4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

          “What is this?  A new teaching with authority.”  We are told in the Gospel today that Jesus taught “as one having authority,” and yet this word, “authority,” is for many an ugly word.  For many it is synonymous with the corruption of power.  Perhaps for us as Americans this is a particularly loaded word because it is a part of our history to celebrate the toppling of authority.  We hold on to our revolutionary spirit.  Of course, it doesn’t help that some who wield authority, at least worldly authority, do not always command our respect.  But I think we have to get at this term, “authority,” as it is meant in this context.  After all, Jesus is no tyrant to be brought down, but the benevolent king and shepherd of our souls.

          So what is this “authority” that the people in the synagogue sense in Him?  Well, it can’t be the kind of authority that is based on age or experience, because Jesus has neither of these.  He would still be a relatively young man, at thirty, not like one of the old, weathered rabbis who had gained wisdom over many years. 

Nor would this authority have come from Jesus’ class or origins (at least as they were known).  After all, He was a carpenter’s son from the “backwater” town of Nazareth—of which Nathaniel would later say, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  Also, He was not of the priestly class; He was not born of the tribe of Levi from whom the temple priests were chosen, but of the tribe of Judah. 

And I don’t think it was just what He said or how He said it that gave Jesus such an air of authority that day.  Interestingly, Mark gives us no indication as to what Jesus said in the synagogue that so “astonished” His listeners.  It just says, “Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.”  And so, it must be more than what He said, or else surely it would be recounted for us here. 

And it can’t be that He was simply a good orator.  The people didn’t go away saying, “Wasn’t he an excellent speaker?”  Rather, they seemed to be amazed at Jesus Himself.  So, we begin to see that the things with which we normally associate authority do not apply in the case of Jesus.

          What, then, is this “authority” based on?  It is based, I think, on Jesus Himself, on His very Person.  He speaks “as one having authority” because He is sure of His identity as the beloved Son of the Father—made known in a marvelous way at His baptism in the Jordan.  He doesn’t have to pretend to be someone or something greater than He is in order to impress.  He is the Son of God.  In fact, this is a strong theme than runs throughout Mark’s Gospel, from the first words of the Gospel—“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God”—all the way to the words of the centurion at the crucifixion—“Truly this man was the Son of God!”  Jesus knows He is the Son of god, and it is from this “space” that He operates.  This isn’t cockiness or bravado but that kind of self-possession that comes from knowing who you are and from living out that identity authentically.

          But this is really only half of it.  The authority of Jesus comes not only from His rootedness in His identity as the Son of God, but also from the fact that He could identify in every way with this people.  Though He was the Son of God, He did not speak as one above them, but as one of them.  He had, after all, become “one of them” in the Incarnation—in His coming in the flesh.  Here we are reminded of the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians:  “Though He was in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness, and found human in appearance, He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”  Here we see that Jesus’ authority is in no way authoritarian.  Quite the opposite of self-aggrandizing, Jesus lowers Himself in order to raise us up.  And so, yes, Jesus is the Son of God, but He is also the “Son of Man,” the “Son of Mary.”  And this too is essential to His credibility.  Certainly, we know this from our own experience as well.  Unless we have a sense that someone really knows us and our experience, we naturally struggle to trust them.

          Jesus offers definitive proof of his “authority” when He is approached by the man with the unclean spirit.  Jesus has but to say the word and the demon is cast out.  This goes beyond even what was promised in our first reading when God said to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin, and will put my words into his mouth.”  In Jesus, it is not simply that He speaks the words that God puts into his mouth—as though He were only an oracle or mouthpiece—but His words are His own.  In fact, He Himself is the Word, as John’s Gospel puts it.  There is, in other words, perfect correspondence between what Jesus says and what He does—between His word and His actions.  His words are efficacious—that is, they do not stop at the eardrum, but they actually accomplish what they say.

          I suppose another way we could put this is that there is no “division of heart” within Jesus.  He is not “yes,” then “no.”  He is not “scattered” within Himself.  This, by the way, is what I think that tricky second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is really about.  Granted, Saint Paul thought that the second coming was immanent (that the Lord was returning soon).  And so last week, as you will recall, those who were married were counseled to act as not being married, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, those buying as not owning, etc.  In other words, Saint Paul was advising the Church in Corinth not to get too attached to this life and this world, which he thought to be shortly passing away.  This theme is simply being carried forward in the passage we read today about the different anxieties of married persons and unmarried persons.  Of course, we know that a person can be married and devoted to God.  It’s not an “either/or” proposition.  In fact, one of the chief goals of marriage is precisely for man and woman to grow in holiness together and, in turn, to help their children grow in holiness.  We also know that an unmarried person can be very worldly.  Single life, even the celibate life, is no guarantee of a holy life.  Setting aside, then, the issue of marriage, I think what Saint Paul is really driving at is that, whatever our state in life, we must be “anxious about the things of the Lord,” loving God and neighbor with an “undivided heart,” with that kind of interior unity of purpose that we see in Jesus Himself.   

          And so, we find in Jesus a kind of triple authority: first, an authority that “comes from on high,” from His divinity, from His grounded-ness in His identity as the Son of God; secondly, it is an authority that comes His total identification with us—an authority, a credibility that comes from His humanity; and finally, it is an authority that comes from an inner unity, that perfect correspondence between His words and His actions. 

It seems to me that if we would be effective witnesses of the Gospel, if we would draw souls to Christ, we also need to possess this kind of authority.  We need to share in that true authority of Christ, and I believe that He invites us into this by our baptism.  In baptism we are indeed made sons and daughters of God by adoption.  We need to be secure in that identity as God’s sons and daughters by grace, and yet we also need to be constantly aware of our humanity and we need to be willing to be “poured out” for those we are called to serve.  And finally, we must act upon what we say.  Understood in this way, then, perhaps “authority” is not such a bad thing, not such a bad word.  In fact, it is a mark of our discipleship.  It is part of what it means to bear the name of “Christian.”