Sermon For JANUARY 30, 2000
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
CHRISTIAN LETTERS: Working Out a Daily Issue ~ I Corinthians 8:1-13
CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: Teaching and Healing with Authority ~ Mark 1:21-28
I had a bizarre dream this morning. It was in that twilight time between the alarm first going off and then responding to the snooze alarm ten minutes later. I think that the invention of snooze alarms probably greatly increased the number of dreams that all of us experience in our lives. Much of the dream world takes place as you are going into sleep, or coming out of it. If you want to experiment with that, find some day when you don’t really have to get up and set the alarm for an hour early then hit that snooze button every ten minutes. Take out a pad of paper and write down all that you have been dreaming during that time. The dreams that take place are often a confusion of things, even a misinterpretation of things. I dreamt that Cindy and I and some other friends were somewhere in California and that we were going out to ride horses on the beach, but it was in the middle of the night, in fact three in the morning, but the sun was still high up in the sky. The sun and the moon were right up above the horizon almost together. I kept on trying to figure out how it could be that in California there would be light all night long. We know from experience that in order to get that light all night long we have to go farther north. When we get to the Arctic Circle, we can experience summer time, which has hardly any dark at all, or wintertime, which has hardly any light at all, because of the tilt of the earth and the rotation of the earth around the sun.
Now it’s not surprising that things get confused in our dream world, but things often also get confused in our every day world. If we take the issue of scripture we sometimes are quick to take scripture at its surface level, without ever looking deeper into it and trying to decide why it was that the story was remembered and recorded. If we take the scripture passage from the Gospel and look at it, our first response is to say that it is a story of healing. But if we look at it closer we find that there’s really not much time spent talking about the healing. We don’t know the man’s name. The man who is possessed by these demons really isn’t the central focus of the story. There is conversation between Jesus and the spirits, whatever they are. People often try to explain away the miracle by talking in psychological terms. To do that is to go down a path that takes us away from the meaning of the scripture passage. It is clear that Mark said this early on in the Gospel to explain why anyone would bother to listen to what Jesus had to say. Why did people in his own time listen to him? Why should any of us, almost two thousand years later, bother to listen to what Jesus has to say. The story then becomes not one about healing, but instead one about authority, and where the authority of Jesus comes from.
When we start to talk about the issue of authority, we can also get confused about things. We are most likely to say that authority comes from position, status and power. Someone is in authority because of the job that they hold, or the training that they have received, or the office to which they have been elected. The scripture passage says something different. It says that Jesus’ authority comes from who he is. How he lives his life. When he does the healing of the man who has been possessed with spirits, the response of the crowd is, “Who is this person? He does a new teaching. He speaks with authority.” It is exactly the same response that Mark shares just a few verses earlier, when Jesus goes to the temple for the first time as an adult to read the scripture. When he reads the scripture peoples response is the same. “Who is this man? He reads and teaches with such authority.”
The question about the source of authority can also be applied to Christian ministries. Ministers are called upon to stand before their congregations to try to interpret, to explain God, to help the ministry of Jesus become real so that it can have an impact on our lives. The authority to do that preaching does not come from the education that a person has received. Nor does it come from the position for which the Minister is being paid. The authority comes from two places. It comes from who the minister is, and it comes from the willingness of the congregation to receive. I am convinced that preachers should not be standing in front of a congregation if they have dearly wanted to be preachers all their lives. Someone shouldn’t be a preacher because that’s what they really want to do. Instead, you should be a preacher because that’s what you are called to do. Anyone that likes preaching too much has to get back in touch with where her authority comes from. It doesn’t come from being the minister of a church, or going to seminary or wanting to be standing in front of people and preach.
The authority also comes from all of you. There is a seminary professor of mine who said that as soon as students came to seminary they should all be given credentials. All be given a Master of Divinity Degree and perhaps all ordained, then sent out into a student pastorate. In the student pastorate they would find out that their authority to minister comes from who they are and the willingness of the congregation to receive them. Then he said when those students come back to seminary, you can take away their degree and their ordination, because they know that they don’t need it any more for authority.
I have experienced a similar kind of thing in watching politics. When our family lived in Nebraska, Bob Kerry was the Governor. I never did know much about his policies, but I know that whenever Bob Kerry spoke I felt like I was getting an honest statement from him. Any time that I saw him on the news, I always felt that Bob was talking directly to me. He was speaking from his heart. He spoke as one who had authority. A couple of years ago Bob, who had become a senator for Nebraska, decided to run for the Presidency. I remember seeing him on the news in New Hampshire. As he spoke this kind of confusion of bureaucratic and political gobbledy-gook came out of his mouth. I said, “Who is this person? What is he talking about? What happened to the honest guy we knew in Nebraska?” There is some belief that when you run for political office, that you have to listen to the polls. Candidates are guided by their trainers so that they will say the things necessary to get elected to office. But in listening to all of his handlers, Bob Kerry lost the authority that he had as governor of the state. He carries that same authority as a US Senator. But as a presidential candidate that authority was gone from his life.
Honesty and integrity, giving yourself to some greater purpose, is what gives your voice authority whether you are a politician, a minister, or a teacher. When you speak about your faith about your relationship to God.
I have files that I have collected over the years, sermons from a variety of different ministers. From time to time I take a look at what they have to say before I preach. This week I looked at a sermon by Otis Young, who has long been the pastor at Plymouth Congregational in Lincoln, Nebraska, in Huskerland! Otis talked about his high school English teacher. He said that this teacher, Miss Reinboldt had an authority. He said her authority didn’t come because she kicked and screamed. Or because she threatened to send students to the principal’s office. Or because she came and whacked your knuckles with a ruler. And it wasn’t because she was an imposing presence. She was, he said, somewhere in her late 50’s or early 60’s with gray hair and it seemed to all the students that she had been at that age forever and ever. He said that kids who got into trouble in other classes would come to her class and they would behave, and even participate. He and his friends tried to understand why that was the case, and they were never quite sure. One day Miss Reinboldt was gone and a substitute teacher came. A man who was a large guy with a strong voice, but Otis said that the kids disobeyed and acted up the whole day in his class. Well after all the years now of reflecting on this, Otis came to some conclusions, and he shares those as he talks about Jesus and the of Jesus’ words.
Jesus gained some fame because of his teaching with authority but his authentic authority had nothing to do with his fame. When he was alive, people who met him recognized him as one who had an intrinsic authority even though they had never met him or heard of him before.
From whence comes authentic authority, the kind of authority my English teacher had and on a larger scale that which Jesus had?
1. First of all, authentic authority comes to us as individuals when we know who we are and love what we are doing. When students met Miss Reinboldt, they sensed immediately that here was an individual who did not need to draw attention to her self. She knew who she was. She did not have to say, “I’m a teacher and have to college degrees so you had better pay attention to me.” She carried herself with an innate dignity and self-assurance.
Each class session was will prepared and you knew that she took her profession as teacher very seriously. You sensed that to her to be a teacher was a high calling. She loved the work of teaching and she loved the subject matter she taught. This gave her authentic authority. As a teacher, she was not the center of attention, rather the students and the subject matter we the center of attention. She never got in the way of her teaching.
Thus she treated the students with respect and dignity. Even the most slovenly student was treated with kindness. She never put anyone down or embarrassed a student in front of the class. You knew that in her class you would be treated with fairness.
There are individuals, and you may know some of them, who become teachers or preachers not because they thought they would love their work, but rather in an attempt to gain authority over others. They wanted the authority of the office of teacher or preacher.
Jesus had authentic authority because he knew who he was and loved what he was doing. He didn’t go around on purpose drawing attention to him self by shouting, “I’m the Son of God, you had better pay attention to me.” He loved being a teacher of God’s word, and he loved the people who came to him.
When he healed people, he did not do so to draw attention to himself, or to show off his power in any way. On the contrary, he usually told people to keep it a secret that they had been healed. His mission, he said over and over again was to draw attention to God’s power. He always pointed to something beyond himself.
Like any good teacher, he made his subject matter and his students the center of attention.
2. Secondly, authentic authority comes to us as it did to Jesus and to my high school English teacher, when we let the power of God work through us, when we let ourselves be used by God’s Spirit. And that means getting ourselves out of the way.
My high school English teacher allowed her subject matter and her love of teaching and love of students to use her, and in so doing she was letting the power of God use her whether she was conscious of it or not. Sometimes the power of God uses us or works through us in the guise of other forces. We, her students, recognized that something greater than her was coming through her, even though we couldn’t name it. That was part of her authentic authority.
When people met Jesus, I believe they could sense that something greater than Jesus was present. They could sense that God’s Spirit was working through him and he was allowing that Spirit to work. The average person who met Jesus might not have called it God’s Spirit, but they recognized that something unusual was present in him. To have that kind of authority, we need to be open to letting God’s Spirit use us and work through us.
3. (These well trained ministers always talked in trinities) Thirdly, this means that the authentic authority that Jesus had and which my high school English teacher possessed, and which you can possess or perhaps already do possess comes from giving our life over to something greater than ourselves and for those of us who call ourselves Christian, it means giving our life to follow the way of Christ. He becomes our authority, and through him we find also authentic authority. It is the ultimate authority of self-giving love. There is no coercion, no brute force, but there is a deep joy. May you find that kind of authentic authority in your life. Amen.
Dr. Otis E. Young
Senior Minister
First Plymouth Congregational Church
Sunday, January 31, 1988
Well, I give thanks for the example of scriptures. I give thanks for the words of Otis Young and for his teacher. I give thanks for all of you. Amen.