Jan. 28, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 4: 21-32

Talk about a mixed reaction. First the synagogue congregation was outraged by what Jesus taught – so much so that its members were ready to push him off a cliff. Then they were astounded, so the text says, by the quality of his teaching because he spoke with authority.

You could say that the Nazarene Jews had an authority problem. They knew authority when they heard and saw it, but they also resented its presence in their lives. I will leave the explanation of that all-too-familiar phenomenon to the psychiatric community. Suffice it to say that while we generally respect authority, we also resent it – just like the people in the synagogue in Nazareth.

“Authority” means what? The power to order others around? The ability to control people and situations? Does it enable someone to say, “I’m the decider. I get to decide”? – We sometimes speak of summoning “the authorities” by which we generally mean the police. And when you’re pulled over in a traffic stop, the person in the uniform is “the” authority in that situation, and you’re not.

It will come as no surprise to you that the Bible has a rather different take on the term “authority.” The Greek word for it is a fun one: exousia, which means the freedom to speak and act out of the authentic inner self.

The quality of exousia is one sorely lacking among public figures in the political realm. With the 2008 presidential election looming (already?!), the hopefuls are to be heard and seen parsing and modulating their statements, for instance, on the war in Iraq. We’re not supposed to know what they really think because it’s entirely possible that they don’t really know what they think. They want to know what you think and then be careful not to say anything that will alienate you.

You can call that mug-wumping or waffling or just plain baloney. But you cannot call it exousia. You can’t call it authority. These people do no astound us with anything save their backing and filling – and then our astonishment is one of disgust.

Don’t miss the scene Luke created of the angry Jews of Nazareth driving Jesus to the cliff’s edge, whereupon he turned to face them and then walked right through their ranks. There was more than just a little John Wayne in that. – Only someone who really knows his or her true self is empowered to such an act of courage. And only one who knows whereof he or she is made can teach as Jesus taught in the synagogue – not telling people what they wanted to hear but what they needed to hear.

We have recently celebrated Martin Luther King Day, and, if we were listening, here and there we surely heard strains of his most famous speeches in which Dr. King told this country not what it wanted to hear – which was a respectful silence from the likes of him – but what it needed to hear.

The one for whom Dr. King and his father were named – Martin Luther – told a church hierarchy not what it wanted to hear but what it needed to hear. Luther did so with enormous courage, refusing finally to recant, speaking in unambiguous terms his refusal to submit: Standen ich hier; ich kann nichts anders. Here I stand; I can do none else.

Who but a church historian immured in the minutiae of the 16th Century can name the popes against whom Luther spoke? (Among them were Adrian VII and Leo X.) We all remember Luther, though, because he spoke with authority, i.e., out of the depths of his real, authentic self – and never mind the consequences. That’s why we revere Dr. King today, and if we can ever find one, we might feel the same about a would-be President or a senator who would speak to us with exousia. Likewise, the rectories and vicarages of the church are largely filled up with rectors and vicars who would rather keep their positions than tell it like it is. I am not one of them, and I will not allow myself to be pushed off the cliff.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.