Whose Authority?

February 2, 2003

Mark 1:21-28

A few years ago I attended a seminar for clergy. It was about pastoral counseling. The man presenting was a former clergy person who had taken up family counseling full time. Some times these seminars are helpful, some times they are even interesting but I must admit that most times I do not expect too much from any such presentation. But his presentation was astounding. And I tell you that I never get astounded at these things, never. He showed a video tape of a counseling session that he was involved in. He showed it so that those of us watching might see how he approaches certain problems. Again, I have never seen anything like it.

The tape showed him counseling an older couple. Their children were grown. They were grandparents. They were seeing a counselor because they had drifted so far apart. They seemed to have had nothing in common anymore. They were considering divorce because there was nothing to hold them together after the children had left or so she said.

The counselor had been seeing them for a few sessions. In this session that the counselor presented on the videotape nothing much happens until the woman turns to the therapist with some urgency and says something like, “I really can’t keep from telling you this any longer. My husband has been sexually molesting our nine-year-old grand daughter.” It seemed to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden this woman is accusing her husband of one of the worst things anyone can do. I don’t know what I would have done because this is a very serious charge. And if true this man could have been doing very serious damage to this little girl. What a horrible thought. Perhaps this man should have been arrested instead of counseled.

But the therapist hardly reacted. Being non-anxious is always a part of his approach. And he showed no anxiety or reactivity at all. It was as if this woman had commented on the weather. He then asked her a couple of questions not really related to her accusation. And she was getting more and more intense almost angry. And with each question she seems to be moving toward real hysteria. Sitting there watching it I was getting very anxious. She finally reiterates the charge glowering at her husband. The therapist is still not impressed and says nothing. Finally, he turns to the man and I am thinking he is going to give this guy a talking to. But instead he says to him (the man happened to be a writer), “I was just wondering if you have ever thought to write a book about your experiences.” The man was speechless but managed a dry “what?” The therapist went on. “Because, I don’t think I have ever seen anything in print about incestuous relations with granddaughters. It might be a big seller.” The man looked at the therapist like he was a lunatic and then laughed.

But that was not the most astounding moment. After that she dropped the subject all together! It was so strange. She started talking about her own loneliness in a way that she had not expressed until then. The charge of sexual abuse of the granddaughter was never mentioned again!

There was no merit to the charge whatsoever. The therapist had somehow realized that and refused to take it seriously. His approach was to give it no power. He knew that it wasn’t the problem. That is astounding especially in this highly anxious world where one of the things that we are most anxious about is child abuse.

In the question and answer session I had to ask him how he knew that the child abuse charge was a red herring. As a therapist it is risky at best to ignore something like that. So I had to know how he knew. He said he just followed his own instincts. That is astounding I thought at the time and I still think it today.

Follow your own instincts? Is that responsible behavior these days? This man thinks so. But it really goes against how we live today. It is so rare to find anyone with that kind of self-confidence.

Self confidence and personal authority are so rare these days that in just about anything you are facing today, from buying a house to going on a diet, you can find someone who will coach you. In fact the newest therapeutic model is “coaching.” It is not for people who are suffering from some psychological or emotional illness it is rather to help people navigate this incredibly complicated landscape called life. Of course there are different kinds of coaches with different specialties but again the coaching is mostly about making life choices it is not about addressing any neurosis or psychosis. There is nothing wrong with this, nothing at all. Life is so complicated, or we have come to believe that life is so complicated, that many of us have been robbed of the confidence to make decisions and that is the real problem. Perhaps what we need are not experts but a little more self-confidence or personal authority.

The Bible reading today is instructive. The first chapter of Mark is very clear about telling us what is special about what Jesus does. And this is different than the other Gospels. For Mark the importance of Jesus comes from not who he is, the emphasis is rather on what he does and most importantly how he does it. In this way it is very different than the other Gospels. In John the first chapter claims that Jesus is the word and the word was before anything else was and everything was made through the word. The important thing about Jesus is that he is this primordial divinity there from the beginning in John. Before he does anything he is important. Luke and Matthew are not so grandiose but also make claims about Jesus’ identity before he really does anything. In Luke and Matthew the birth stories provide these claims about his identity and divinity. The heavenly host, the angel Gabriel, and the magi all announce the special-ness of Jesus. But there is no birth narrative at all in Mark. The emphasis in that first chapter is all about what Jesus does. And the attribute that sets him apart, the identification of his divinity comes from not what he knows, not who he is, but from his own personal authority and confidence. It is said in that chapter that Jesus spoke with authority personal authority unlike the scribes, unlike anything anyone had ever heard before. If you read that chapter closely you will notice that he is doing everything with great personal authority, or confidence. That is what sets him apart and that is the spark of the divine in him, at least according to the writer of the Gospel of Mark.

I dare say it is also the spark of the divine in us. We don’t need more information these days, we have too much. We don’t need another opinion, or another expert, or consultant, or a coach nearly as much as we need a sense of our own personal authority and our own self-confidence. This is what makes the difference in all that we do. It may not be all that you need or I need to achieve, or succeed, or find happiness, or meaning in this life but without confidence we are most surely lost. You cannot live in this world without it. Fortunately for you and me, we find ourselves in close proximity of the wellspring of confidence and authority. Luckily you and I are committed to finding faith in our lives; bringing God into our lives. You will find no more confidence than that. And it makes the difference. At least that is what the Bible tells us again and again.

We read the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. That is an incredible miracle but if no one had the confidence to walk through that canyon of water it would have been of no consequence that God and Moses had produced such a wonder. According to the story there is no salvation without confidence. Jesus understood this I think and that is why when he healed someone he would so often say, “Your faith has made you well.” He knew that without faith, without confidence, the miracle would be wasted. That is how the miracles of God work. They are all around. All we need is the confidence to live by them.

And there in lies the rub. It is your choice. Could you walk through a canyon of water, is God that good in your life? Or more to the point, is the real miracle of your life a random accident or is your God looking after you, giving you life and breath and abundance. Be confident that God cares for you exceedingly and the miracles shall not cease. This is the promise that is fulfilled in faith. In Christ Jesus. Amen.