The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Deuteronomy 18:15–20
Revelation 12:1–5a
Mark 1:21–28
Authority, so problematic for us, is central to the biblical message. The Kingdom of God is not a democracy, as a character in Chariots of Fire pointed out. When the [Israelite's] banded together to decide things their own way, they voted either to go back to Egypt or to make a golden calf. Almost the only time the apostles acted unanimously was when ‘they all forsook him and fled’. God’s redemptive word of authority, calling us to order, breaks through the noise of humans stampeding in the wrong direction. Admitting this means swallowing pride. Refusing to recognize it means conniving at self-destruction. Lemmings all go together when they go.
And yet. We learnt long ago that power corrupts; we learnt more recently that all authority is to be distrusted. Humanly speaking these are important lessons. Yet one can no more live on suspicion than one can eat a Marxist tract. Without trust breaking through afresh we condemn ourselves to bleak, cynical lives. Trustworthy authority appears, as a strange gift from God, so that we may find the way forward out of our self-imposed prison.
Of course, the costs of freedom sometimes make us shrink back. Notice how the destructive, dehumanizing ‘unclean spirit’ shrieks out its accusation that it is the one being destroyed. Truth is an early victim in spiritual warfare, as in other kinds. The new teaching, ‘with authority’ (as Jesus’ onlookers remark with surprise), comes to cut through the shroud of lies, to announce the presence of the living, life-giving God, the only one in whose name a true prophet will speak, and to declare the victory of this God over the ancient dragon.
Turn this scenario into lurid apocalyptic dream-language, and you have Revelation 12 in a nutshell (though why one should break the paragraph before verse 6 is a mystery). Many cultures told tales of a young prince, born to destroy the old tyrant, spirited away until the final battle lest the tyrant strike first. First-century Rome told a story (not least through images on coins, the main mass medium of that society) of the resplendent goddess Roma giving birth to the young emperor who would rule the whole world, defeating all rivals. The early Christians adapted the first of these, and showed up the second as a ghastly parody of the truth.
In the Christian story, replete with biblical echoes (e.g. of Psalm 2:9), the old tyrant is the Satan the accuser. Rome becomes the agent of evil, not the redeemer. And Jesus, born from within the messianic community, is destined to overthrow not only all arrogant human authority but all destructive spiritual forces as well.
True authority is thus the liberating rule of the woman’s child. The idea that all authority is suspect turns out to be the last great lie of the jailer. But if valid authority is revealed in Jesus, its shape and goal are very different from what we have come to expect.
N. T. Wright, Twelve Months of Sundays: Reflections on Bible Readings, Year B (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002). 24-25.
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