The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for January 29, 2006

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

Title: “The Burden of Authority”

              Imagine yourself sitting behind a big mahogany desk in a big office on Park Avenue, the several floors beneath you occupied by hundreds of people who are at your beck and call.  Imagine how great it must be to possess that kind of authority.

              Imagine standing before a spellbound jury as you lay out that perfectly reasoned argument guaranteeing that the interests of your client are upheld.  Imagine how great it must be to possess that kind of authority.

              You are standing before an audience that have paid large sums of money to hear you sing, watch you dance, or watch you hurl a football that might seal a win in the biggest game of the year.  Imagine how great it must be to possess that kind of authority.

              People of authority command our attention, and are very often rewarding exceedingly well for what they do.

              Authority is a major biblical theme. God, of course, demonstrated his authority in the acts of creation.  God pronounced his authority in a series of commandments. 

              God appointed prophets to act in his name, charging them to protect and preserve his authority.  God committed himself to a people, a chosen race, anointing Abraham to found a nation, his heirs as numerous as the sands on the seashore.  To Abraham God gave great authority.  How great?  “I will make of you a great nation [God declared], and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one that curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Imagine what it might be like to command that kind of authority. 

              As you know, Abraham began to doubt that God was good to his word.  How, after all, was he expected to found a great nation when he and Sarah were childless? Abraham knew that Sarah was well beyond child bearing age, and besides he was no rooster himself.  Abraham reasoned that no son would be born to him. But God said, “whoa, not so fast” [or words to that effect].  Along came Isaac, and after him Jacob, and after him twelve sons who would give birth to sons. It turned out that Abraham didn’t have anything to worry about.  God was good to his word.  Abraham’s authority lived on.

              Came a time when God selected a new recipient of his authority, a descendant of Abraham’s house by the name of Moses. It was upon the shoulders of Moses that the mantle of God’s authority would now rest.  God formalized his relationship with Moses through a covenant just as he had with Abraham, and that good man went to work, his authority exercised over forty years of trial and testing in the desert of Sinai.  Came a time when God was forced to choose Moses’ successor.  It is to that transfer of power that our first lesson referred.  Jealous of his authority, God would himself pick the prophet who would assume Moses’ role. 

              God’s handpicked men lived in the limelight, and what a heady experience that must have been. If those giants were here with us today they would undoubtedly testify to that fact. Yet, you know your Bible, it is very likely that those courageous men would most dwell on the burden of authority.  Even a not too careful reading of scripture exposes the extreme obstacles against which the Abraham’s, the Isaac’s, the Moses’ and that whole crowd labored.  You have authority, you better be prepared to duck at any moment for you are very likely to catch a pie in the face.

              Authority can be a major pain in the back when everyone wants a piece of you, when everyone has an agenda to press, when you are expected to be on your game 24/7.

              No, it’s not so great to have authority when the decision you are required to make has far-reaching consequences.  It’s not so great to have authority when you find your every decision critiqued by those responsible for placing authority in your hands. It’s not so great to have authority when you are asked to explain comments made when your emotions were fully engaged, but your brain was taking a rest.

              Authority---even if the only authority you ever possessed was exercised in drawing up roster for the parents in the neighborhood carpool---is decidedly a mixed blessing.  No, the burden of authority, and the responsibility that comes with it, is not for everyone. You, of course are smart, you don’t have to be told that.

              Have I told you about the time I was asked to umpire a little league baseball game?  They needed someone to cover second base, and I was available, available being my only real qualification for umpiring, though I did possess a basic knowledge of the rules of the game. You would think that the parents and coaches of the player would give the thirteen year old a break, after all it wasn’t a league game, and I was being given no money for my trouble.  What I did have, however, was something that proved to be a burden of the king-sized variety.  I had authority to make a call at a play around second base.

              When the passions aroused around a little league baseball are in play, take it from me, no one is going to cut you any slack.  If you are judged to have misused your authority your youth and innocence don’t amount to squat.

              Passing over Jesus’ birth, an event the Gospels of Luke and Matthew report, the Gospel of Mark moves immediately into issues of authority.  There is Jesus baptized at the river Jordan, the Spirit of God announcing, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Baptized, he is immediately tested by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus’ authority unblemished in that encounter. That test behind him he meets up with Simon and Andrew, and won over by his authority, they leave their nets to follow him.  All this occurs in just twenty verses. That ground covered, the scene opens in Capernaum.  [The four gospels tell us that Capernaum received a lot of attention from the Lord.]

              In the narrative sequence that Mark gives us Jesus has just begun his public ministry, arriving in Capernaum an unknown.  That status, however, would soon change.  And why?  Let Mark tell us.  “He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Hold that distinction in mind, for it will prove important later, he taught, but “not as the scribes.”  

              The passage I just identified is a teaser because it doesn’t really expand on the character of his teaching, simply citing his audience’s response to it. We are given very little time to ponder the source or character of Jesus’ authority before he is presented with an opportunity to demonstrate his authority.  It is curious isn’t it that his nemesis, the “unclean spirit,” knows the source of his authority even before the good people in the crowd who so recently proclaimed it.  The “unclean spirit” isn’t in the dark, the spirit knows that Jesus is the “Holy One of God.”

              Jesus taught with authority, and the people got it. Jesus healed the man with the unclean spirit, and the unclean spirit really got it—authority with a capital “A,” “you’ve had it spirit, find some other place to hang out.” To teach with authority, certainly important, but it is in deed, in action, that authority really struts its stuff. Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus never let us forget that.

              There is, of course, an inherent risk in using authority.  To be sure, words can get you in trouble, but acting out of authority can get you in big trouble.  Jesus knew all about the burden of authority, the kind of burden that presented itself overtly in an unclean spirit intent on working its agenda, but also the kind of burden that worked covertly to accomplish its ends, the scribes mentioned in our lesson fitting into this latter category. It would take long for the scribes’ jealousy and resentments to rise.  They were soon looking for ways to get rid of the Lord.             

              Jesus bore the burden of authority represented in the two sources I just named, but also the burden represented in the twelve he called to be his disciples.  In the case of the twelve they were constantly mistaking the kind of authority he chose to exhibit.  But can you blame them?  The authority upon which he chose to rely wasn’t the conventional top down kind of authority that we see applied in the armed services or the corporation.  The authority he exhibited wasn’t of the “respect me for the office I hold” variety. Nor was the authority he exhibited of the preening, “watch me do my thing because I’m important” variety.  No, the kind of authority that Jesus wielded introduced itself as authority in act.  It was the kind of authority that validates itself in the eyes of the observer by demonstrating its authenticity. Authority of the type I am talking about evokes a response that can be summarized in just three words, “that makes sense.” 

              Yet you would have to admit that many of Jesus’ pronouncements hardly made sense at all. “The first shall be last.”  “One must become as a child to enter the kingdom of God.”  “You must surrender your life to gain life.”  “Love your enemies.”  The mindset that inspires that kind of thinking is hardly convention.  The world hasn’t gotten to were it is by embracing such doctrine.  But, you see, that’s the point. Jesus shattered the conventions, and the people who witnessed him doing it, and were not threatened by what he was doing, ultimately concluded that the world of shattered conventions he introduced looked more authentic than the world in which they were living. No, not at first, what Jesus was saying didn’t make a lot of sense at first, but in time the pieces came together.

              The question might reasonably be asked why Jesus, the very son of God, chose to bear the burden of authority, when he possessed the power to install his authority top down.  Why, in other words, do the servant thing, when he could have just as well done the CEO thing from the start? Here is how I see it, he chose to bear the burden of authority, suffering the opposition from those who resented his unconventional methods, and ultimately died on the cross, to demonstrate to those who would follow him the level of opposition his followers are likely to face from those who are so invested in the world’s standards to disregard persons who offer an alternative.

              Yes, make no mistake, authority is a burden when you take Jesus’ authority to the street.  People want to know why you are spending time hanging out with losers at the soup kitchens.  They want to know why you are hosting fund raisers on behalf of AIDS patients.  They want to know why you are traveling to Columbia to walk at the side of those who have been targeted for assassination. They want to know why you are using your free time to work on a Habitat house.

               They want to know why spend your time on all those things when you could be playing a round of golf or doing something about your bottom line. There are options out there.  Our Lakeview neighborhood is an investor’s dream.  There is serious money to be made.  Listen to the voice of authority.  The realtors and bankers are betting on Lakeview.

              There are many authorities to consult as we consider the future of Lakeview or our city. Opinions are coming in from all over the map.  As a community called to represent the interests of Jesus in our community and city, however, it is to his authority we must turn.

                Jesus, so far as I know, has not issued a statement on how we should proceed in rebuilding our neighbors and city.  But Jesus has given us some serious guidelines on how we should proceed, and those guidelines have little to do with the economic viability of the city, levees, green space, or the numerous other things that attract popular attention.  Jesus’ guidelines focus on things like economic and social justice, the kind of issues whose constituency tends to be very small.

                  The constituency for what Jesus taught was built in the back alleys among the low lifes and sinners the respectable crowd shunned.  It was this constituency who first recognized his authority, the burden Jesus bore was in demonstrating to the well-established, upstanding scribal and priestly leaders, the respectable ones, that his authority was authentic.

               The task of the church is to build a constituency for Jesus’ authority, it is to demonstrate that the values he lived and taught make sense of the world in a way that no other authority can.  If that’s the task of the church, there is no better place for that task to be initiated than right here, as Jesus’ word confronts us, chastens us, and hopefully, hopefully, converts us into a community who reveres his word not as a burden, but celebrates it in action as the joy it was meant to be.   AMEN.   

PRAYER

                 Sovereign God, who has provided that we should rise to greet another morning, gather in this place to worship you, and in the company of these friends, reaffirm our commitment to serve you, may our praise and thanksgiving be a worthy tribute to offer you this day.  Grace, ancient in origins, yet daily renewed, was a gift enjoyed by Abraham, father of the Jews, by Moses who faithfully led your people to the Promised Land, your obedient, often long-suffering, prophets, and generation upon generation who turned to you as the source of hope.  In the confidence of your constancy displayed generation to generation we live into the future you are in this very moment preparing for us. 

                  He taught with authority such that those who heard him were given to see the world in a new light.  He taught with authority, and people came to him to be healed.  He taught with authority, and his followers were transformed into disciples who, disregarding all obstacles, courageously carried his message into the world. He taught with authority, and his enemies resented his authority.  They conspired to get rid of him, they tried him, and on a cross crucified him.  Forgive us for our complicity in his crucifixion, the evil residing through which we deny the Christ and scorn his teaching. 

                   Lord, fearing the burden of authority, the personal cost of living after your example, the church has established priorities that reflect its own goals and aspirations rather than those you lived and died to preserve.  We write lofty mission statements, craft impressive documents announcing our grand ambitions, but somehow our efforts, however well-meaning and passionately expressed, fail to produce the hoped for results.  We are called to be prophetic, but instead we wait for prophets to arise in our midst and mobilize to action.  We wait for things to happen, grow impatient when things aren’t happening, but fail to understand that by virtue of our baptisms we are called to make things happen ourselves. How we must strain your patience, O Christ, you who surrendered your very life that people like us might build on the foundation you laid.      

                    O Christ, even as we assess the state of the church and its mission, we know that the Gospel you brought is not merely a blueprint for remaking the world, but is a blueprint for an enriching life.  And so we turn to your Gospel, O Lord, for solace and comfort, your reassuring voice sounding from the pages, “I am with you always, onto the end of the age.” Though we fear, though we doubt, your word stands, a citadel, a fortress, to which we turn for strength and assurance.

                    Craving assurance and strength, O Lord, many have gathered in churches just like this one today.  Some have brought great expectations to the place of worship, others modest expectations, still others, no real expectations at all. Whatever our struggle, whatever our frame of mind, you, O God, know it entirely.  Grant us courage to surrender our need to you, and in that surrender may our faith be more firmly founded.    

                    “Prince of Peace,” that is one of the names by which you are known, O Christ.  Yet you are opposed by an aggressive, warring spirit bent on fulfilling its destructive mission. The world holds its breath to see what the recent elections in the Middle East will bring.  The world holds its breath as Iran defiantly sets a dangerous course.  The world holds its breath not knowing what new atrocities El Queda is planning.  The world holding its breath, it’s the posture we have learned to live in.  Not the way it was supposed to be, O Lord, but just the way it is.  O Christ, in your mercy hear our prayer for peace, that enemies of peace may themselves be deprived of peace themselves, but that for the measure of grief they dispense they may experience grief ten-fold.

                     Look, O God, with favor upon your people gathered here.  Fill us with your Spirit, restore our confidence in your providence, and teach us patience in all things we undertake in your name.  For the opportunity to worship, for the fellowship of the church, and for the gifts you provide that we may take your message to the world, we pray, O Christ, the prayer you taught us…