Feb.1, 2015FUMCHSQuestioning Authority! By Rev. Michael Mattox
Rev. Barbara Lundblad, Lutheran pastor and seminary professor in NYC, even a frequent guest preacher at UMW events world-wide, tells about a friend of hers who paraded around everywhere with her back pack slung over her shoulder. But, this was no ordinary backpack. Over the years it had become a sort of canvas-billboard, covered with buttons and lapel-pins advertising all kinds of causes and movements, many of them controversial. Lundblad admitted that sometimes she even feared for her friend’s safety, riding on NYC subways. “What if somebody read one of those lapel pins stuck to her backpack and got so annoyed with her that they just took a slug at her?”
I’ve known people like that… (the button-carrying ones—and the one’s who’d just as soon slug you) those I’ve known show up at church meetings with their car covered with so many bumper stickers it appears the vehicle itself is almost held together with them! Remember some of those slogans? One from the 60’s (the era of Martin Luther King, Jr. John & Bobby Kennedy, Joan Biaz, and Barry Goldwater) was “QUESTION AUTHORITY!”
Yes, question authority, question everything. When 18 year-old young men were being drafted and shipped off to Vietnam without even having the right to vote until they were 21, question such authority…question the status quo. And many did… and some changes took place. 18-year olds finally won the right to vote. The US got out of Vietnam. Women got much more involved in the American Political Scene. Civil rights and human rights became more and more prevalent in the American conversation.
Look at Jesus in Capernaum. Apparently, this notion of authority was very much on the minds of the people of this town that Jesus sort of “adopted” after he had grown up and left Nazareth. Well who wouldn’t want to end up there, out from the clutches of your mom and dad? A town near the sea. Mountains close by. Large enough to offer entertainment, far enough away from where you grew up that no one would know everything you did immediately. But that was if you had enough money for partying. I suppose it helped that, according to some stories, Jesus just hung out with Peter and his wife there in Peter’s house—not really paying rent, just staying overnight (for an extended time). This was such a big deal and widely-believed, so much so that, excavations of just such a house from 1st Century Capernaum reveal what is so often the case now when we “discover” such an archeological find—we write on the walls! “Jesus slept here!” and other such stuff literally inscribed on the walls of that ancient house.
25 years ago, I visited Capernaum; saw that odd synagogue built with unusual rock, glad to have a warm trench coat on that winter day. A funny sight we were, I’m sure… 20 Methodist preachers meandering around the site of that old synagogue, trying to “get a pictue”of what Jesus might have encountered when he stood near that very place and preached.
Mark lets us see the picture he saw, and it wasn’t pleasant. Trying his best to preach a decent sermon in the synagogue, he is very rudely interrupted by a man screaming at the top of his lungs! Where in God’s name were the ushers that day? Were they outside smoking a cigarette? If that were to happen here, don’t you think Craig Keaton or Brad Hudgens and their teams of able minded ushers would rise to the occasion and “take care of things?” And if they didn’t then surely the security guards or maybe the new invitational evangelism team headed by Dr. Peggy Woodall would!
But Jesus doesn’t need bodyguards. That’s not at all the way he dealt with threats or danger. That’s not how he dealt with people. That’s not how he dealt with interruptions. Not Jesus. You see, all the folks in Capernaum had been talking about this Jesus of Nazareth who had sort-of moved in over at Peter and Mrs. Peter’s house. I suppose Peter’s wife had hosted parties and people gathered around to listen to him teach until, finally, someone must have said, “Why don’t you just come on over to synagogue this coming Friday night and speak there?” It was amazing, really, what he had to say. It seemed so real, so genuine. Instead of quoting and citing… “…according to X who told Y who told Z,” Jesus just spoke from the heart, I guess, as we like to say here in the south—and so, they remarked to each other, “My, what a good speaker!" He speaks with such authority, not like those scribes who’ve been to seminary over in Jerusalem!” And, I guess that’s why this man, screaming at the top of his lungs, annoyed them so.
WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US? JESUS OF NAZARETH! HAVE
YOU COME TO DESTROY US? …..I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, HOLY
ONE OF GOD!
You see, I believe they all knew about this poor soul; they’d seen him around town before, but Jesus hadn’t seen him. Remember…this is just his “adopted” town, he’s not really one of the locals yet—that takes a while, sometimes a long while. So, instantly, Jesus has to deal with something that they’ve seen for years, maybe even generations to deal with—and had done nothing about it. Jesus, on the other hand, engages the man immediately and sees the bondage that cripples him, speaks to his multiple personalities, and sets him free.
And, as I said earlier, they gather still closer, up to the very front of the synagogue where Jesus and the liberated man stand, and continue listening to Jesus’ teaching! No one puts up his hand and says, “What was that you just did to this troubled man?” No one says, “Excuse me sir, would this be considered a healing or an exorcism?” No one asks, “Was this a miracle or not?” No one says any such thing! Maybe they watched what happened when the poor troubled soul interrupted Jesus in that particular synagogue in Capernaum and decided they’d just keep their mouths shut! And maybe, just maybe, they went back to listening to Jesus’ teaching, because, as you’ve already heard… it was really, really different. Such authority.
Later, during lunch they went back over it again and again in their minds and kept remarking to each other about such authority with which Jesus spoke and decided then and there to not question it!
It makes me wonder about our teaching today. Makes me wonder about what gets us talking? Sensationalism is very very real. Entertainment and spectacle-seeking is as big in the religious world as it is in the secular world. And, when you stop and think about it, we could spend all day tracking the latest, juiciest, and most spectacular story. We could even spend most of our time inventing spectacles! But, at the end of the day, would our teaching astound others so much that they would say, “My… what authority, what genuineness those people have!” If truth be told, everything we do and say, especially in this day and time, is questioned anyway! Our programming, our advertising, our buildings, our future plans, our mission, and our vision. And maybe that’s how it should be. But oh to be carriers of a message like Jesus’ Capernaum message that is so clear, so compassionate, and so full of authority that people would focus on nothing else. In our age that seems to be on super-steroids when it comes to information… that it’s even dubbed “The Information Age” what a gift that would be to our world.