Psalm 111, Deuteronomy 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1b-13, Mark 1:21-28
Speaking with Authority
Today’s Gospel lesson shows us a remarkable fulfillment of a prophecy contained in the lesson appointed for today from the Old Testament. Mark does not directly link the two passages, but it is virtually certain that the people who heard Jesus that day when he taught in the synagogue – those people made the connection. Messianic expectation was running very high at this time in Israel’s history, and that expectation looked forward to several ideals of the Messiah. We can see this, for example, in the questions which the religious leadership in Jerusalem put to John the Baptist, such as we find in John chapter 1:
“ … the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ 21 And they asked him, ’What then? Are you Elijah? ’
He said, ‘I am not. ’ ‘Are you the Prophet? ’ And he answered, ‘No. ’ ”
You see, there were a lot of people running around in Palestine during that time, making veiled claims to be the Messiah, or sometimes open claims to be the Messiah. Jesus warned his own disciples about these people. And, so the religious authorities in Jerusalem had something like a Messiah Confirmation Commission which would go out and investigate people who were gaining something like a Messianic reputation. We see them sparring with Jesus in all four gospels.
But, they were, evidently, not present on the day which Mark records early in Jesus’ ministry, when he and his disciples went into the synagogue in Capernaum one Sabbath, and Jesus was given one or more of the passages in their lectionary on which he was expected to make comments.
What Jesus said and did on that occasion sparked a furor among those who were present, because they had never seen or heard anything like this in all their synagogue-attending days. Two things happened which cemented in the people’s minds a conviction about Jesus: he had real authority to speak for God. Let us turn out attention to what prompted those in the synagogue that day to recognize this.
Mark tells us straight away that the people in the synagogue “… were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
The scribes, of course, were the primary teaching authorities in Israel at this time, and it is ironic to refer to them as teaching authorities, because they never taught with authority – as the people in the synagogue understand. When they were doing the Jewish equivalent of spiritual education in the synagogues, the scribes laid out for the people a long litany of opinions of various rabbis who had established themselves as experts on the Law of Moses and the Prophets. What you would hear from the Scribes would be a reading from the OT scriptures, and then something like this:
“Rabbi Jose says this ….” and then he’d give Rabbi Jose’s comments on the passage. And, then he’d say, “But, Rabbi Hillel says that …” And then you’d hear what Rabbi Hillel said about the verses in the lectionary. And, then he’d continue “But Rabbi Shammai says that …” And, so it would go. I’m not sure what the people in the synagogue were supposed to do with presentations like that. I think some of them must have responded as I saw some of my seminary friends respond when they first hit serious academic research in some of their Bible courses.
I want to say at the outset that consulting teachers of God’s word over the past centuries is never a bad thing to do. But when you do this, there are two dangers you face.
First of all, you may find a bewildering number of different opinions, all of them argued very persuasively, by scores of different teachers. And this will lead the green student of theology to throw up his hands in despair and think, “It’s hopeless! How can I judge all this scholarship and figure out what the text is really saying?” I saw some of my fellow students’ faith come near to ship-wreck as they were preparing a term paper for a course in theology or in a course on some book of the Bible.
The second danger you face when consulting all the teachers of the past is to miss the forest for the trees. In this case, the forest is the Scripture itself, and while the Scriptures may contain ideas or statements which are difficult to understand, it would be a huge mistake to overlook what is plain and obvious in the Bible because you are fixated on a riddle which you cannot puzzle out.
That’s what the Scribes did, to judge by the writings that have come down to us of their teachings. But, Jesus didn’t teach like this. Mark says he taught as one with authority, not as the scribes. If you want to get an idea of what this was like, look at the Sermon on the Mount. in Matthew 5: Consider this, for example, when Jesus says:
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.
There is no Rabbi X says this, and Rabbi Y says that, and Rabbi Z says something else. Jesus hews very close to the Biblical text presses his audience to consider the full implications of that text.
That is why people who were familiar with what we read for the OT lesson for today likely thought of it when they heard Jesus teaching. It was not only his style – and I really don’t think style has anything to do with this – rather, it was how Jesus spoke with God’s authority. Remember that God said this to Moses:
18 I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.
That’s what the people in the synagogue heard. They had heard the words of God in the Scriptures. And now here was someone speaking God said later prophets after Moses would speak. Indeed, the expectation of Messiah is that he would be like Moses, or Elijah – like them in this respect: through them God would speak to his people.
But, something else happened during that synagogue visit. Not only did the people hear teacher that made them immediately think of the great prophets of the Old Testament, someone else heard and recognized who Jesus was. Mark tells us there was a man in the congregation who had an unclean spirit residing in him. This demon understood immediately who this was – “What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”
Mark doesn’t tell us what the man was doing there in the synagogue, but the implication seems to be that his deplorable spiritual condition was quite well known to those in the congregation. In any event, Jesus silences him with a command, and next he commands the demon to depart from the fellow he is controlling. And, after some fireworks – convulsions and screaming – the demon came out of the man.
This, again, was evidence that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Not only was the coming Messiah expected to be like Moses, but he was expected to be like David. Jewish exorcists in those days did their work by means of very long, complicated, and tedious rituals, which sometimes worked, and sometimes did not work. But, King David was well known to have had such power over demons that he could simply sing a psalm and play his lyre and the demon would depart. Here is Jesus, then, simply commanding the demon, and he departs. It is no wonder, then, that Mark concludes this episode with these words: “And immediately His fame spread throughout all the region around Galilee.”
There are two applications for us from this passage, one of them having to do with teachers of God’s Word, and another having to do with those who hear. Preachers and teachers today are not Jesus, but I have heard some who act as if they are, or whose manner in a pulpit is supposed to evoke the
idea of “authority” in the ears of the listeners.
Rhetorical styles vary from preacher to preacher, of course, but they are far from being the decisive factor. Jonathan Edwards, whose sermons sparked the First Great Awakening, read those sermons in a monotone, rarely looking up from the page on which he had written out what he was reading. The results, however, were extraordinary. People cried out in anguish of conscience, others fainted in their pews. To judge by some of the accounts, you’d have wondered if perhaps someone outside had been burning weeds that contained psychedelic toxins and the smoke had gotten into the church house. One could rightly have said about Jonathan Edwards that he taught with authority, and not as the scribes. How, then, does this happen?
I think the answer is best described in a description of this kind of preaching given by Dr. Hutchens in a comment he posted to a blog for Touchstone magazine [http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/06/encomium_iacobo.html] a comment in which he was describing the pulpit ministry of his own pastor:
“He studies the scripture passage upon which he is preaching … yet he avoids speculation or romanticizing. Because he is wary of speculation and respectful of the Great Tradition, his preaching is remarkably surefooted and catholic. In the years I have heard him, only one or two sermons would not have been suitable for any orthodox congregation of the Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox traditions, because all these traditions regard the scriptures as authoritative, and the closer one adheres to them in preaching, using scripture to explain and interpret scripture, the more universally Christian the preaching becomes. Those who read the public discourses of Father Reardon, or have had the good fortune of hearing him preach at his parish in Chicago, will find exactly the same thing in his work. In fact, this is what defines good preaching wherever it is found.”
It won’t do simply to mention the name of Jesus a lot. In Acts 19, Luke tells us that “ … some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, ‘I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.’ … But the evil spirit answered them, ‘
‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?’ " Name dropping – even dropping Jesus’ name – doesn’t make for sound and solid preaching. We have the words of God in the Bible. The teacher who teaches with God’s authority still does so because – as Dr. Hutchens said – he adheres closely to the Scriptures, using scripture to explain and interpret scripture, and by this his words are infused with the authority of the God who spoke those words into history.
The second thing I would say to you – and to myself – is what God said to Moses about the prophets whom God would send after Moses, including that Great Prophet, his own son.
“19 And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him.”
Said another way, if the prophet is speaking God’s Word, it is no excuse to the one who refuses to hear that word that it was a mere man who spoke. That is why the Apostle Paul, an Apostle of this same Jesus Christ, can write these words to the arrogant in the Church of Corinth[1 Cor. 14:37]: If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.
God grant us to be among those Jesus spoke about when he said [John 16:27ff] “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
