Three weeks ago we left off of our series on the early ministry of Jesus as he was walking out of his home town, Nazareth, very much alone, having been violently rejected by the people of the synagogue where he grew up. What a tragic story. We don’t know that he ever went back. If you missed that, there should be copies of my sermon in the rack in the narthex.
But did he give up? No way. He walked east, down the Jezreel Valley, towards the Sea of Galilee. And it wasn’t long before he was teaching on another Sabbath in a different synagogue, in the fishing town of Capernaum. You’ll hear about this town, Capernaum a lot as we go through Luke’s Gospel. He found people who would listen here. He found some real disciples here. This was Peter’s home town. He did many miracles and taught many times here.
This is a very special story for me, because in 1990 I was able to take a tour of Israel. Archeologists have excavated this synagogue. They know right where it was. The synagogue where Jesus taught many times had been destroyed somehow, and a new one was built right on the same site, on the same foundations, with the same dimensions. The walls of the new one fell down years ago, but you could see where they were and I got to walk on the actual stone floor of the second synagogue, built right on top of the stones where Jesus taught. That was awesome. So when I read this story, I was there. I stood where Jesus stood.
Do you know what happened when he taught in Capernaum? Did they run him out of town, too? Let’s find out. Open your pew Bibles to page 62 in the New Testament section. And Lil will come and read it for us. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.
31 He went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and was teaching them on the sabbath. 32 They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. 33 In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 `Let us alone! 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.' 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, `Be silent, and come out of him!' When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. 36 They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, `What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!' 37 And a report about him began to reach every place in the region."
Every part of Luke’s gospel has a purpose. Step by step he’s telling us what we need to know about Jesus. What do we learn about Jesus in this story? What was it about his teaching that caught people’s attention about Jesus? He spoke with authority.
Uh-oh, did you say a bad word in church, ‘authority’? Isn’t authority the word for parents who stifle their children’s individuality? Wasn’t it the king’s authority that we Americans rebelled against when we broke from England, so that we could be free? Isn’t it authority that has blocked opportunities for new ideas in science and the arts? Isn’t authority what regressive control freaks resort to?
Aren’t modern folks supposed to reject authority? You think what you want and I’ll think what I want and we’ll just leave it at that. Authority is so old, so authoritarian.
But the Bible says that Jesus spoke with authority. Jesus was not one of those teachers who says that one guy says this and another says that and you take your pick. It doesn’t matter. Jesus spoke the truth and it really mattered.
And he really claimed a lot of authority. He told his home synagogue in Nazareth that he was the fulfillment of one of the most important Old Testament prophecies. That claims a lot of authority.
He told people that their sins were forgiven. And some of those who were listening said, wait a minute, only God can do that. And they were right. Jesus was acting like God. And do you know why he was acting like God? He was God.
When a storm was about to sink their boat on the Sea of Galilee he just stood up and told the storm to stop, and it stopped. His disciples said, whoa, who is this guy?
One day when people were after him over the authority he took he said something that really ticked them off. He was talking about Abraham, and they said, ‘Yeah right, Abraham lived centuries ago; what do you know about Abraham?’ And Jesus said the strangest thing. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Now that’s very strange English. “Was” is past tense. “I am” is present tense. You’re not supposed to mix tenses like that. What was he saying? One thing he was saying was that he existed before Abraham did. None of us here can claim that. And where have you heard the expression “I am” before? When Moses met God in the burning bush, Moses asked, who are you, when I go tell my family about this, who should I tell them spoke to me? What’s your name? And God said, “Tell them I AM sent you.” When Jesus used that name, “I AM”, some of the people there picked up stones right on the spot to stone him to death for blasphemy. They knew he was claiming to be God. Jesus spoke with authority!
You often hear people say that they believe that Jesus lived and they believe his teachings, but they don’t accept any of that Jesus was God stuff. And when I hear that I want to say, “Then you haven’t read him for yourself?” His teachings all point to him. His teachings assume a kind of authority that no sane human being ought to claim.”
And of course there are always people with inflated egos or mental illness, who shoot off their mouths. But you don’t have to listen to them very long and you can see that their credibility is about zero. They have no authority. Jesus had authority. You just knew you had to take him seriously.
And this is a very important lesson for United Methodist in the early years of the 21st century.
Somebody once said, “Ask a Catholic a religious question and they’re likely to say, ‘The pope says…’ Ask a Lutheran and they may well say, ‘Luther said…’ Ask a Baptist and they’ll say, ‘The Bible says…’ (Good for them!) Ask a United Methodist and they’ll say, ‘Well I think…’”
I fear that sometimes we have gone so far to be open minded and accepting of anything that we have forgotten that we are dealing with the God who created all things, who knows us inside and out, who stands above the foolish prejudices and fears and self-indulgences of us humans, the God who will judge us at the end of time. Jesus spoke with authority. This is someone we need to take very seriously.
We have our advertising campaign with the slogan, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.” And that’s a very important message to say to the world. Come on! Your life may be a mess. You may not understand much of the gospel. You may be a different race or culture from us, you may dress differently from us, but come on, get started. We’ll open our hearts to you as a person. We’ll open our minds to you to listen to the things that matter to you and share with you what we’ve learned. And our doors are really open. Come in and join us. We don’t care where you are when you start.
But we’ll love you enough to care a lot about where you end up. We want you to know our Jesus. We’re firm on that. You need Jesus. There’s no one else like him. You need to take him seriously.
When Jesus taught in the synagogue in Capernaum, this time it seems that most of the people listened to him. They even went out and told their friends. That was very different from the reception he had back in Nazareth.
But there was a voice that reacted to his authority. Luke calls it a man with an unclean demon. And this guy just couldn’t stand this kind of talk. He shouted out, right in the worship service, ‘Let us alone!’ Today he might have said, ‘Give us some space here,’ or ‘Back off, will you?’ You’ve got your way, I want to stick with mine.
There’s something in all of us that doesn’t like any authority except ourselves, something that refuses to submit to authority, that always wants to keep our own hands on the wheel and our own foot on the gas pedal.
And I wonder if this guy had sat quietly through hundreds of synagogue services where different teachers had laid out different options for ways of thinking. Here are what the four best selling Rabbis of this month say about when the Messiah is going to come. Some experts say this and some experts say that. And he was fine with that. It didn’t upset him. He felt like he had done his religious duty by listening to it. But he had forgotten it all by supper time.
Maybe he had sat through a lot of services that warmed your heart with cutesy, feel good stories. That was fine.
Maybe he had sat through a lot of services with things like 4 easy steps to improve your self-esteem. He might have even tried one of them.
But on this day he realized that he was being called to submit his heart and his very life to God. That was new. And when that finally sank in, it scared him. He didn’t like it at all. When you got down to the bottom line, he was a slave to his own independence from God, which is the very essence of the devil, anything but submit to God. And so there was this big wall between him and God.
And then Jesus said the word, and the devil was gone and he was free. Only Jesus had the authority to do that.
And this is an issue that every one of us needs to face. When push comes to shove, who’s going to be in charge of my life? Will it be me, with my fears, my indulgences, my limited experience and wisdom?
Or will it be God, who created all things, who loves me better than I love myself, who understands the full wonder of his creation and how it is meant to be.
Jesus speaks with authority to us, today. We can fight it and push him away. But we won’t properly understand him until we honor him as Lord of our lives, until we bow our hearts before him. AMEN
