Fourth Sunday after EPIPHANY (Written on January 23, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of February 1, 2009: Mark 1:21-28

 

"They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, 'What is this? A new teaching—with authority!'”

 

BEST UNSPOKEN by Larry Patten

Jesus, Mark’s Gospel bluntly stated, taught with authority.

Authority set him apart from others. He was different and better than the scribes, the established teachers.

Define authority. Point it out to me. Can you show me where it is taught in a curriculum? Tell me where I can find it on the shelf at Best Buy? I am a published “author” . . . do I have authority? What does my thesaurus say? Sway, control, and influence; those are like-minded nouns with muscles. How about these authoritarian adverbs: strongly, potently, and arrogantly?

When I left for a sabbatical my district superintendent (who has authority over me) reminded me that as an Elder in the United Methodist Church I take my authority with me. Wherever I go. Whatever I do. Even without serving in or for a particular church. I am ordained. I have authority. To do what? In United Methodist parlance, I am ordained (authorized) to word, order, and sacrament.

Ah, to teach and preach the word.

What a blessing. What a burden.

At Barack Obama’s inauguration, along with billions of others, I witnessed authority. Yes, in the new president’s speech. Yes, in Aretha Franklin’s song. But what lingered for me, like the taste of the ripest peach, was Rev. Joseph Lowery’s benediction. There was audacity, indeed an authority, in the words he flung forth to place an exclamation point on the day’s sparkling sentence of change. Lowery, an 87-year old “icon” of the Civil Rights movement prayed,

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

I don’t have the “authority” to speak those humorous, poignant words. He did. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen!

And yet sometimes the authority of the word is best unspoken.

The phone rang a few days ago. It was a colleague of my wife, but it was me the person sought. After identifying herself, the caller asked, “Could you visit Anna . . .?”

Then she hesitated. Anna was another colleague, someone I’d met when I attended work-related parties and gatherings with my wife. Someone I’d had brief conversations with over the years. Someone I admired.

“Would you visit Anna . . . as a pastor?”

Anna was seriously ill. Not long ago, there were plans and possibilities. She was recently retired. A calendar filled with obligations and meetings might soon be replaced with vacations and adventures. Now? Trips to the doctor’s office. Hospital stays. Tests and more tests.

But the cancer was relentless. With our array of medicines and machines, technique and technology, we still lose too many battles. The 21st century lab-coated physician, with a calm demeanor and a wall of fancy degrees, must feel little different than Hippocrates 2,500 years ago. It’s one thing to vow, “Do no harm.” It is another to see harm you never caused win.

I tell you this. I hate cancer.

Would I visit “as a pastor?” Of course.

I won’t share details of the visit. Confidentiality matters. Each life is supremely precious and private. I claim no magic words, no special touch, nor do I posses any privileged conduit to the divine’s so-called mysterious ways. But I went with my fragile, humble authority. Was it the authority given me at ordination? Was it an authority based on a decades-ago “call to ministry” that whispered through my soul before an official, established denomination ordained me? I wonder?

In Mark’s Gospel, between teachings and a healing, the crowds marveled at Jesus’ authority. Different. Better. I imagine and believe there was no arrogance in what the Nazarene said or did. I imagine and believe that whatever authority was displayed, however he “swayed” or “controlled” or “influenced” others, it was all shared with an ineffable compassion. (Even that description, in my imagination and belief, seems lame.)

My authority?

I can tell you this. I loved every single second I spent with Anna. Most of the time we said nothing. Much of the time I held her hand. I listened. I wanted her to know that I wanted to be with her and no one else in those moments.

Does that matter?

How powerful the spoken word’s authority can be. But there are those moments when authority claims only silence. Hushed in the presence of the holy. In the ways of the divine, which I hardly understand, I know illness hurts and destroys, but I believe it never triumphs.

in Peace,

Larry