A Sermon on Mark 1:21-28

Preached February 2, 2003

By Donald M. Tuttle

First Christian Church, Corpus Christi, TX

Tuesday night many of you probably did as we did—sat in front of the television to watch President Bush’s State of the Union Address. Generally, the consensus seemed that it was a good speech. Maybe not as good as those delivered following 9/11, or even last year’s State of the Union Address, but most commentators seemed impressed. It was rhetorically and substantively solid—and this from a man many have dismissed as inarticulate and dumb. Whether one agrees with President Bush or not, one would, I think, have to say he spoke with authority.

Our experience of that speech gives us some clue as to what took place so long ago in Capernaum. It was the Sabbath, the Holy Day, and the men of the town gathered in the synagogue. There they offered up their prayers. There they would hear readings from the Law and the prophets and have them explained by a learned member of the assembly.

But this day was different. There was a visitor to Capernaum, a man named Jesus, one who apparently had a reputation as an expert in the Scriptures. So, as often was the case, the distinguished guest was asked to give the message, to comment on the readings. And he did. We don’t know what passages of Scripture were read that day. And we don’t know what Jesus said. All Mark tells us is the people’s response. They were "astounded." They were amazed. They were astonished at what they saw and heard.

But what did they find so astounding?

Mark says that it was the fact that he spoke with authority, and not like the scribes.

I can understand that. A few years ago I attended a preaching conference in Louisville, Kentucky. There were several notable scholars there, each teaching or preaching during the course of the week. They were all interested in one way or another, but many of them verbally footnoted their lessons or sermons. Each statement they made referenced some other scholar or work or each claim was carefully nuanced so as to make the most minute distinctions. As I said, it was interesting, even helpful. But the highlight of the week was James Forbes, the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City. While a scholar of note, he is a preacher without peer. And when he spoke, he spoke powerfully. There was no equivocation. There was no outlining of multiple possibilities. There was not reading of long quotes from great scholars to make his point. He spoke with authority. He spoke in a way that said, "I’m right, and you know it."

Maybe that is what astounded those folk in Capernaum. Maybe it was a product of the way Jesus spoke, the style that he brought to the synagogue that day.

But it also might have come not from how he taught but what he taught. That seems to be the suggestion in verse 27. It says the people were amazed and kept asking among themselves about it. They even said it was a "new" teaching.

That’s not hard to imagine, is it?

Although Mark doesn’t give us a lot of what Jesus taught, Matthew’s Gospel suggests it could be quite radical—even shocking. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus runs through a series of teachings that would raise eyebrows. Although he said, "Blessed" are the poor, the grieving, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, most folks wouldn’t think so. His declaration that people were to be more righteous than the Pharisees or that it was not just wrong to kill but to be angry, not just commit adultery but to lust would certainly leave people astonished. They could certainly call such statements, "A new teaching."

Still, new teachings emerge all the time. I’m sure that they had heard others say things that were new or original, yet I don’t think they responded in the same way. No, I suspect that there was something more at work here than either what Jesus said or how he said it. But what?

Maybe it was what drew us to the television set Tuesday night. Most any speech teacher or amateur thespian could have delivered the State of the Union speech as well as President Bush did. His spokesman or any member of his cabinet could have shared with us the same information that he shared. Yet what prompted millions of us to watch was not what was being said or how it was being said. What prompted us to watch was "who" was saying it. By virtue of who he is—by virtue of the fact that he is the president—he speaks with an authority like no other.

And that’s what left them amazed in Capernaum. Oh, the people didn’t realize it. They didn’t quite understand the authority by which he spoke. But the demons did. That’s why when they heard Jesus, they responded with fear. "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? We know who you are—the Holy One of God."

The demons knew that this was not just Jesus, son of Joseph; this was Jesus, Son of God. They knew that he was not just a fine teacher or a distinguished rabbi. They knew he was the Word made flesh, the wisdom of God in human form. While the people didn’t understand, the demons knew the source of Jesus’ authority. They knew who he was. His authority rested in the fact that he was God.

There is a strange irony in the lives of many Christians today. On the one hand, many in the church are frustrated by the failure of so many people to follow the teachings of Jesus. We want more than anything else for people to love one another, to love and pray for even their enemies. We want people to serve others, to humbly express the concern that Christ embodied. We want people to share the faith, to open the doors of life to those around them.

Yet on the other hand, many of those who most desperately want Jesus to be our moral and ethical model dismiss the one fact that makes him authoritative. And that is his divinity. Recently I was visiting with some colleagues. We were talking about the faith. One offered that when he is worshipping in churches that recite The Apostles’ Creed he can’t bring himself to say, "and on the third day he rose from the dead." Another volunteered that he balks at "conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary." Between them they dismissed the Incarnation and the Resurrection. They dismissed the very foundations on which Jesus’ authority rests. And in so doing they reduce him to just another guy with good ideas. And if that’s the case, we might as well be disciples of Freud, Gandhi, Marx or Dr. Phil.

Today’s Gospel reading challenges us to give Jesus his due—to recognize that he is more than what the folk in Capernaum and maybe the folk around us believe. He speaks with authority because he is no less than the Holy One of God. Recognizing and acknowledging that changes lives.

It did for Daniel Fried. He was a graduate student when he wrote of his conversion form Judaism to Christianity. Of course, the most significant affirmation that one must make in such a change is in one’s understanding of Jesus. No longer could Jesus just be a wise teacher or rabbi. No longer was he merely a prophet like those of old. Fried recognized him as the Son of the Living God, the Messiah for which he had long waited. And that meant what Jesus had to say, how Jesus taught us to live, was authoritative. As Fried put it:

If you believe the Creator of the Universe cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, it gives you a new terror at the clear-cutting of the rain forests. If you believe that God loves all people, it gives you a new hatred of racism in yourself and in society.

Because of who Jesus is, because he is the Holy One of God, Fried’s life and world changed. He now lives under the authority of all that Jesus said and did.

One doesn’t have to be converted from another faith to do as Fried did. Christ calls all of us—even those who gather regularly in his name—to such a conversion, to the recognition and acknowledgement that we cannot become what God intends us to be, we cannot experience the abundant life that he offers, until we acknowledge fully the authority of Jesus as Lord of our lives. Amen.