Who’s the Authority?
Deuteronomy 18:15-18; Mark 1:21-28
The Reverend Anne Benefield
Geneva Presbyterian Church, February 1, 2009
Introduction: Before I read the story, I’d like to explain a few things that will make the passage clearer. We’re still in the first chapter of Mark and we will stay with Mark’s first chapter for another two weeks. (For the parents, this is the same material your children are studying in their classes.)
Jesus is now teaching in the synagogue of Capernaum. As William Barkley explains:
The synagogue was primarily a teaching institution. The synagogue service consisted of only three things—prayer, the reading of God’s word, and the exposition of it. There was no music, no singing, and no sacrifice. It may be said the Temple was the place of worship and sacrifice; the synagogue was the place of teaching and instruction. The synagogue was by far the more influential, for there was only one Temple. But the law laid it down that wherever there were ten Jewish families, there must be a synagogue, and, therefore, wherever there was a colony of Jews, there was a synagogue. If a man had a new message to preach, the synagogue was the obvious place in which to preach it. [William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Mark, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 30]
The thing that makes us uncomfortable in this passage is that it features an exorcism. With our present day knowledge of medicines, most Presbyterians don’t believe in exorcisms. What we need to remember is that at Jesus’ time and place, people believed that illnesses were caused evil spirits and demons. Jesus healed within the framework of the understanding of the time. Today, we recognize that Jesus works through the medicines and surgeries of our times.
Mark 1:21-28
They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, He 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 all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” At once His fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
Prayer: Powerful God, make us bold to embrace Your wisdom and open to being shaped by it. Speak to us that we might enact Your word and transform our world in amazing ways to conform to Your way of compassion, love, and justice. Amen.
We live in interesting times. Our culture is drenched with vacuous celebrities who are sometimes given an amazing amount of authority. Not long ago there was a commercial about some high tech feature for televisions. A young woman named Jessica Simpson, singing, dancing and talking in short shorts, said the name of the featured item and then said, “I don’t know what that is, but I know that I want it!”
Google has this program called Zeitgeist which means “the spirit of the times.” Google gathers the number of “hits” on different things and then makes a list in order of the most sought after information. In 2006, Paris Hilton topped the list; an actor named Orlando Bloom was second. Third on the list was cancer, then pod casting, Hurricane Katrina, Bankruptcy, Martina Hingis, autism, 2006 NFL draft, and finally, “Celebrity Big Brother 2006”.
For 2008, the list had changed. Last year, Barrack Obama led the list. Facebook, att, iphone, youtub, Fox news, Sarah Palin, Beijing 2008, David Cook, and “surf the channel” made up the list. There is something reassuring about the #1 position moving from Paris Hilton to Barrack Obama.
The question for us is, “Who speaks with authority to us? Who do we recognize as the authority in our lives? Who do we turn to for advice?” Is prayer one the first places we go with our questions? Is the Bible our textbook for life? I know that sounds a little pedantic, but the questions are important to explore.
Take a few minutes to think about who speaks with authority to you. I’ve enclosed a little insert in the bulletin for you to use to remember who speaks with authority to you.
I’ve put room for you to write down who those people are. They could be your spouse, your boss, a news commentator, your parents, your doctor, a special friend. Just list them. Across from the name, write down the gist of the information those people give to you. Do they encourage you to be the best person you can be? Do they give instructions? Do they build you up?
The people you put on your list may all be good influences, at least most of the time, but are there some authority figures in your life who encourage you to do the wrong things? To practice the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust?
Take a moment to think about those people who encourage you to sin. Maybe there isn’t such a person, but deep inside you there is an urge that you have trouble controlling. My dear husband, John, loves ice cream. I love it, too, but I have trouble not eating it if it is in the freezer. Luckily, there are a few flavors that I don’t like and don’t tempt me. The same thing is true with chips. There are certain ones that I can’t resist.
To make it a little easier for me, John is in charge of the ice cream and chips buying. I so appreciate how John helps me resist. (I have the same problem with chocolate and cookies. I just have a terrific sweet tooth.)
You may think that I’ve chosen a silly item, food, to illustrate the things that draw us away from the Lord, but the issue of weight problems in the US is a huge topic these days.
Let me explain where I’m going: We don’t talk about being demon possessed these days, but in a way we are. We are possessed by all the things we want from enough wealth to be secure in these difficult times, to enough prestige at work, to a fine enough son or daughter. Our desirers possess us.
I have a good friend who moved here from Princeton, which is a lovely town, but the houses don’t compare with the homes in Potomac Village. My friend has a 2-year-old son, who points to the homes and says, “Look, Daddy, there’s another castle!”
Our desirers possess us because they have gained the power of authority. We have given authority to our wants. We need to take that authority back and give it to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He can overcome our out-of-control expectations.
I gave blood on Friday. A lovely woman named Solong sampled my blood to insure that I had enough iron. We struck up a conversation and it turns out she is a Christian. She told me that in 2006 she felt God calling her to go back to school. She didn’t have enough money to go, but she trusted God and somehow every time she thinks she isn’t going to be able to pay her tuition or rent, God provides the money. She has finished her master’s degree and when I left the interview room one of the other workers said, “We are proud of Solong. She’s going to be a doctor.”
Solong didn’t let fear possess her. She found the authority of Christ leading her. Are we willing to bow to the authority of Jesus?
Before we can recognize the authority of Jesus we must recognize His voice. Erwin McManus, a pastor in Los Angeles, tells a great story about recognizing God’s voice.
My son, Aaron, was five or six when he began asking me, “What does God’s voice sound like?” I didn’t know how to answer.
A few years later, Aaron went off to his first junior high camp. In the middle of the week, I went up with another pastor at Mosaic to see our kids. Aaron, I learned, had started to assault another kid but had been held back by his friends. He was unrepentant, wanted to leave camp, pulled together his stuff, and shoved it into the car.
I asked him for a last talk with me before we drove away. We sat on two large rocks in the middle of the woods. “Aaron,” I asked, “is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“What’s the voice telling you?”
“That I should stay and work it out.”
“Can you identify that voice?”
“Yes,” he said immediately, “It’s God.” It was the moment I’d waited for.
“Aaron,” I said, “do you realize what just happened? You heard God’s voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that’s happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize Him.”
I will never forget Aaron’s response: “Well, I’m still not doing what God said.”
I explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey His guidance, his heart would become hardened, and his ears would become dull.
If he continued on this path, there would be a day when he would never again hear the voice of God. There would come a day when he would deny that God even speaks or has ever spoken to him.
But if he treasures God’s voice however it come to him—through the scriptures, through his conscience—and responds to Him with obedience, then his heart would be softened, and his ears would always be able to hear the whisper of God into his soul.
Aaron chose to say, I’m grateful to say. If he had chosen differently, he would have begun the path toward nominal discipleship. Perhaps he never would have rejected the faith overtly. He might have even chosen to be a faithful attendee at a church and been by everyone else’s estimation a good man, but he would no longer be a close Jesus-follower.
I’m convinced that Jesus speaks to us in so many ways. We just need to fine tune our hearing. If we don’t work at fine tuning our hearing, Jesus may sound like static on the radio and we may either turn it off or find a more pleasing sound that will tempt us to do the wrong things. Jesus speaks with authority. Let us listen with care! Amen.
