January 30, 2000
The following message of Pastor
Gene Preston was given on Sunday, January 30, and
immediately after it Mrs. Rosana Gaw was
baptized.
FRAGILE
AUTHORITY (Mark l:21-28)
People nowadays have a love/hate
relationship to authority: And why not! Human beings have
paid a terrible price against the most barbaric forms of
authority in the century just ended. Millions of lives
were sacrificed to defeat Naziism and Communism. And the
greater value we now place upon individualism makes us
skeptical of all institutional authority. Even democratic
governments and traditional religion are suspect to many
modern people.
But just as we can't live with
authority we can't live without it. So as trust in
secular government decreases increased blind trust in
religion increases. Religious authoritarianism is on the
rise. Islamic fundamentalism has come to political power
in Iran and Afghanistan and Sudan; it aspires to power in
many other countries. Hindu fundamentalism took over the
national government in India, albeit by democratic
processes. The Christian Right would like to govern in
the US.
Some authority is new and is
sneaking up on us. The greatest authority of our era is
the new economic market economy of international trade,
finance and multi-national companies, many of which now
have more cash flow than most governments.
The popular challenge to its
claim upon our lives is just beginning as we saw in the
Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade
Organization late last year and in last week's street
protests at the elitist Davos conference in
Switzerland.
And so we come to the theme of
today's Gospel which is that of authority. Hear the
Gospel:
"THEY WENT TO CAPERNAUM; AND
WHEN THE SABBATH CAME, JESUS 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 AMAZED, AND
THEY KEPT ON ASKING ONE ANOTHER, 'WHAT IS THIS? A NEW
TEACHING &endash;WITH AUTHORITY! HE COMMANDS EVEN THE
UNCLEAN SPIRITS, AND THEY OBEY HIM."
The Jesus teaches with a kind of
authority that amazes his listeners in the synagogue. He
did not teach them like the scribes who piled up quotes
after quotes from the scriptures, citation after citation
to sustain their scholarly authority. And we may deduce
that he taught with an authority at odds with the worldly
authority about which we are so suspicious today. Worldly
authority presumes to power. Truth is often sacrificed to
retain power.
Jesus taught without regard for
power. .He did not claim power unto himself nor promise
power to his listeners.
Strangely we are not told in the
opening chapter of Mark what it was that Jesus taught. We
are only told he taught with a new authority. New because
it came from a source beyond tradition and worldly
concern with power. Later belief ascribed Jesus'
authority to God, but the only thing his first listeners
could grasp was that he taught from his heart. Jesus'
authority was personal, and thus paradoxically modern
two millenia before our present concern with the personal
and individual.
******
It's puzzling that the writer
Mark tells us here nothing about the content of Jesus'
teaching. We learn nothing of what Jesus said which so
impressed the people, only the manner in which he
communicated. We also should note that while people were
impressed enough with the healing that his fame began to
spread, the authority he demonstrated did not at the time
produce a single disciple. The only recognition of his
ultimate authority came from the defeated demonic spirit
which acknowledged him as the Holy One of God.
We will not hear that
acknowledgement again until toward the end, after the
crucifixion, when the Roman soldier makes the same
statement at the foot of the cross.
Just a few verses earlier in
Mark l, Jesus has called four disciples without any
content of his message stated. Jesus simply said to
Andrew and Simon and the others, "Follow me" and they
just as simply followed. In these opening snippets it
appears that it was not what Jesus said to people but how
he spoke which conveyed novel authority to them. He
spoke as one with a genuine personal authority capable of
provoking a personal response in others.
In his manner Jesus was able to
touch people at a place beyond the usual religious debate
and argument.
I think we have all experienced
times like that, when something someone said something to
us which cut right through whatever tangle of thoughts,
opinions, and prejudices tend to block our comprehension.
We felt something new and it felt like truth.
This ability to speak to the
human heart is a trait in all great literature and drama
and poetry, so much so that the cutting power and appeal
of truth often comes to us from someone who seems an
unlikely source. Victor Hugo took an ugly character, a
hunchback, and had him speak to the heart of l9th century
French cynicism. In his current film, ALL ABOUT MY
MOTHER, which has just won the Globe Awards as the best
foreign film of l999, the Spanish director Pedro
Almodovar, presents an unlikely character, a transvestite
and a macho tranvestite at that, and has this bizarre
character not only become creditable as a human but
appealing to straight audiences around the
world.
Jesus was another unlikely
source for truth. His truth would be rejected by many;
viewed as scandalous by many; and yet it would endure.
And that is because in addition to his style, Jesus acted
with authority. The singular act reported in this episode
is his healing of a man who was possessed by, as they
said in those times, an unclean spirit.
Whatever we may imagine that to
mean these days, I want you to focus on the word
POSSESSED. It means to say that the man was not free to
be himself, not free to be what God had made him to be.
He was caught and held fast by an alien authority to his
human nature and to God's love for him. He was liberated
from bondage by the word that Jesus spoke.
This incident gives us a major
clue as to the kind of authority we can respect and
trust. Is the word of authority a liberating word? Does
it loosen the grip of that which holds us in bondage -
our fears, our unexamined commitments, our inappropriate
ambitions, our pride, our need to save face, our easy
gratification of our desires and our senses? Does the
truth we hear depossess us of our bondage?
And the second major clue to the
uniqueness of Jesus' authority goes right back to his
style: Jesus taught through persuasion rather than
coercion.
Jesus was persuasive because his
authority was holy and holy power always is relational
and seeks to persuade us of its truth for us. God's
power to influence us is precisely just that; God wants
to influence us, to enter into our lives, and to evoke
the highest receptive, self-creative and persuasive power
in us.
Not everyone is ready to be
persuaded; some want to be coerced. We have seen in the
nationalistic sponsored seminar in Japan last week that
some element of the public there still want to be remain
brainwashed…the participants denied that the Nanking
Massacre had ever taken place. I presume they believe
Japanese face must be preserved, even at the price of the
big lie, in the hope that one day nationalist
authoritarianism will have another day in the sun. The
new strength of the ultra right in Austria with its
reliance on the big lie of scapegoating and denial that
Naziism pogroms ever took place in Europe represents a
parallel return to the power of coercive
authority.
But Jesus always spoke
persuasively except when he encountered evil. The
demonic spirit flatters Jesus with acknowledgement that
he is holy, but Jesus declines that self-serving flattery
of evil and squashes the demonic spirit on the spot. But
with humans he aimed to persuade.
And he did this in part by
keeping his truth deliberately simple so that we could
understand him and decide about him. What does God
require of us? To love God as we adore ourselves and to
love our neighbors as we should love God? What does the
Lord God ask of you? Nothing more than to love mercy, do
justice, and walk humbly. What is God's will in our
lives? That we should contribute to the building of God's
kingdom of justice.
These are not complex
instructions from an immutable authority. These are
lifelines to bring peace and joy to our forlorn
situations; they are simple, straightforward truths to
chasten the authority of all our institutions including
the religious ones and the family as well as the economic
and political powers.
The simplicity and voluntarism
of Jesus' basic teachings are in contrast to the
convictions of numerous Jesus followers who pronounce
with total certainty that they know the mind of Jesus on
a variety of issues about which he never spoke, either
because he did not think them central or because they
arise from modern situations which were unknown to
Jesus.
When I hear someone declare that
Jesus would have said this or that, or done this or that,
I suspect the exhorter is mainly interested in tapping
into the authority of Jesus in order to advance a
personal agenda based on coercion.
Given the poor job we Christians
have done on implementing the few teachings we do know
come from him, how much greater would be our guilt, or
the need for our covering hypocrisy, if Jesus had
pronounced on hundreds of other situations which we would
equally ignore. It seems to me that Jesus was both very
gracious and very practical to leave many life decisions
up to our informed moral sense. Jesus was not interested
in entrapping us but in freeing us.
Scripturally and wisely the
Church Universal requires only a few declarations from
candidates at baptism: Do you believe in God? Do you wish
to renounce your old bondage and lead a new life in
freedom through following Jesus? Are you touched enough
by Jesus to welcome him as the authority in your heart
and life?
Jesus probably felt he could
trust his followers to do what is right because he gave
to them the Church to support and help them and the Holy
Spirit to quicken and enlighten them.
Charles Curran has been one of
the brilliant voices of progressive catholic thought the
last forty years; so progressive that some years back he
was silenced by Rome and forbidden to write or lecture on
the several matters on which he was a world respected
scholar, matters precisely about the appropriate role of
power in the church hierarchy.
When he was silenced by his
church as being an unreliable authority, he was asked
how he could be sure that he was right and the pope was
wrong. He replied in this statement which I respect as
expressing genuine discipleship:
"In that last analysis the
dilemma of every Christian is that I have to act in
accord with my conscience, but my conscience might be
wrong. In the end I think that the criterion of a good
conscience is in accord with the mystical tradition, a
conscience which is at peace, a peace which only the
spirit can give. Even in the midst of all the
complexities and the tensions, if one is honestly trying
to respond to the word of God and the call of God and the
needs of one's neighbor, I think that the ultimate
criterion is the peace and joy that comes and can
co-exist with the fact that one is never totally sure.
One is always a pilgrim."
What these early Marcan stories
are about are the possibilities which are open to people
when the decision of faith is presented to them.
Discipleship is no accident nor is it derived from
compulsion. Discipleship is the antidote to possession;
it is accepting an invitation to have spiritual freedom
and then to exercise it in some very difficult choices
whose resolution can involve dying to self and following
the cross in the way of love, service, and humility. We
need to be persuaded of that way; we can never be coerced
there.
If we are not prepared to go
down the road of discipleship, we need go no further with
Jesus than the one healing episode. We can watch for the
moment, applaud the healing, and then go onto the next
performance. As I look out to central Hong Kong I see
those magical tents under which The Cirque Soleil is
performing. If we grow tired of Jesus we can go there for
momentary entertainment. But authority derived from
entertainment values, just as authority stemming from
coercion, do not endure. They are fragile. The walls
tumble down as ten years ago in Berlin and all along the
Iron Curtain just as certainly the Cirque Soleil tents
will be pulled down in a few days notwithstanding the
months of hoopla we have experienced in Hong Kong as the
promotional run up.
The power and the attractions of
this world are fragile compared to the enduring and
transforming truth of God.
The text from Mark puts the
question which the demon got right: Who is
Jesus?
I am glad that one among us has
asked the question and given her answer - "He is the holy
one of God" - and now she will come forward because she
wants to be baptised in the name and under the authority
of Jesus which authority is freely offered and
voluntarily received.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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