“Authority Crisis”
Mark 11:27-12:12 Esv
27 And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28 and they said to him, "By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?" 29 Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me." 31 And they discussed it with one another, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him?' 32 But shall we say, 'From man'?"--they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. 33 So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."
1 And he began to speak to them in parables. "A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 7 But those tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture: "'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?" 12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.†
Reading the Text
Jesus walks into the temple, which we can say is rightly his own. He is The Lord; he is the Son of God Almighty. Jesus has authority to be there like no one else does. From the time he was 12, he referred to the temple as “My Father’s house” and now he has come home. It is the third day that he and the disciples have entered the temple to teach.
On this day, his enemies are lying in wait for him. The “chief priests, scribes and elders” approach him. This is clearly a representative delegation from the Sanhedrin—Israel’s equivalent of the house, senate, and supreme court combined. They converge on him—surround him, as it were—and question him.
Now there are different ways of questioning someone. There is respectful questioning, like disciples asking questions of their Rabbi. They ask questions because they are sincerely devoted to seeking truth and acknowledge the one whom they question as worthy of such questions. Then there is “questioning down,” which can be disrespectful and insolent. You know the feeling when your children question your good judgment. This kind of questioning attempts to put you in the hot seat, with a bright lamp in your face, demanding that you explain yourself. These two kinds of questioning are worlds apart in terms of their attitude and motives.
The elders, scribes and chief priests are not even pretending to be respectful, but put the question to him like federal interrogators:
"By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?"
Jesus cleared the temple and his teaching clearly defied the centuries-old traditions of the most devout Jews. He was an outsider—meaning he didn’t rise up through the right channels and had no interest in the rabbinical circles and councils of Jerusalem—yet he had a huge following. The priests, scribes and elders had controlled the temple for hundreds of years and saw to its standard of practices. They wrote its bylaws and Book of Order, and they were responsible for the theological correctness of the sacrifices and observances.
From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the people were amazed at his teaching—why? Because, as we read in Mark 1: 22:
22 And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.
and 1: 27:
27 And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, "What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him."
and 2:10, when he healed the paralytic:
10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--he said to the paralytic—get up….
and 6:7, when he shares that authority with his disciples:
7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
Clearly, the word authority is at the center of Jesus work and action throughout his ministry. The inquisitors clearly felt like they were the owners—or at least the rightfully-authorized stewards—of the mysteries of the Jewish religion. So of course they want to know how Jesus justifies all he’s doing that stands up and against their establishment.
The irony is almost painful. Here are those with no authority talking down to the one who has true authority. Here are the renters giving lip to the owner. Here are those with no authority disrespectfully questioning the one, true authority; the insolent treating the Lord as though he were being insolent.
Jesus turns the tables on them—meets their disrespectful question with a kinder one:
Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?
After much quibbling they realize that the lose/lose question has been turned back on them. In a number of place in the Psalms we hear David asking that those enemies who set snares for him would be caught in their own devices. Like
Psalm 35:8
So let them fall into their own traps. Let them stumble into their own nets.
What was the basis for the authority of the temple establishment? For one, longevity. They had been in charge so long they had come to believe that their rule was law. Do anything long enough and you get your personal stakes fixed into the ground. They believed the temple belonged to them—that they themselves owned it—because of the many years of establishment. Think squatters’ rights on steroids.
Furthermore, they had been in the business of obeying God’s law for so long that they likely came to confuse the temple—with all its practices and observances—with God himself. For them, a relationship with God meant painstaking observance of their generations-old traditions.
It’s All About Authority
This is similar to what happened after a thousand years of power politics in the Church. The Roman Catholic Magisterium had such grand and glorious traditions, not to mention political power and wealth, that it took the place of God in the world.
Fyodor Dostoevsky expressed this idea very well in The Grand Inquisitor, a poem from The Brothers Karamazov. In the tale, Christ comes back to Earth at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He performs miracles and the people adore him, but he is arrested by Inquisition leaders. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that he would now only interfere with the mission of the Church. He says to Christ, “We don’t need you.”
The Medieval Church tried to take the place of God in people’s lives, just as the temple tried to take the place of God in Jesus’ day.
It is all about authority.
To have authority is to have power and the ability to put things into order. To have authority is to have credibility with those for whom you exercise authority. In Jesus’ day, it was the Sanhedrin. A thousand years ago, it was the Roman Catholic Church. Their words were taken as authoritative and unquestioned. They were unquestioned because they were at the top of the pyramid of questioners and there was no one above them to question them.
Consider the following clip:
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Peasants” see below]
Authority used be a matter of names—as in, “I come in the name of the King of England,” or “Stop in the name of the Law!” Or as we hear in the New Testament, we gather in the name of the Lord, or cast out demons in the name of Jesus (which means with the authority of Jesus).
The Big NO
One simple way of describing authority is by its powers. Chiefly, I think we can say that authorities have the power to say “no” to a variety of liberties. Authorities are those who set and enforce boundaries. This usually amounts to saying, “no”:
No running at the public pool
No guns allowed at the airport
No driving over the speed limit
No violating international boundaries
Authority keeps order and enforces the rule of law.
The 20th century was all about the erosion of authority. Students were encouraged to “Question Authority”—perhaps more in the insolent way than the respectful. We live in a free society that believes deeply in liberty. The down side of this is that every individual has been encouraged to think of him or herself as her own authority. “I decide for me!” is the motto of individual liberty.
Questioning authority can lead to a suspicion of all rule. Any and all attempts to set boundaries—even reasonable ones—is met with suspicion and resistance: “Who are you to say?” which is another way of saying, “by what authority do you tell me no?”
Many contemporaries have even rejected God as an authority, replacing God’s Word and all it meant for America with a new, irreligious morality. The idea that you don’t have to believe in God to be moral is growing in popularity, but were we to ask, ‘By what authority do you call good good?” they would be hard-pressed to answer.
Some reject religion as “repressive,” due in part to the fact that they don’t like the Ten Commandments and don’t feel they have to answer to anyone for what they want to do. They despise any authority but their own, and even despise God for the “noes” of his commandments.
In terms of God’s commandments and indictments, let’s be clear:
Behind every little NO is an enormous YES
For example, with the commandments, behind the no of not using God’s name in vain is the enormous yes of using God’s name only for worship. Behind the no of graven images is the yes of God’s self-revelation. Behind the no of coveting is the yes of human value—that people are more important than possessions, and so on.
The scribes and chief priests had extrapolated over 600 “laws” from the ten commandments. Obeying these traditions became the center of their spirituality. Jesus takes the whole of the Law and Prophets (including the ten commandments) and sums it all up in merely two: love of God and love of neighbor.
Interesting: the entire world—believers and unbelievers—are okay with the second, loving our neighbors, but it is number one that provides the chief offense to secular humanity. People want no authority other than themselves. That is our sinful nature. To obey the first—to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—leaves us little space for self-love. To say The Lord is God or Jesus is Lord acknowledges an authority that no earthly authority can match and to which all are answerable.
People want a God who never says no, but people of faith know that
Behind every little NO is an enormous YES
People of faith love the Lord and want to serve the Lord. We answer to him in all we do. We love his Word, and obedience is not repression but our very pleasure.
Acknowledging the Authority of Jesus
What is our role today? What authority does the Church have? It sounds simple, but everyone wants to their own personal liberties and opinions catered to, and thanks to the many denominations of fragmenting Protestantism, we can shop our personal preferences—go out and find a church that turns a blind eye toward whatever ways we would like to thwart the authority of scripture.
We say, in effect, Jesus has authority over this, this, and this; but not this, this, or this. I can be conservative on this issue, liberal on that issue; aligned with scripture on issue A, but claim a varying interpretation for issue B. Here’s the test: which words in the list below are under Christ’s authority and which areas are under your own, personal authority?:
career finances time
relationships sexuality ideas
politics leisure
When confronted in our own comfort zones and in our won homes by the creator, maker and true owner, who wants to say NO to something we want, like or desire, do we say: “This is MY turf!” or “By what authority do you tell me how to live my life?”
We are the Sanhedrin in the temple, claiming our turf against its true owner.
We are the medieval Catholic Church, claiming that we got it all under control and on mission and therefore don’t need interruptions, even from God.
We are the body of Christ in the world, divided in our minds about what is godly and what is not.
The whole Earth belongs to God. It is his and his alone. He will return one day and many will be offended because they thought they themselves were the owners. †
“Peasants” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! --- HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!