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Sermons
Jan 29, 2012
The scripture readings for today are about authority, what makes it legitimate and how to avoid its abuse. The passage from Deuteronomy is part of Moses’ farewell speech to the people, saying that when he dies God will raise up another prophet to guide them. They can’t stand to hear directly from God; the power of God’s voice would burn them right up, so God will speak through the prophet and they have to listen to the prophet as if he were God himself. False prophets will die. You don’t play around with the authority that is bestowed by God.
The letter to the Corinthians discusses the implicit authority we all carry in the community of faith, and points out that whether we intend it or not, we’re always setting an example to others. We may be terribly enlightened and sophisticated and able to see that certain regulations about conduct are really beside the point, but we should remember that others for whom the regulations are helpful may see us disregarding them and actually be damaged. It’s sort of like deciding not to watch violence or sexual exploitation on TV when small children are around; you may be equipped to dismiss it as vulgar and stupid, but they will see it as a glamorous way that grownups act. So don’t let your liberty become a stumbling block to the weak, Paul says.
The most interesting treatment of authority, though, is from Mark’s gospel, which gives us a story within a story today. Jesus went on the Sabbath to the synagogue and taught, and we don’t know what he said but people were astounded because he taught with authority, unlike the scribes. Then a man possessed by an evil spirit identified him as the Holy One of God and protested against him, and Jesus cast out the evil spirit. Then the other members of the synagogue were still more amazed, and said to each other, “A new teaching—with authority!” And his fame spread.
Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus was saying with all that authority? It reminds me of a story about Jimmy Carter, who went to some kind of state dinner in Japan and made a few formal remarks. He started with a little joke, and his interpreter interpreted it, and everybody laughed, and Carter was gratified. Then after the dinner a friend who spoke Japanese told him that the interpreter had said, “President Carter has now told a funny story and everybody should laugh.” Only the Japanese would be too polite to stop the interpreter and make him actually tell the funny story. But I guess Mark doesn’t think it’s important what Jesus said; you had to be there. What’s important is that people reacted with astonishment, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the preachers.
We all know how to react to the preachers. All of us preachers have certain well-worn ruts we fall into, and even when we try to exercise some care we still tip back into them, and our congregations know what we’re going to say before we even say it. We even know what other people are going to say before they say it. Last week in adult Sunday School Pat said very clearly that church is a place where she can pursue really hard questions to which there are not obvious or easy answers, and our visitor Tony heard her say that church was a place she could come for comfort and security. He’s just heard that so many times that he assumed that was what Pat was going to say too. Apparently Jesus said something truly astonishing, that woke everybody up. It was not what they were pre-programmed to hear, and it was not what their experts had told them they would hear at synagogue. And Mark does not say that everybody loved it; he just says that they were astonished.
The people were astonished, and the unclean spirit accused Jesus of having come in order to destroy them. You will understand if my first thought, logically enough, is of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort Kali, who also come to destroy. Kali in particular is quite the destroyer; apparently she goes into some kind of blood lust frenzy and has to be restrained sometimes. She has wild hair and her tongue sticks out and she’s about as scary as they come. In fact, in the instructional documentary I like to show to my class, the host asks his guide who his god is, and the guide says Kali, and the host says, Oh, she’s really fierce, isn’t she, and the guide says, “She is quite terrific. She is terrific against evil.” Shiva, too, is the destroyer, and he sometimes dresses in a tiger’s skin. BUT he carries a snake, and why is that? Because he destroys in order to make way for new life, the way a snake sheds its skin to allow its new and better skin to come to the surface. Shiva is not only the god of destruction; he is also the fertility god.
Jesus did come to destroy. His teachings were startling and disturbing because they did not tread the well-worn paths of theology that the scribes recited every week, and people who heard his teachings didn’t know how to take them. There was no interpreter to say, “That was a joke; you should laugh now.” They had to hear them and figure it out on the spot, and they may not have been sure whether they were going to like what they heard or not. The unclean spirit really spoke for all of them; Jesus had come to destroy the echo chamber and the walls that kept everybody in their place and the filter through which they heard the word of God. He had come to destroy the world as they knew it so that it could be reborn. That doesn’t necessarily look like good news right away on a Friday evening in Capernaum.
Maybe Mark deliberately left out the content of Jesus’ teaching so that we would have to focus on the dynamic of being astonished and confused. Maybe if he told us what Jesus said it would become old and stale and familiar, like the story of the Prodigal Son which is so counterintuitive and offensive and astonishing but we know it so well now that we only hear a cliché. Maybe we’re supposed to think about being astonished and confused at authority. Indulge me in another little Hindu excursus: a folk tale tells about a king who loved flowers and kept them in pots around the palace. One day a servant accidentally broke a flower pot so the king sentenced him to death. The servant begged for mercy, and the king decided that if anybody could put the pot back the way it had been, he would spare the servant’s life.
So a wise man came to town, and he said he would undertake this project. He picked up a stick and systematically broke all the remaining flower pots. The king was astonished, then furious, and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” The wise man said, “I have just saved the lives of a dozen more poor servants who would eventually have broken these flower pots and been sentenced to die.” The king was even more infuriated by the sage’s insolence, and demanded that he be tied up on the floor and trampled by an elephant. But when the elephant came, the sage was quite calm, and chanted, Hum, the Lord Shiva is in the elephant, the Lord Shiva is in all the people watching, the Lord Shiva is in the king. And the elephant refused to trample him. Finally the king gave up, sent the elephant away, and asked the wise man what was up. The wise man said that when he turned his mind to the fact—the reality—that God was in all those different beings, and that they themselves all expressed the holy, he was filled with love. Apparently the elephant perceived their oneness, and was also filled with love and wouldn’t trample the saint. And the king finally understood how foolish he’d been and forgave the servant and went off to be a wandering monk.
This is a story about being astonished and confused and not terribly pleased at the action that somebody takes. And it’s a story about somebody acting with authority—breaking the flowerpots, talking back to the king, submitting calmly to the prospect of being trampled by an elephant—because he knows he’s right. He is presenting the truth to the king, and he knows it’s true. AND it’s a story about coming to new life by having the old categories and perceptions violated, broken apart—by being astonished.
The question of what we’re doing at Pine Ridge has come up twice in entirely unrelated conversations in the last week. We’re never entirely comfortable with our relationship there; it’s always sort of the best we can figure out but not quite right, because we have concerns about acting like sugar daddies, concerns about whether we’re enabling dependency; we have an aging and dwindling contingent of people who go there; we haven’t developed any significant relationship with the children there. I’m more confused than astonished, I have to say, and I’d welcome a teaching with authority. But I wonder if it’s time to take a fresh look at what we’re doing at Pine Ridge, just because it’s sort of settled into this default setting and I’m not sure I can say why we do it or if we’d do it if we hadn’t already been doing it for so long. That’s just an example that’s on my mind, which is why I want to have this conversation after church, but my larger point is that in this season of Epiphany we’re being told to pay attention to that which confuses us and even puts us off. What’s astonishing, confusing, sort of attracting/repelling you? It’s time to pay attention.
Holy God, you gather the whole universe
into your radiant presence
and continually reveal your Son as our Savior.
Bring healing to all wounds,
make whole all that is broken,
speak truth to all illusion,
and shed light in every darkness,
that all creation will see your glory and know your Christ. Amen.
Why yes, the pastor does seem to be getting tired of posting her sermons on time, doesn't she?
Jan 1 2012