing,” Megan McKenna writes, “corresponds closely to Isaiah’s description of what God’s does for [God’s] people Israel and of what a servant does that brings pleasure to God.”

We are part of the story and hold to the same promises

We trace our own faith back through the long story of Israel, and we hear in today’s reading from Deuteronomy (18:15-20) the same promise they heard, of a prophet who speaks in the name of God. To us, Jesus is that promised one. Richard Swanson urges us: “Consider whether it might not work to read Jesus as the eruption of what the scribes had long taught and described. The scribes teach and preserve and prepare; Jesus blazes, explodes, and erupts.” In this season of Epiphany, “the season of revelations,” Swanson reminds us of our call to “participate in a revealing of what opposition to the goodness of creation looks like, for real.”

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus begins his ministry by going into the synagogue and introducing himself and his ministry by reading from the prophet Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and letting the oppressed go free. In Mark’s Gospel, we don’t hear such beautiful words. Instead, we hear words like “destroy,” “rebuke,” and “convulsed.” However, 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. 

Manifestation and transformation

We are deeply into the season of Epiphany, a season of manifesting and revealing. Swanson urges us to reveal “what opposition to the goodness of creation looks like,” but to do so in order to take the next step. That second step is as important as the first: opening ourselves and our communities to being transformed, shaped by God’s hand at work in the world. In any age and any religious setting, words can easily stay just words. Words, however, spoken in the name of God, have power. Mike Graves writes that they can, like the words of Jesus, “cause things to happen.” That’s why, for example, preaching is so important in the life of the church. All good preachers, Graves writes, “want the same thing, come Sunday. We do not desire simply to provide more information about this text. We do not desire to add to all the other words ever uttered from pulpits, just because that’s what preachers do on Sunday mornings. No, we hope that our words, infused with the power of the One who speaks through us and on whose behalf we speak, will cause something to happen.” Undoubtedly there will be many words spoken from pulpits and in Bible studies this Sunday, and much information shared, but we pray too for transformation, for “something to happen,” in the United Church of Christ, and in the whole church: healing, peace, liberation. Then, all will be amazed, not just by what they think they see, but by the reality they encounter in God’s love made known, made manifest, right before our eyes.

For Further Reflection

Alice Walker, 20th century
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Blaise Pascal, 17th century
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Howard Smith, 20th century scientist
I’m religious not because I’m ignorant. I’m religious because I’m in awe. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel, 20th century
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Leighton Ford, 20th century
I am advocating that we see the gospel as story, and that we understand evangelism as living and telling the Story of the One who has entered and changed our story and will do so with theirs who also encounter his story.

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