What Iver Happened to Authority
Mark 1:14-22
Janaury 26, 1969

tt seems that we are spending more and more time recantly reminiscing
about the "good old days". And the topic of these nostalgic reminiscences
seens always to have something to do with authority. As we look back ~— even
to the recent past ~ we recall a feeling of safety, security and stability.
Authority was respected. Children obeyed their parents; students obeyed
their teachers; the people respected the police and the courts; the world
respected America; and everybody respected the church.

Of course, there is a certain favorable distortion that takes place
whenever we engage in this kind of reminiscence. Things were never cuite
that simple. And yet there can be no denying that we are, today, in a new
situation, and that authority is, in fact, under siege from several quarters.
Now before we look more deeply le+ me hasten to add that this siege of
authority may not be nearly so ominous as it appears. The radical right would
have us equate the questioning of aithority with the death throes of the
Republic. I would merely suggest at this point that quite the revorse nay
be truco; that it is a healthy, albcit painful, exercise for authority to
be questioned with the result that tric authority is finally established
and false authority unceremoniously thrown to the wind.

Im any case, this is where we ere. At no time in our history has
constituted civil authority in the form of government, law enforcement
agencies and the judicial structure beon less sure of itself,
less effective, or commanced less resneot. In the cities, on the campuses,
authority has yet to be established notwithstanding modern weaponry,
Nations] Guard invasions, police dogs and the strong talk of Governor
Reagan. It just hasn't worked. In fact, it appears that efforts in this
direction serve only to increase the ever-widening gap between those who
exercise authority and those who question the right to its legitimate
excercise.

Parents, since the days of Socrates, have bemoaned the disrespect of
children toward authority, In this sense the generation gap is rather old-
hat. dnd yet, here too, we are dealing with something new. This is different.
The old gap has noticeably widened. And, in fact, parental authority is not
what it used to be.

Probably the most significant illustration of the authority
crisis in which we find ourselves, however, has to do with the church.
lor a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church has been synonomous with
authority. The Church had and exercised a commonly accepted authority over
the lives, beliefs and behavior of its members. In relationship to the
world about it, the church claimed for itself a certain divinely ordained
authority to act, to influence and to wield power. That, too, has passed.
The liberal Protestant journal "The Christian Century" several months ago
was strongly critical of Pore Paul's encyclical on birth control, taling
it to task for its lack of realism and its failure to speak to the necds
of people and at the same time the mest importent single problem facing
the whole world. But in the very next issue, "The Century" called attontion
to the fact that thereally sicrificent thing about the Incyclical was
that priests were openly criticizing it, and Reman Catholics were openly
and consciously ignoring it. That is +e say, ecclosiastical authority
simply isn't what it used to be. Anc the Caristian Century was quick to
see that all churchly authority ‘“s at tha cane impasse. That is, it's
crumbling fast. What there was of the old authority, is no more, and sorie

mien

new basis, some new reconstruction of a hase for authority must be devised,
or we are all in serious trouble.

I believe part of the problem is an inherent suspicion of all authori ty
that is simply built-in to the American mentality. It has stood us in food
stead in days past. It was born in a revolution, expressed in a systen of
checks and balances, and nurtured in the evolution of Republican Democracy.
But it has its less noble expressions as well. A great American pastine
has always been stealing from the Government. Political slander and chioracter
assassination have been table talk in millions of homes. And long before the
hippies were calling the police "fascist pigs", millions of Americans wore
deviding and disdaining them in the presence of their children. How far is
it between the obscene gesture of the radical student and the quiet disdain
of his very respectable father? After all, our respect for the police
generally is mirrored in the fact inat a man can earn more money doing
almost anything elre.

All things considersd, then, I think + very clear that we are in the midst
of on authority crisis of the first magnitvde. Carl Sanburgs'words about the

Civil Yor era apply with equal precision tcdey: “Something is dying ond some-
thing is being born." \icre it will lead, culturally and politically, is
anyon's guess. But one thing is certein.. You and I and everone else who is

alive and functioning in i969 will inevitably influence the final course. By
what we do -- or don't do — new fcrms of authority will emerge to give structure
and statulity to our common life- is Christians this places a special res—
ponsibility on »us -- mainly because this whole matter of authority is very <?*
closely related to oar feith.

Individual authority is an extremely slippery concept. A man with a
gun has authority. As long as he has the gun and no one else does, he can
Make things happen the way he wants them to happen. That is authority based
on coercion ~ and it's easy enough to understand. But thereare those without
guns who have authority - and here difinitions become difficult. Some men have
it - others .“5 not, and it's not always easy to understand why. In fact a man
heave muthority for me — and leave you cold, and here we get into the nebulous
.rea of personal response to other people. For instance, there are political
figures who, for some of you, have authority, While for others of you these
same politicians have absolutely no personal authority at all.

Jesus of Nazareth was one man, who for some p-ople had authority. In
tect, from the very beginning this one was one of the more remarkable things
about him: he had authority. In the first chapter of the Gospel according to
liszk, inmediately after he had enlisted Andrew and Simon, James and John, he
went to the synagoguc at Caperniun and began to teach. Mark reports that the
peoplo there were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who
had authority, end not as the scribes. The same comment is found in Inke, ™®%
following his teaching in the Nazareth Synagogue: and in Matthew, at the con-
clusion of the Sermon on the Mount. Whatever individual authority is, Jesus
had it.

It's very significant that in each case the euthority of Jesus is con-
trasted with a lack of authority on *he part of the scrites. "The people wore
astonished because he taught with authority, not like the scribes." That's
significant because if anyone had authority in the culture of first contury
Judea, it should have been the scribes. They were the interpreters of the
religious law; scholarly men, their task was to apply the ancient, Ilosaic legal
code to the daily situations of life. They had going for thom the law itself
and the ontire tradition of the people of Isracl. When they spoke, poople should
have listened. So it is quite significant that it is these men with :hon the

——

authority of Jesus was contrasted.

Of course we read back into the New Testament our own belicfs and veelings
about Jesus. To see ~ twenty centuries later - He is the divine Son of God.

For us that is the base of his authority: He is Lord of all: He had all the
truth of God on His side. But His first century listeners certainly didn't
know that or belitve it. To them he wag just an itinerant teacher fron tho city
of ljazarcth. :

vo understand the full significance of this remarkable contrast, then,
wo must note that he had no religious credentials: the scribes did. Itc had no
ecclosiastical status: the scribes did. He had no power of influence with the
establishment: the scribes did. And yet he had authority; and the scribes did
not.

Why?

Jesus spoke from experience: that's why. The scribes based their teaching
and judgements on tradition. Jesus spoke out of the context of life itsclf.
When He taught E>» told stories people could understand; situations in which his
listonors had been involved. He posed questions they had asked and gavo answers
that were realistic. That is to say Jesus, was relevant: His teachings mot
poople where they were because they were coming from one who knew what life
was like for the common man. Jesus had this authority. But there was more.

It was an authority of love: deep, compassionate, personal corccrm for
people. They knew his reputation. He had defied tradition by stooping to lift
&@ prostitute from the gutter: He had compassion for the adultress, the leper,
the tex collector, the riff raff. The scribes did not. Or if they did, their
fcllings were well desguised in the costume of respectable peity. So he had
authority: when He talked about a man's social responsibility for his neighbor
the people knew exactly what he meant because he was living it daily. ‘To use
the cliche, "he practiced what He preached" and so He «had authority.

Minally, there was an authenticity about Him when He spoke. ‘hore was
nothing pompous or presumptious here. People responded because this was a
goniune man. George Arthor Buttrick has put it well: "People listened to Jesus,
and then said, That is what I have always known deep down, even though I have
no words to say it" (I.B. P336, Vol. VII) That's a perceptive commont. Every
so often it happens to me. Someone will put into words a feeling, an wnder-
standing, that is inside me, but which I've never been able to articulatc. And
when that happens, the person who makes it happen suddenly has authority for me.

there, is more, of course, Jesus had that quality «so much in the nows at
election time called charisma. He spoke - and a spark was kindled: people
listened. You can't put it down — but some men have it, and others do not.
But mainly His authority was based on his life experience, His leve and Ilis
hones authenticity. And it was for this that people were astonished.

-liow, it seems to me that this little exercise ought to be helping us with
our om concerns about authority. I+ seems to me that we ought to learn here
that parental authority based on either coercion or tradition isn't going to
bo very effective. To put it even more bluntly, if we expect childrcon to res-
our outhority 1)because we will punich them if they don't, or 2)because we are
parents and children ought to obey parents - are in for a rude awakoning. It
docsn't work - at least for long.

-And yet that is an extremely difficult lesson to learn. We wish it were
the other way. It would be so mich simpler if our homes could operate on the
samc basis as Marine "Boot Camp". But the homes in which I've observed real
authority ~ effective authority - are the homes in which love is so genuine
anyone can feel it; when parents honestly attempt to participate in the
thought —worlds of their children: where judicial decisions are not handed
down ccoremoniously, but gently, in love, and out of a mutual participation in

~d—

the complexities of life.

That's a hard lesson to learn: but it is even more difficult in tho area
of public authority. I have the notion that civil authority is respected when
it ic authentically responsive to the needs of people. That is to say ~ if the
polico in the ghetto have the image of an oppressive, occupying army ~ which in
fact they have - it is absurd to assume that their authority will be respected
simply because they have a badge on. It doesn't work. The people didn't res~
pect the scribes because of their office remember. Fortunatly there orc more
and more public adminstrators who are learning this conspicuous but difficult
lesson. The Police Department's that do their job most effectively on not
those. with the heaviest weaponry but those enlightened departments with a good
public relations and community action program. The cities where civil authority

is vospected are \hose in which the Mayors have walked the streets of ‘theo ghetto
and honestly attempte to speak and listen -- paeoges of grandly leislating from
City Tall. The Campuses that are p- aceful:a those on which authority is based
on the administration! sconspiceuus concern For the identity of its students,
whore adminstrations hayrc come ouv from behind their desks to talk with students
and to take their concerns seriovaly

Ueelesiastically, the ere hari lessea must be learned. For cen turics,
the authority of the Church -. or religion gonerally - has been based on coercion =
n the form of the fear of hcll — and tradition. Neither one gocs vory var today.

People are neither afraid of holl, nor mach impressed with ecclesiastical tradition.
John Calvin may have had a point, but most people today could care Joss.

,Chruch authority will be established when people see the Church loving
people. It's that simple. Church authority and influence will be effective
when tho gap closes between what we say on the one hand, and what we do on the
other. The Christian Faith will begin to speak with authority to the nocds of
the World, when the World observes the Church discarding any traditional’ status,
any ecclesiastical pomposity and gesting its hands dirty and bloody in tho suf—
fering of humanity.

liow about us? Who has authority for us. If it is not Jesus Christ, perhaps
somothing is missing. Perhaps we are not seeing or hearing clearly. fic had
authority, the Biblical writers note, and it was astonishing ~ not logical, but
surprising, remarkable.

Perhaps we suffer from over—exposure. Perhaps we've said the crced, and
sung the hymns and prayed the prayer so often that it's all very old hat.

Perhaps our persistant religiosity serves only to keep Jesus Christ at arms length,
and this deprives him of any authority in our lives.

If this is so, and I expect it is, perhaps we need nothing so much as’ a
now, uncluttered look at who he was and is: what He did and said. Yorthis same
Jesus who taught hemble men is the Lord of all creation. That is our faith.

This game one whose compassion was so commonly conspicuous is the cosmic Lord
of the whole universe. That is our faith. This same man who livdd. and died
2,000 years ago - is risen and alive and working in our midst and in ae world
+ reconcile and bind up and heal. That is our faith.

Stated matter - of - factly, that is astonishing. May this Lord, about
whom we so casually affirm these things, become the authority in our lives.

fren .