The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 1, 2009

Texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-20/Mark 1:21-28

Title: “Authorization Approved”

              There are compartments of my life where Jesus is not authorized to be. There are parts of my life into which his authority does not extend. He gets in there anyway, but that is an issue we will defer to later.

              You may ask me why I have posted that “not authorized” over compartments of my life.  I have chosen to do that because I suffer an affliction common to our species. We call that affliction “sin.” You will not greet this announcement of my affliction as “breaking news.” The affliction is deeply seated in my genes, but also in your genes, in all of our genes. Furthermore the affliction has been widely diagnosed in persons of every generation that have ever lived on this earth. The Bible, but also other historical records dating from the earliest centuries, exhaustively recounts its presence.

              Each of us sin, no news there, the only difference is that there are areas of our lives about which we are particularly sensitive, areas of our lives we are particularly zealous to shield from Jesus’ inquiring eye.

              There are compartments of my life where Jesus is not authorized.  I have every reason to believe the same holds for you. I will not attempt to speak for you, but the reason I withhold authorization is because what Jesus may find in a particular compartment might shame me. In my guilt I fend him off.  I withhold authorization because I fear Jesus’ judgment. What he can’t see he can’t judge. I withhold authorization to preserve my self image. I don’t want to look in the mirror Jesus might hold up to me.    

              Mind you, I didn’t invent this idea of sealing off compartments of my life to Jesus’ view. The strategies I use have been around a good long while, literally from the beginning of time. Remember Adam and Eve?  Who can forget them?  Because they were overtaken by guilt and remorse by a transgression against God---remember the apple---they thought they could avoid God’s prying eye by sewing fig leaves to cover their nakedness. It didn’t work.  Concealment strategies never work where God is involved.   

              There are compartments of my life where Jesus is not authorized to be.  There are lessons he taught that move too close to those places where I feel most exposed and vulnerable.  If I put down my guard and let him in I might be forced to alter the way I’m living or the way I think. I might be forced to surrender something I am not prepared to give up.

              The question is this, to what extent are you and I willing to reveal ourselves to God? Are we willing to acknowledge God’s authority over all aspects of our lives, or just the parts we deem most presentable?

              Our lesson this morning states that when Jesus began teaching in the synagogue “[the people] were astounded” for he “taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” This may sound cynical, but they may well have responded positively to his authority because what he taught on that occasion didn’t threaten to expose anything they were concealing out of sight in a hidden compartment.

              There were many, many things he taught, many things he did, that were affirming and altogether positive. He was, after all, the physical embodiment of God’s love. It would be impossible to be more affirming and positive then that.

              Throughout the Gospel of Mark we watch his popularity grow and his authority expand through a succession of good deeds.  He feeds five thousand on the scarcest rations of five loaves and two fish. He repeatedly stops to heal the sick and the demon possessed. Such deeds had not been seen before.  Mark’s report that the people were “astounded” by what he taught was probably right on target.

               That is not to say that the people would have readily embraced everything he taught, for there were other things he taught and did that were challenging, or down right offensive. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed then to have two hands and to go to hell.” To those who wished to conceal their deeds he declared, “For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.”  

              Our lesson tells us that the good people in the Capernaum synagogue responded to Jesus “as one having authority.”  Mark neglects to tell us what specifically he taught. Again, perhaps, just perhaps, the people acknowledged his authority because the message he taught didn’t carry into those hidden, off limits places where his audience felt exposed and vulnerable.

              We are here because we believe Jesus possesses authority that we do well to heed.  That is not to say we always order our lives around his authority, obediently living our lives as he prescribes.  No, we pick and choose what we deem to be authoritative, straining out that which we do not wish to hear or ignoring that for which we are unwilling to be held accountable.

              Accountability.  I seriously doubt that anyone came here this morning yearning to hear a message based on accountability. Accusation and faultfinding, even if it biblically based, does not build an audience for God’s word. Instead, we have gathered here as a place to release our burdens, not to assume more burdens. We have come to enjoy a break from family issues, jobs, economy, wars, crime, and all the other stuff that occupies our minds the rest of the week. We have come seeking something positive to take with us when we leave.

              Though week to week you may not receive the positive reinforcement you have come here seeking, it my consistent aim, the aim of Lewis and the choir, and others who are involved in planning worship, to deliver that reinforcement. Communicating the good news is what we are about.  It’s the very substance of our mission.

              The good news Jesus has commissioned the church to bring to the world, however, is more than a message of reassurance and joy abounding, it is also a message of liberation. Jesus wants you and I to be free, and the freedom he wants us to enjoy is not attainable so long as there are compartments in our lives where he is deprived access. Jesus came preaching release to the captives, and his project was not limited to those forced to live behind bars of iron, he came to liberate those living behind bars of shame, guilt, and remorse.         

              There are compartments in our lives that we have sealed off from Jesus, things we don’t want him to see. We don’t want him to see the prejudice we harbor against our fellow man.  We don’t want him to see our selfishness.  We don’t want him to see our greed, our covetousness, our lust, or our spite. We want him to think well of us.

              Jesus brings the good news of liberation but many of us won’t allow liberation to occur.  There are places in our lives Jesus is not authorized to be, nor ever will be unless we learn to trust him sufficiently to allow him to go there.

              The good people in the Capernaum synagogue were “astounded,” for Jesus brought something to that place they had never heard before.  What specifically they heard we shall never know, but his “astounding” message may well have found its way into compartments of their lives where the messages of scribes and other holy people had never been before.                  

              Be that as it may, we do know that at least one person left that synagogue liberated, had a compartment of his life opened.  Recall from the lesson I read that among the people in the synagogue was a man who had “an unclean spirit.”  People who suffered in that way were often the ones who recognized Jesus for who he was. Such was the case this time. 

              The man with an unclean spirit caused quite a disruption, “What have you do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  Something Jesus said or did in the synagogue threatened to pry open a compartment in the man’s life he had sealed shut. He wasn’t going to allow that to

happen.

              We have unclean spirits living in some sealed compartments in our lives.  We don’t want Jesus near them.  It’s not that we derive any benefit from protecting those unclean spirits; in fact we know that those unclean spirits are parasites that diminish our quality of life. The fact of the matter is we have given them residence for so long we are afraid what evicting them might mean. In their absence we might be forced to change the way we think or live, and we are unwilling to accept the risk.

              Jesus could purge unclean spirits from our lives using the direct approach he used with the demon possessed man. He could do that.  In most instances, however, Jesus needs our authorization before he can go about his liberating work. We must invite him in, and that can, and often does mean, confessing our guilt and shame. It means making ourselves vulnerable.  It means lifting a mirror that may expose blemishes we have been too afraid, or too ashamed, to acknowledge.

              There once was a young man who was afraid of what the mirror might disclose.  This was after he had taken his inheritance and blew it in the most disgraceful way.  Alone, friendless, no prospects in sight, he did what he could to get by.  He scraped up enough money to live on, but just barely. 

              Now one day the light came on.  He reasoned that he was sacrificing his life to the parasites of shame and guilt. Time had come to show them the door.

              It was time to go home.  Mind you, he didn’t know what to expect there, but he was simply too tired to drag shame and guilt around with him any longer. A light came on for him, you see, a light that guided him home. The light even had a name, and its name was “trust.” Trust guided him home.     

              Shame and guilt did what they could to discourage trust. They fear the light.  They fear exposure. In this instance, however the light prevailed. Trust prevailed.

              There is a light beckoning each of us. It wants us to open those compartments of our lives where we have stored the selfishness, the greed, the lust, the spite, and the anger that is preventing us from living our lives as fully as our lives were designed to be lived.    

              There are parts of my life where Jesus is not authorized to go.  I’m simply not at the point where I can trust him sufficiently.  And frankly, trusting him may take an act of will and courage that are beyond my capacity.

              Jesus taught and acted in such a way that people recognized his authority.  Having recognized his authority many of them were willing to place greater and greater portions of their lives under his authority, even those parts of their lives where they had not previously authorized him to go. They began to trust.

              Paul Tillich, one of the great theologians of a previous generation who spent a life time attempting to say all God had given him to say about things divine, knew a lot about our strategies to restrict God’s access to certain parts of our lives. He was not one to under-estimate the powers of sin to undermine a life. Yet fully aware of the powers sin commands, he writes about possibilities of which you and I should be aware: “Accepting the fact [he writes] that God has accepted us, even if in our heart of hearts we find ourselves unacceptable, is the first act of courage that allows us to cope with the inhospitable world.  God is more generous [he continues] than we are, and to realize and accept that is to know what grace is.”

              There may be areas of your life as in mine where you are withholding authorization for God to enter.  God is waiting for a sign from you that authorization is approved.  God is beckoning you to come home. There is a light implanted within each one of us to lead us there.  It’s just amazing what God is willing to do on his end when we display some trust on our end. Open the sealed compartments of your lives. Life can offer blessings beyond our imagining. AMEN.

PRAYER

              O Lord, you have introduced yourself to the world as a God of love, a God whose love does not stop at the boundaries we establish. You love us unconditionally but we cannot bring ourselves to believe that such a love exists despite the fact that you came to us embodying that love in human form. You love us unconditionally but we lack the faith to believe that unconditionally means “unconditionally.” Help us acquire a more complete understanding of what love means as you define it, and may a more complete understanding prompt in us a more complete obedience.

              Not as the scribes or the other teachers to whom the people looked for leadership, O Christ, you taught with authority. Not the authority of top down power, the power you introduced to the world was something the world had not seen before.  Not power from the top down, the power you displayed was servant power, power from the bottom up.

              You have called the church to be a servant community, and we thank you for the privilege of serving.  May our witness be such, O Christ, to commend your name to those who have not heard it. Embolden us to speak of grace and salvation with confidence, not so as to mimic what others have said, but to speak out of our own personal experience of grace and salvation. Quicken us in prayer, Bible reading, and the outreach to those around us, that day by day our faith might attain a more secure mooring. 

              Lord, be with those who feel themselves unworthy of your love or unaddressed by your word. Abide with the discouraged, the disheartened, and the disillusioned who worship as spectators rather than participants. May your Spirit nurture new life where root systems cannot draw nutrients, or where roots have already shriveled.

              Abide with our children who face grown up challenges as school, sports, and other activities impose their demands. Be with those who struggle to compete academically. Grant onto them confidence to persist in their studies even when success appears to be remote. We celebrate teachers who make special efforts to help the less capable.

              Lord, we continue to pray for our nation, indeed the world, mired as we are in a great recession.  May those who make economic policy craft strategies that will effectively address the problems we confront. May their policies inspire confidence that help is on the way.

              Grant mercy, O God, to those who have lost jobs, homes, and self-confidence during the current economic crisis. May they be strengthened to persevere until the economic trend line turns up once again.

              We pray, O God, for our President in these demanding times.  Grant onto him wisdom, courage, and patience to meet the challenges he will confront.  We pray, O God, that the Executive and Legislative branches of our government will find common ground in a joint commitment to do what is in the best interests of the nation, rather than their partisan base.

              We continue to pray for our city in these challenging times.  We pray that those we have elected to lead us will do so with integrity and vision.  We pray that new strategies may be found to address the growing crime epidemic that faces our city.

              O Lord, who surrendered your son to death that we might have life, we pray that righteousness and peace may one day flourish in our land, but until that day we heed your call to persevere and serve.

              Lord, hear our prayers now for those who have special needs.