Mark 1: 21-28 (January 29, 2012): Teaching with Authority

Teaching with Authority

                                                   Mark 1: 21-28 (January 29, 2012)

1)      The Text

21They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

2)      Perspectives/Questions

a.       Multiple Voices

We encounter multiple voices in life, and are constantly discerning which one to listen to. All four gospels start out with the narrator tipping the reader off as to the primary voice we’ll be hearing. Matthew tells us it is Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. John tells us that it’s The Word who became flesh. In Luke, it is more indirect; we are given an account of “the events that have been fulfilled among us” (1:1).

Mark tells us to listen specifically for the voice of the Son of God. We’re being schooled to learn to recognize the distinctive voice of Jesus the Son of God. We learn it through what he talks about, through what he doesn’t talk about, and through his actions that speak louder than words.

We also learn about who Jesus is by listening to the voices of those around him. Throughout Mark a series of proclamations of Jesus’ identity are voiced by various characters in the narrative. In our passage in Mark 1:21-28 we hear three voices. We hear the voices of the synagogue-goers. They express how impressed they are with Jesus’ authoritative teachings. They are astounded at his teaching because it had authority. He is not simply passing onto them the traditions he had learned, but confidently presenting his interpretations. The implication is that the authority of Jesus to teach, to exorcise and to heal comes from the Spirit of God whose power is working through him. But the synagogue goers aren’t ready to go that far in affirming Jesus’ identity.

But someone else is. We hear the voice of the unclean spirit. Mark loves irony, and this is a good example of it. It is ironic that an unclean spirit is the first one to voice his recognition of who Jesus is. Jesus is the one who bears God’s unique authority and power to drive down the authority of the demons. The unclean spirit recognizes the sound of the real enemy’s voice. The real enemy of chaos and sin is Jesus. The enemy of the unclean spirit is Jesus. Amid all the competing voices we hear, we should listen to Jesus.

b.      A different way of teaching

This passage takes the shape of a sandwich, a familiar pattern in Mark. It begins and ends with comments about Jesus’ authority as a teacher (1:21-22 and 1:27-28). In between is an exorcism (1:23-26). Already this simple structure tells us a lot. We are meant to find a connection between Jesus, the teacher and Jesus, the exorcist. More than that, this is the first episode in Jesus’ ministry which Mark recounts after the call of the disciples. Following the conventions of ancient writing we would expect the passage to hold important clues about what is to come. Authority is also the first main theme in the collection of controversy stories in 2:1 – 3:6, the authority to declare to people God’s compassion in forgiving their sins (2:10).

In 1:21-22 the first point to note is that Jesus enters the synagogue on the sabbath. He is at home in his own religious tradition among his own people. Mark tells us more: he teaches. So he is not only at home there; he takes on a responsibility within that tradition: he teaches. The people are amazed not that he teaches, but at the authority with which he teaches. What did they mean? Did he rant and rave? Did he shout? Was he clever with rhetoric, an adept story teller? He may have done all of those things or none of them. The context forces us to guess what Jesus must have taught. It does not get much better for chapters to come, because even in Mark 4, where we get parables, they are all about the effects of his teaching, rather than the teaching itself.

Our best guess is to look back at 1:14-15. He taught about the kingdom. Our next guess is to note the sandwich structure: it must be about forcefulness or, at least, it must have been disempowering of oppressiveness, i.e., liberating. ‘And not as the scribes’ in 1:22 is an important clue. How did they teach? From Mark’s gospel we would have to conclude that much of their teaching was concerned with fine points of interpretation of the Law. And from the rest of the gospel we would have to conclude that Jesus’ teaching must have focused on central themes like God’s compassion.

In Mark and elsewhere we find Jesus often teaching with a directness which drew on common life experience rather than derivatively by interpreting scripture. This had the effect of shifting the power base of knowledge from the experts (in scripture, scribes) to the common people, who all knew about common life experience. It was a different way of doing theology, which democratized the process.

c. The power of God’s Word

In this story, in fact in all Jesus’ exorcisms, we see the activity of God gaining control over a creation separated from him and now hostile to him, a creation subject to dark forces. These hostile powers are brought under God’s rule by an authoritative word from the divine man, Jesus.

The Bible is full of commands. We are commanded to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are commanded to strive toward the perfection we possess in Christ. Such commands often leave us with the impression that our progress in the Christian life is a matter of effort, a matter of obeying God’s laws. We all know that getting saved is totally dependent on what Christ has done for us, but when it comes to staying saved, there are many believers who think it depends on what we do for God.

Believers tend to divide into two groups when confronted with the issue of salvation. Some are Calvinist (God chooses us) while others are Arminian (we choose God). Is it both? One of the hot issues of debate is whether it is possible to lose our salvation. A Calvinist will argue “once saved always saved.” Yet, scripture does warn us that we can lose our salvation, at least in theory. We can choose to walk with Christ, or choose not to walk with him. The interesting fact is that Arminius, unlike his followers, was not convinced that a regenerate believer could lose their faith. Having once tasted Christ, who could cast him away?

So then, how do we stay on the narrow way; how do we maintain our standing before God; how do we progress in the Christian life? We are kept in the game of faith by the power of the Biblical Imperative. The authoritative Word of Christ commands, and in the strength of the Spirit of Christ, those hostile powers that would undermine our faith, are subdued. We hear and are set free by the grace of Christ’s authoritative Word. In simple terms, our standing as a Christian, yesterday, today and tomorrow, rests on what God does for us in Christ, not on what we may, or may not, be able to do.