As One With Authority

Imagine this. It's the mid-1950s. The governor of Massachusetts is running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes, and no lunch, he arrives at a church barbecue. It is late afternoon. The governor is famished.

The governor moves down the serving line. He holds out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She puts a piece on his plate and turns to the next person in line.

"Excuse me," the governor says. "Do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?" "Sorry," the woman tells him. "I'm supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person." "But I'm starved," the governor says. "Sorry," the woman says again. "Only one to a customer." The governor was a modest and unassuming man. But at that moment he decided he would throw a little weight around. "Do you know who I am?" he said. "I am the governor of this state." "Do you know who I am?" the woman said. "I'm the lady in charge of the chicken. Move along, mister."

Supposedly that's a true story. The governor was Christian Herter. It happened a few years before anyone left Hope Church in Detroit to come out to Livonia and start Hope Extension, where Holy Cross now sits. The story about Governor Herter raises some questions for us today: Which one was acting with authority at the church barbecue? The governor, or the lady in charge of the chicken? What is authority, anyway? And how is it that in Mark's Gospel we hear, "They were astounded at Jesus' teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." What does that tell us about authority? Was Jesus more like the lady in charge of the chicken, or was he more like the Governor? And what about the scribes?

Volumes have been written on this subject of authority. Authority is a major issue in the church today, just as it is in society at large. Those who are old enough to remember Governor Herter or Hope Extension tend to accept and respect authority in most spheres of life. Their grandchildren, on the other hand, seem to constantly question authority in their private and public lives. And so now there is less deference toward those in authority in our public institutions, including in the church. The sociologist Richard Sennett says that many people mistrust authority because they have been deceived by it too often. From clergy abusing children to presidents acting irresponsibly, we have plenty of reason to mistrust authority figures.

In the Bible, there seem to be two types of authority. External authority and internal authority. External authority comes to someone by the role they are serving. In our time, we see external authority imposed on them by an organizational structure or an institution. It comes to them by rank, or position, or it's recognized by a uniform, or a badge, or a stole, or a collar, or some other symbol. When we are deceived by those in authority we have a crisis. We become torn between respecting the office the person holds and not respecting the person who holds the office. The scribes had external authority. The governor at the chicken barbecue had external authority. The authority of a role or an office. But it didn't get him very far in that instance, did it? Even in the 1950s!

The other kind of authority in the Bible is internal authority. This authority comes not from any role or position or uniform but from God. There was a justice on the Supreme Court, I can't remember which one, who was commenting about pornography, and struggling to define it. Finally he said, "I can't really define it, but I know it when I see it." That's what internal authority is like. It doesn't come from a position. But we know it when we see it. We automatically respect it. We fear it, like our Psalmist says, because we know in some unexplainable way, that respecting and fearing this authority is in fact the beginning of wisdom.

Jesus had no degrees, no titles, no uniform. But Mark says the people in the synagogue were "astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." Jesus' authority was not imposed on him from a structure or an institution. Rather, it came through him from God. It was an authority people responded to out of their experience of Jesus. It was an authority that even has power over unclean spirits.

Our texts today speak a word we could all stand to hear. They call us to step back and ask ourselves where the source of our authority comes from -- as a congregation, and as individual baptized people of God. They call us to step back and ask ourselves, "Who has authority over us?" How much authority does Jesus have in your life? In our life together? "Who or what has authority in our congregation?" or, to put it bluntly, "Who's in charge here?" Is it the pastor? Is it the council? Is it Barb? Is it Michelle? Is it the congregation? Who's in charge of your life -- really? Is it your house and all you have to do to keep it up and make it look the way you want it to? Your kids? Your significant other? Your addiction? The truth about who has authority over us is twofold: Jesus makes a claim on us and so do other powers.

The "other powers" are not unlike the unclean spirits. Jesus, because of his internal, God-given authority, was able to cast those out and destroy them. These "other powers" in our lives are powers that we tend not to see or name. But in fact they are powers that can possess us and ruin our lives, both individually and collectively. These powers can have authority over us without our permission, or even our awareness. Like the unclean spirit in today's Gospel lesson, they can even give allegiance to Jesus. They may call him "the Holy One of God" just to get him off their back. Kind of like getting a flu shot, these unclean spirits that claim Jesus' authority can inoculate us against Jesus' real authority over our lives.

If you're thinking about what these powers might be, in Mark 5:9, it says they are "legion." They are many. And we all know them -- the obvious ones: greed, immorality, self-serving ambition, revenge, racism, addictions, materialism, hatred, substance abuse, pride, violence. We could go on. We could stop and think about what powers are claiming us now.

But there are powers that are even more dangerous because they are more subtle. They disguise themselves as good things, they pay homage to Jesus, and yet they take us in the opposite direction. In the church these powers may claim the name and authority of Jesus. But the real authority behind these powers may be something else. It may be tradition, or the pastor's ego, or being "nice in order to cover up differences," or our real authority may be the preferences of a few, or it may be finances, or life long relationships, or programs, or a building, or events, or a committee structure. Any of these things may be an important part of a congregation's ministry. But when they become our primary authority, God isn't. And do we ever miss out. I'm reminded of a Christian Education committee meeting I attended recently. What seemed to be the guiding authority there was whether or not we would "ruffle anyone's feathers."

Bob Benson tells a story about going to a Sunday School picnic as a kid. When it came time to eat, he sat at his end of the table and spread out the baloney sandwich he brought. The folks who sat next to him brought a feast. The woman was a good cook and she had worked hard all day to get ready for the picnic. She had fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad and homemade rolls and sliced tomatoes and pickles and olives and celery. And two big homemade chocolate pies to top it off. That's what they spread out there next to him while he sat with his baloney sandwich. But they said to him, "Why don't we just put it all together?" After some embarrassment and initial resistance, he accepted their kind offer. So he sat there, he says, eating like a king when he came like a pauper.

One day it dawned on him that God had been saying that sort of thing to him all along. "Why don't you take what you have and what you are, and I will take what I have and what I am, and we'll share it together." "I began to see that when I put what I had and was and am and hope to be with what God is, I had stumbled upon the bargain of a lifetime." That's the power that came in and through Jesus as he was teaching and healing with authority in the synagogue. God's power. That's what we do when we discover our spiritual gifts and discern our ministry profiles and offer them today or whenever we get them done. We put who we are and what we have with who God is and what God has, and we share it together.

Benson says, when he thinks about it, it really amuses him to see somebody running along through life hanging on to their dumb bag with that stale baloney sandwich in it saying, "God's not going to get mysandwich! No, siree, this is mine!" We hang on, so needy, half starved to death, yet hanging on for dear life. It's not that God needs your sandwich. The fact is, you need God's chicken!

"Go ahead," Benson says, "eat your baloney sandwich, as long as you can. But when you can't stand its tastelessness or drabness any longer; when you get so tired of running your own life by yourself and doing it your way and figuring out all the answers with no one to help; when trying to accumulate, hold, grasp, and keep everything together in your own strength and authority gets to be too big a load; when you begin to realize that by yourself you're never going to be able to fulfill your dreams, I hope you'll remember it doesn't have to be that way."

You have been invited to something better. You have been invited to share in the very being of God. You have been invited to live and serve as one with authority -- to live in, with, and under nothing less than the power of God. AMEN

Pastor Dana Runestad
29 January 2006
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Mark 1:14-20

Sources:
Bob Benson, "Baloney Sandwich" from See You at the House printed in Stories for a Faithful Heart compiled by Alice Gray, Multnomah Publishers, p. 189 ff.

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