By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Jan. 28, 2024)
In the name of God, our one holy and undivided trinity. Amen. So Jesus goes into the synagogue today and we're told that he taught not as one of the scribes, but as of one having authority. And then after this miraculous healing at the end of the passage this morning, a new teaching, they exclaimed, this time with authority. Thinking about authority, as I prepared this sermon because the word kind of jumped out at me also just because of what's going on in the world around us. It's an election year. Of course, by the end of this year, we will know who our next president is, we hope, and the race has seemed to be set among two persons.
Leadership is in crisis at the national level. It's also at some crisis at Harvard. Like many of you, I was shocked and saddened by the resignation of President Gay. We are in this transitional period now. One we did not expect, and that has me thinking about authority and that's critically at stake in people's reactions to Jesus today. There's something about his authority that stands out and stands apart. So what is it? What's the gospel talking about today when it talks about authority and what does it have to do with us in the midst of our own crises?
We think of authority and we think of leadership, power, command. When I was in the Navy, they would talk about command authority, who has the authority of command, and there's a cognate word to the word authority. Of course, authoritarian. The idea of authority is we have it speaks to the sense of power, and I think there's something of that in today's lesson. We're told that even the spirits obey him. That sense of obedience, that's something about authority, but the etymology of the word, which is translated into English is authority here is somewhat different than all this command, obedience, authoritarian sort of thing. The word which is translated as authority here is the Greek word "excousia," and excousia actually derives from the verb to be.
Excousia means it comes out of your very being. It has to do with the essence of someone. Our modern sense of authority, it's conferred from the outside. Some power gives you power. I grant you the authority if I am powerful or whatever. This is not something conferred from outside. What's called authority in this passage is something that comes from within Jesus. That's what they're remarking upon. There's something in him. It's almost more like authenticity.
He speaks from out of some deep well in himself. His words come from somewhere in himself and what he says, how he says it, seems absolutely and entirely true to him. A new teaching we're told with authority. So what's the teaching? What are we meant to learn? What has Jesus taught? This is the trouble with the Gospel of Mark. I love the Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of Mark, there is so little teaching. Mark spends almost no time telling us what Jesus said and taught so much so that when other gospel writers took up his text and expanded on it they used most of his plot narrative, but then they added a bunch of words. They added a bunch of Jesus's teaching because Mark has so few of Jesus's teachings.
I mean, just to give an example here in the Gospel of Mark, this event, this healing in the synagogue is the first narrated public act of Jesus's ministry. In the Gospel of Luke, the first narrated public act of Jesus's ministry is a teaching in the synagogue. And Luke gives us the teaching. He tells us what Jesus said. In the Gospel of Matthew, the first narrated public act of Jesus's ministry is a sermon, and Matthew spends several chapters giving us all the words that Jesus said. He gives us the teaching. Mark doesn't tell us what Jesus said. He just tells us it was really impressive.
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Mark just tells us what happened, tells us everyone was impressed. And then we have the story of this odd and abrupt healing miracle. We hear all about Jesus's teaching, but all we see is this healing. And in fact, it's the first of many. You know what Mark lacks in teaching, he makes up for in healing stories. It's healing story after healing story after healing story in the Gospel of Mark. First this one, the demoniac in the synagogue. But there are others. Others if you're familiar at all with the gospels, you've probably heard the woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years, the Phoenician;s daughter, the Gentile's daughter who was also possessed by a demon. In one of the most moving passages, I think in all the gospels, Mark 5, when there's a man who lives among the tombs and he's so wild and reckless, they bind him with chains. Think of that. A person bound with chains and he rips them off and it says he spends all night weeping and beating and cutting himself with stones. Living among the graves of others and Jesus comes and heals him.
In Mark, we don't hear any teaching, but in Mark Jesus' actions teach. "Exousia," authenticity, a teaching that comes from within. In the Gospel of Mark, we don't know what Jesus says, but he does what he says. His deeds are words. They speak his deeds, his actions speak of who he is and what he means. In the Gospel of Mark, the healing is the teaching. So if the healing is the teaching, what do we learn from these teachings? Is it that even the spirits obey him? That's what the crowd exclaims. Even the spirits obey him. Maybe that's what we learn. I don't know that that's the most important thing that we learn. I don't know that that's the most important lesson that Jesus is trying to teach us, despite the crowd's surprise at the end of the scene. So let's set the scene. What happens in this passage from the Gospel of Mark? They are gathered in the synagogue on the Sabbath.
This gathering of men, of scribes, of scholars and students convened to study the law. A gathering perhaps not unlike this one, folks gathering around scripture, hoping to learn from it, assembled together to learn from its authority, to acquire its authority, to amass their own authority, the authority of learning, and then know how to exercise that authority. A gathering of people like me, scholars and religious leaders, experts, scribes, not really any demoniacs, no one unclean or disruptive invited to this gathering because this is serious work. This work of cultivating and adjudicating authority.
Whose interpretation is right, who has the authority, who knows, and by that knowledge has power. And then this man possessed by a demon enters crying out, "What have you to do with me?" That phrase, what have you to do with me in first century Greek, it was idiomatic. It was kind of like what gives? What's going on? It doesn't translate exactly, but even though it doesn't translate exactly, that phrase, what have you to do with me is especially pointed, I think in this situation, because we have to ask, did any of the things these scholars and scribes were arguing about, did any of those things have anything to do with this suffering man when he walked into their midst? "What have you to do with me" cries the wild eyed, unclean maniac possessed by demons, the one who walks in at the most awkward moment, the most uncomfortable moment, right into their midst.
"What have you to do with me," he asks, and Jesus steps towards him and replies, "I have everything to do with you. You are the reason I am here. You are the reason God sent me. Like that wretched man who lived among the tombs and beat himself with stones, like the woman hemorrhaging blood, like the Syrophoenician daughter. You are the one." Jesus says, "You are the one God loves." Only he doesn't say it. He shows it. So what do we learn from this teaching? What is the lesson? What is this teaching? It couldn't be clearer really. What is absolutely authentic about this Jesus, what is absolutely unwavering in all his acts through the Gospel of Mark is his commitment to the dignity and the worth and the belovedness of every single person he encounters. Even those who look like demons to us. Even those possessed by rage and grief and frenzy and fury. Even those who stand apart, even those who don't belong, those who are so easy to dismiss or neglect or despise.
Even those we demonize and we do that so much in our world, even so much as to demonize those others who demonize. The miracle here is not that Jesus can banish any demon. The miracle here is that he can love any person. Each of them. Every one of them. They all belong to God and so they all belong to him. They have everything to do with him and his ministry, and he does more than just pay lip service to this idea. He acts on it.
I'm a priest of the church and I'm a preacher of the gospel, and I'm a teacher of theology at this most esteemed university. In some circles you might say I carry a little bit of authority, but if I'm honest, as honest as the gospel compels me to be, I must confess that outside these walls, that one question lingers, what have you to do with me? What does all you do, you priest and preacher and teacher, what does it have to do with me? It comes, that question comes, from the dismissed and the neglected, from the despised and the demonized. It comes from immigrants sleeping at Logan Airport, from citizens, our fellow citizens incarcerated in our prisons, from victims of violence and persecution and injustice in our streets and suffering and dying in wars, fought around the world with weapons we have made. What have you to do with me, they ask. They ask me. They ask us all. May our lives offer a useful answer.