Authority

The gospel text for this coming Sunday is Mark 1:21-28. The story is about the visit Jesus made to the synagogue in Capernaum, including an exorcism. Mark introduces his frequent reminder that Jesus is determined to control His identity by telling us that Jesus told the demon, “Be quiet!”

As interesting as the whole idea of demons, possession, and exorcism is, what interests me even more is the impact Jesus had on people – even people who were not particularly prone to be overly impressed with Him. Before the demon story is ever told, Mark tells us, “they were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (1:22)

In his recently released translation of the New Testament – The Kingdom New Testament – N.T. Wright translates that phrase like this: “They were astonished at his teaching. He wasn’t like the legal teachers; he said things on his own authority.”

So who were these legal teachers or scribes? At least at some level, they were teachers in Israel who were prone to say something like “this text means this, because some rabbi said it means that.” Really good ones might be able to go back a generation or two in noting what others had said about the text.

On the other hand, Jesus just stands up and teaches! And the end result of that is “they were amazed.” The word Mark uses appears only 13 times in the New Testament, primarily in the gospels and primarily to describe the reaction of people to Jesus’ teachings. Gospel writers typically use a different word (see 1:27) to describe the response to His miracles. Mark’s word literally means something like “to strike out of one’s senses.” At some level, it suggests a kind of amazement that overwhelms.

Most often that idea is describing His teaching, not His miracles. (Matthew describes the response to the Sermon on the Mount with the very same word.)
While I recognize that none of us who preach and teach in the kingdom of God are given the same kind of authority as Jesus had, I still think there may be a lesson here for us. The contrast this word often sets up may be as simple as Jesus appeared to know what He was talking about and the scribes knew what others were talking about and made it their own.

The challenge for preachers and teachers in our age is that it is so easy to find what someone else has said about a text and pretend as though it is our own. One can randomly pick about any text he or she wants, do a Google search, and probably find something we’re willing to say. The problem with that is that even if we find something “right,” it isn’t ours and it often sounds like “it isn’t ours.”

Interestingly, this story in Mark comes shortly after Mark’s brief mention of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. (1:12,13) That was a time when, to get to the heart of it all, Jesus had to decide whether or not he would be the kind of Messiah God sent Him to be, or the one religious people wanted – the razzle-dazzle, miracle a day keeps the devil away kind of Messiah.

Could it be that the forty day trial in which Jesus had to determine His commitment to mission was the foundation upon which a kind of authority that overwhelmed His listeners was built?

Obviously there is a place for listening to what others have said about Scripture. But that place, whatever it is, can never replace our own wrestling with the text of Scripture to the point that it becomes a part of who we are. Only then can the Word of God exhibit its authority in our preaching and teaching in a way that overwhelms.

Somehow I don’t think Jesus would have downloaded His sermons from an internet site He found by using Google. When we do that, we sound much more like scribes than Jesus! No wonder the church struggles in our day with its own identity. Wrestling with the text allows us to at least sound like we know what we’re talking about – and that’s not a bad thing.