Authenticity and Authority.

Mark 1:9-15

February 18, 2018

I.

Two of the things with which the church is struggling right now are authenticity and authority.  These are closely related issues, as indicated by the fact that both words start with the same four letters derived from a word in Latin meaning origin.  

Who are we really?  Why do we do what we do?  Whom should we obey?  What is real, true, and good?  How do we respond to it? 

The answer for us, of course, is Jesus Christ.  He is our authority and model; he is both true divinity and the truly human One to whom we belong and whom we have to obey in life and in death, as our Book of Confessions says.  

Which is why this section from Mark 1 is so important.  It shows, in Mark’s terse, compact prose, Jesus’ own coming to himself, being tested, and launching out into the world with his mission.  The beginnings of Jesus’ ministry are also the beginnings of the church which he calls to continue what he starts. 

We have to keep returning to these seminal events because the church is chronically distracted by every other shiny object that comes into our line of sight.  We are continually wandering off the path.  We follow after whatever promises us success by the world’s standards.  We run after whatever we imagine will give us back our power, wealth, and popularity.  We are particularly prone to this in times like ours when the church seems to be in decline. 

When we give factors other than Jesus any authority in our lives at all, we lose our connection to our origin, our true “author,” as it were.  We lose our authenticity.  Instead of being followers of Jesus, we are fooling ourselves.  We convince ourselves we are Christians, but we are actually under the influence of other authorities, spirits, and voices.  

This passage has three brief sections.  The first is Jesus’ baptism and his experience of God’s call.  The third section has him back in Galilee beginning his ministry by proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  But between them we have the Spirit driving Jesus out into the wilderness.  This is the necessary hinge or bridge that connects baptism with ministry, for him and for us. 

The Spirit does not allow him to just bask in the glow of his marvelous baptism experience.  He does not simply take that realization and go back to Galilee to start his mission.  It is not enough for him just to have this spectacular spiritual awakening at his baptism revealing his true identity.  No.  

The same Spirit that gives him that blessing at his baptism, now immediately pushes him into deprivation, marginality, and testing in the desert.  He has to make sure that this was not his own ego calling him.  His authenticity as God’s Son must be proved.  Only then does he have the authority to carry out his mission.  His authority is based on his authenticity.

And his authenticity means his rejection of the values, structures, leaders, procedures, and habits of the old order of things.  To go into the wilderness is to reconnect with Israel’s origins in the wilderness of Sinai.  It is to leave behind the corrupt and violent regime of Pharaoh, based on exploitation, injustice, slavery, and racism.  It is to see something new and wonderful emerge. 

II.

We have to do the same thing if we are going to be authentic followers of Jesus Christ.  If we are going to have any moral, spiritual, cultural, or other kinds of authority, we are going to have to truly be whom God calls us to be.  This means in some sense going into the wilderness to face and reject the self-serving suggestions and stories projected by our own egos, and renounce the social order organized around them.  The desert is where our old, small, shallow, false, fearful, and resentful selves go to die.  

When Jesus is in the desert being tempted by Satan, Mark says “he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”  In the book of Daniel, “wild beasts” represent the kings and princes who dominate the world by ruthless violence.  These are the ones who project their own superior strength to oppress people and gain what they want.  Angels, on the other hand, are the emissaries and messengers who remind us of our true nature with and in God.  In the desert is where the battle happens between these two forces for control of our souls and our world.  And that’s where we have to go.  We have to face honestly the vicious monsters we have become and unleashed upon the creation, while relying always on the voice of God in our hearts that we are actually blessed and good.

If the church has problems with authenticity and authority, it is largely because we have steadfastly refused to go anywhere near this wilderness place.  Rather, we have allowed ourselves to be coopted and adopted by the principalities and powers that dominate the world, and allied ourselves to these wild beasts.  For over a thousand years the church was little more than an extension of the agendas of the reigning establishment.  We rationalized, justified, and profited from all kinds of atrocities, from war to slavery to ecological degradation to torture.  It’s no wonder that some people gag when they come to church and hear Jesus teaching about peace, justice, and love, three things that are still in short supply in too many churches.

The greatest threat to our authenticity, the place of our most shameful hypocrisy, is the yawning gap between Christ and Christians, between Jesus and the church.  And the only cure for this hypocrisy that is destroying us is to follow Jesus into the desert to identify, face, and reject the powers that rule in our hearts and our world.  It is to go into the turbulence and recognize and accept the blame for our own sorry history. 

The fact is that we have already been in the wilderness and not accepted it.  God has sent us into a kind of exile even though we haven’t actually relocated.  The world we know seems very different and considerably less hospitable to the church than the world I knew 50 or 60 years ago.  The desert has come to us, in a sense, and it is going to kill us… the question is whether we are going to to find our life again, our true life, in Jesus Christ.    

III.

In other words, we have to realize that the Lord Jesus is our only authority, and that we truly live only to the extent that we obey and follow him.  The only way to organize ourselves for survival in this desert is to structure our lives according to his life, to model our actions on his actions.  To be an authentic Christian is to stay close to Jesus in all things.  Indeed, that is what it means to be an authentic human.

We will see this in his self-emptying, generous, accepting, forgiving, healing, sacrificial ministry, culminating in his giving of his own life for the life of the world.  We see it in the life of service, humility, thanksgiving, and joy he calls on us to live.  

Our goal is to emerge with him from the wilderness with the knowledge and the announcement of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, something that can only be seen through eyes reshaped by the kind of repentance and trust we gain in the desert.  

We cannot see the Kingdom of God until we have relinquished our allegiances, loyalties, and investments in the powers and values of this world.  We cannot know God’s Kingdom without going through the desert, being tempted, and knowing the predatory violence of the wild beasts who rule in this world.  We cannot enter God’s Kingdom without leaving behind us the selfishness of the world’s kingdoms.  And that is highly unlikely if we are thoroughly invested in them.  If we are wedded to the kingdoms ruling this world, any talk of God’s Kingdom will be unintelligible to us.

In the wilderness Jesus confronts and rejects the old order.  As he emerges he proclaims the new order, which is really the original order, the Kingdom of God.  His ministry will be about living into that order, establishing communities where his values of inclusion and equality, forgiveness and love prevail.  That has become our job, to continue in his Name and by his Spirit, fed by his Body and Blood, his mission of reconciliation and compassion.    

The values and practices of God’s Kingdom are meant to shine beyond our walls.  They are meant to bleed over into the world, and spread through it, permeating it like salt or leaven influences and changes a whole lump of dough.

IV.  

The season of Lent is instituted by the church as a regular way to be reminded of all this.  It is 40-days of fasting and prayer designed to wake us up and open our eyes to see God’s salvation in the Resurrection of Jesus.  It places us in the desert of simplicity, and confronts us with our selves.

At the same time, Lent separates us from the manic pursuits of the rat-race.  That is, it intentionally makes us aware of, so we can separate ourselves from, our greed, gluttony, envy, anger, lust, sloth, and pride.  In Lent we strive not to consume, not to buy, not to use, not to gain, not to be first, not to have, not to win.  In Lent we plum the depths of our own authenticity as followers of Jesus.   

For it is only out of that authenticity, measured in what we lose and let go of, that we acquire authority and win a hearing among a jaded and suspicious people.  In a world where the news is divided between fake and bad, it is those who are in touch with their own true nature who will remain.  In a world coming apart at the seams, it is those who are able to bring people together in acceptance and forgiveness, who will thrive.  In a world that has forgotten its Maker and destiny, it is the little gatherings of remembrance that will lead by example into God’s future.

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