Two weeks ago today Gina and I stood with a thousand or so people in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican to be blessed by Pope Benedict XVI. It’s quite a show. They roll a big red Pope banner out the window of his apartment and the crowd starts to buzz. Then the Pope comes to his window and addresses the gathering in several languages before blessing everybody in Latin. The crowd goes wild and snaps lots of pictures. It happened to be Catholic school day when we were there, so we saw bundles of children in uniforms waving school signs and pom-poms, guarded by nuns with rulers. (Not really). But it was sort of a pep rally for the faithful.

It might surprise you to hear a Baptist would even wait around to see the Pope, let alone to be blessed by him, when some truly amazing Italian food is waiting not five blocks away! We Baptists – and especially we UBC Baptists - are naturally suspicious of anybody who claims to be an authority over us or expect our obedience. “Authority” and “obedience” are not words we like much. We seldom use them, except maybe with our children.

But let me tell you, I’m glad for anybody who will bless me in the name of the Lord. What’s more, the Pope is the spiritual leader of millions of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world. He deserves respect by virtue of his office. You don’t get to be Pope just by speaking Latin and wearing a funny hat. Pope Benedict is a respected scholar and a compassionate pastor. He deserves respect for the person he is. I don’t agree with everything he believes, and I don’t have to. I won’t be obeying everything he commands, and I don’t have to. But I will listen to what he says and reflect on it because of what he represents and who he is.

I feel the same way about the Dalai Lama and the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. It makes sense to listen to the voices of respected spiritual leaders, even when they say things we don’t want to hear. Maybe especially when they say things we don’t want to hear. In the final analysis, of course, you have to make up your own mind. You have to make up your own life. You are responsible for your own soul. But you can’t do it alone. You need help. You need the wise counsel of those who have gone before. You need the informed support of fellow travelers. You need the discipline and correction of a loving community. Those people who think they need no authority but themselves are arrogant fools. Nobody is so wise as to need nobody else. A little education and an above average intellect only set people up for self- deception; if you only follow your own light you are a dim bulb indeed! But before you submit to other voices for guidance, you better choose carefully the voices and community you will trust to be your authority in life.
Most of us consider ourselves free-thinking independents. But it’s amazing some of the people we Baptists trust nowadays to be our authorities! We aren’t about to let any Pope tell us what to believe and how to behave. But we let celebrities and news pundits tell us what to think. We let Madison Avenue and Vogue tell us what to wear. We let Hollywood and MTV tell us what’s cool. We give our loyalty wholly to political parties and charismatic leaders. Some Baptists who would never submit to the Pope, will follow their silver tongued preacher into hell itself, when they don’t even speak Latin or wear a funny hat. But where are we encouraged these days to be theologically educated? Who is teaching people to think for themselves? Where are we welcomed to raise voices of dissent?

Our gospel passage today is all about authority. Jesus comes to Capernaum and when the Sabbath rolls around, where does he go? He goes to worship, as it’s his habit to do. And hey, if Jesus thought it was important one day a week to study scripture and worship with the covenant community of God, aren’t you glad you do, too? On this particular Sabbath he was teaching from the scripture. And Mark says, “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). I think we usually hear this as a slam on the scribes. But Mark is not saying the scribes were bad teachers. They were good teachers, educated scholars who had given their energies to studying God’s law. Like any good scholars, their teaching tended to be a gathering of various informed points of view: “Rabbi Hillel says this, Rabbi Shammai says that, this is what I think” but they left the hard work of deciding up to the listener, which is what good teachers do.

The scribes were good teachers, but were only human, and to be human means to equivocate, to finesse, to waffle on some things, to be one voice in a continuing dialogue. Any human who does not is not being honest about what we can know and the limits of our human understanding. Even Pope Benedict has included a scallop shell in his coat of arms, recalling the story of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, who was once walking along the seashore, meditating on the unfathomable mystery of God. He came upon a boy using a shell to pour seawater into a little hole in the sand. “What are you doing?” Augustine asked him. The boy said, “I am emptying the sea into this hole.” At this Augustine reflected that humanity has about as much chance to penetrate to the depths of the mystery of God as the lad had to empty the whole ocean into a tiny hole in the sand.

Even the Pope understands the limits of human understanding where it comes to the mind of God. But amazingly, I’ve heard some Baptist preachers who go farther than the Pope in their sense of authority. They pit themselves in the place of Christ! They read this passage in Mark to mean they should only speak in absolutes as if they were not themselves as human as the scribes of Jesus’ day. Mark’s point is not that the scribes were bad. Mark’s point is that Jesus spoke with authority which the scribes – or any other human - lack, because Jesus is the authority, the very source of truth itself.

Ironically, we Baptists come from a long line of believers who were suspicious of authority and very careful about whom they trusted. Those early Baptists remembered how power corrupted even the best intentioned individuals, so they preferred to submit to the authority of the community and have a government of checks and balances. They remembered a time in European history when people were tortured and executed for dissenting from the majority Roman Catholic faith. They remembered a time in England and even in colonial Virginia when the government required everyone to follow the Anglican faith and Baptist preachers were thrown in jail for preaching a dissenting view, so they believed in a strict separation of church and state. They believed no human, no governor, no professor, no prelate, and certainly no preacher should ever try to interpose between God and your own conscience. They believed in a free pulpit where preachers could speak the Word of God to their people as they discerned it. But they believed just as much in the freedom of the pew, that it belonged to the individual believer to agree or disagree with the word they heard. None of this history has changed; it has only been repeated. Neither should we change our Baptist beliefs about authority.

But what makes for authority anyway? Who do you trust and why? Some people gain authority through power by force of might. They can’t make you believe anything, but they can make you pretend to believe it, they can make you obey them by threat of force. Violence is the weakest and least lasting form of authority. Some people gain authority by virtue of office, through election or appointment. The way they exercise that authority determines whether or not people will trust them with more or resist them until they can be replaced. Others gain authority through education and practice, through what they know and what they have experienced. This is the specialized, particular authority of the plumber or mechanic, the financial advisor or scholar of antiquities. Of course not all plumbers or financial advisors are equal. You still have to be careful about which ones you decide to trust, or you might wind up with an overflowing toilet and no money to fix it. True authority is earned. The exercise of authority over time demonstrates how much a person should be trusted and followed, even obeyed.

The best authority, I think, is when someone says something that is so true, when you hear it, you know it’s true. You feel it in your bones. It coheres with all your experience. It rings true to the depths of your soul. You follow it, not because you are forced to, but because you want to, because you want your own life to be true. This is the authority of self-evident truth, and I think that is the authority with which Jesus taught.

Still, I believe there is an even higher, more trustworthy authority than the authority of truth. And that is the authority of love. When you know the person speaking loves you and wants only what is best for you, and believes what he or she is saying to the point of living by it themselves, then their words have a power for you that is compelling.

That day at the synagogue in Capernaum, just as the people were marveling at the authority of Jesus’ teaching, some disturbed soul cried out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). Crackpots are always speaking in the plural, of we and us and they and them, to disguise their own personal agendas and to isolate anyone who might disagree. But Jesus isn’t taken in by it. He sees this man, like every other man or woman, has an unclean spirit which has power over him. And Jesus heals the man, so that the unclean spirit leaves him.

Now the people are truly amazed. Mark says, “They kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching-- with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him”(Mark 1:27). In this case Jesus’ “new teaching” is not a set of ideas conferred with carefully reasoned thoughts or eloquent words. It is the loving action that risks, confronts, and heals, and sets the example for others to follow. Actions always speak louder than words, and the authority of Jesus’ teaching comes from the coherence of his words and actions, both of which proceed from a deeply loving heart.

So, okay, Mark’s point is that Jesus is the authority we should trust. The scribes are not the authority. The Pope is not the authority. I am not the authority, nor any other Baptist preacher. Jesus is the authority. But how do you submit to Jesus? How do you get guidance from him or listen to his teaching? This isn’t Capernaum. This isn’t the synagogue. Jesus isn’t here to teach us today. Or is he?

We believe the risen Christ is here today, here with us whenever we gather. Remember the story of the disciples after the resurrection? Their eyes were opened when he interpreted the scriptures to them. Two of them recognized him when he broke bread with them. Jesus promised to be present wherever, whenever two or three gather in his name. We believe the risen Christ still speaks to us through the scripture. We believe the risen Christ still teaches us with authority. This authority does not come to us undiluted through a Pope or a preacher or any other source. We have to discern it for ourselves.
It always remains for you and me to discern and decide how to obey. But we cannot discern the will of God if we are not seeking it. We cannot follow the Risen Christ if we are not expecting him. We cannot obey God’s truth when we are neither searching for God’s truth nor wanting to obey anything but our own self-directed egos. Writes Denise Levertov:

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
At first belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places;
a quick glance, and away - and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop to think about you and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river’s purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain’s heart
the sapphire I know is there?

Beloved, who do you trust? Whom will you obey? I urge you today, trust in the Lord. But to trust in the Lord, you must seek the Lord, know the Lord, hear the Lord, obey the Lord. He is not so hard to find if you are looking for him, not so hard to hear if you are listening. Are you listening? May we pray?

Speak to us, Savior, in tones clear and bold of your love, of your grace, of your calling, of your holiness. Speak, and we will listen. Speak, and we will obey. Speak, and we will follow you into the life that is rich and real and everlasting in Jesus’ name. Amen.