January 29, 2012 Sermon by Peter Terpenning
Community United Church of Christ
Boulder, Colorado
“As One With Authority”
Mark 1:21-28, Howard Thurman, “I Seek Truth and Light” (Meditations of the Heart)
The scene in Mark today is in Capernaum, a small city on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has just begun his ministry of sharing the good news of God and gathered a few disciples. He arrives to teach in a synagogue. We don’t know what he talked about, but the people were amazed that he taught as one with authority, not like one of the Scribes. Scribes were teachers of the law. They weren’t paid clergy, but were students of the Law of Moses as contained in the written scrolls of the Torah. Their vocation was to teach and interpret this law to the Hebrew people. They were a bit like what we might call fundamentalists, focusing on the authority of the written word and trying to follow it exactly. They believed that God’s authority was best found in scripture. Jesus had another kind of authority – and I wonder what that was.
The story goes on and a man, it doesn’t say who exactly, who was possessed by an evil spirit cries out to Jesus and names him. Perhaps this was we would call a mentally deranged person, or perhaps not, perhaps one of the supposedly sane people of the synagogue who was listening and saddening cries out. In any case, Jesus speaks to the spirit and it comes out of the man. Jesus seems to have authority over even the parts of people that are possessed or evil. The people of the synagogue recognize Jesus’ authority as coming from God, that he speaks the truth and has the truth within him.
I am wondering about this idea of authority. I have been starting a new class of Confirmation this winter, with 8th and 9th graders. One of the first things I talk to them about is the non-doctrinal nature of the congregational tradition, and how we believe each person has the authority of God within them. Non-doctrinal or non-creedal communities such as ours or the Quakers believe that each person can interpret theology and God’s presence on their own and do not need clergy, bishops or popes to tell us what to believe. Even the scripture is open to interpretation. This is crucial for the confirmands to understand so they will start trying to figure out what their personal theology is. What is this authority that Jesus had, and that we believe each person to have within them. The simple answer is that authority is God’s truth. It is that within us, and the people of Capernaum, that recognizes truth when we hear it or see it. Jesus, by all accounts, had it.
Jeremiah 31 reads: “I have put my truth in your innermost mind, and I have written it on your heart. No longer does a man need to teach his brothers and sisters about God. For you all know me, from the most ignorant to the most learned, from the poorest to the most powerful”. I believe this to be true, that we all have it within us to recognize the truth when we see it. This is because we are all part of God, God is within us. In a sense, we recognize God when we see God – in truth expressed, or compassionate action, love or friendship.
Howard Thurman, who we have been hearing from this morning, tells the story of being at a Quaker meeting. He sat in the quiet meeting and found it very appealing to him, for he was a person who meditated and sought a mystical relationship with God in the quiet of his heart. He decided he would seek what God wanted him to say that day, if anything, through meditation and sat quietly, seeking to go inward to his quiet center and listen. He shared my belief that such truth is available within each of us. It caught him off guard as he started to see words written in his conscious mind, almost like he could read them. They were words from the Sermon on the Mount. It began to gather these words to speak them to the meeting. He opened his eyes and began to stand when a woman’s voice behind him began to speak the very words he was thinking of, from the same verses of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Amazed, he sat down and listened as one person after another rose to comment on these words. Finally, he rose and shared that he had had the same words given to him.
Have you ever had the experience of being in a meeting or gathering and had something to add, but resolve to keep you mouth shut to see what others have on their minds. Then to you surprise someone says exactly what you were thinking. I suppose this is not necessarily remarkable if one is in a group of people with similar background and education, that the same ideas might pop up, but I still find it remarkable and wonder if we are tapping into some kind of truth that speaks in us and through us.
I remember attending a forum on peace with the Interfaith Leaders for Non-Violence that used to meet during the Iraq war in Boulder. Seven different clergy rose to speak from Mennonite, Quaker, Hindu, Presbyterian, Sufi, Unitarian and Muslim traditions. A Hindu woman, Alananda, rose to speak and said that it was a fundamental mistake not to think of Iraqi children as our children. We think of our children in our families and our communities as our children and seek to protect them. But the fact is that Iraqi children affected by the war are our children as well and need our protection. Her words touched me deeply and the truth of them seemed to reverberate in the people of the room. She spoke a truth and we all recognized it – and I still remember it. Howard Thurman said it well: “Human life is one and all men members one of another, this is the hard core of religious experience” We all share truth and recognize it when we hear it. This is to speak with authority, the authority of truth with a capital T, which I consider to be the authority of God.
This is basically mysticism. The definition of mysticism is the belief that people can encounter God. To encounter God is to believe that God is present in creation and within us, and we can encounter God. We can seek this presence is meditation and prayer, in scripture, in worship, in communicating with others. Not all of communication is truth, but we know it when we hear it. Truth has authority, this is what Jesus had.
But what about Jesus’ authority over the unclean spirit? Is this relevant to us or is it nonsense of a non-scientific age. Certainly, we understand physical and mental disease differently now, and don’t think of healing as the casting out of spirits. However, it is true that people can be possessed by spirits of addiction, alcoholism, pornography, gambling and drug addiction. People can be possessed also by fear, anxiety, anger, busy-ness, affluenza or being workaholics. Turning these kinds of possessions over to God – letting go and letting God help us manage them can feel like healing. It does seem that God has the authority to step in a remove these burdens from our minds and spirits. I would be remise if I did not witness that prayer and faith can at times relieve us from the suffering and burdens we bear in our spirits. In naming the authority of Jesus I have personally experienced the peace of God when suffering with fear and anxiety.
My point today is that a basic part of faith in God for me, is the belief that there is truth with a capital T that is God. Jesus expressed it, and he is a source of Truth for humanity – though not the exclusive source. It is within us, and we can recognize it when we see it. Many spiritual leaders and other people have expressed this Truth. It is like the wild grass that cannot be prevented from growing through cement. It is everywhere and it keeps popping up. God is part of us and we are part of God. We can trust in God.