Authority

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on December 14, 2008.

The wolf and the lamb – such a lovely image for a new way of being. Think about it, in the hierarchy of wild things, the wolf is part of the elite power structure. They are predators, good ones, and they are very smart. Wolves live in close knit communities and they hunt in packs. We are frightened of them. Think of all of fairly tales and fables with wolves as the bad guy – Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Wolf, the Three Little Pigs, the Boy Who Cried Wolf. We talk of throwing someone to the wolves, in desperate times the wolf is at the door and the idea of a wolf whistle carries with it the threat of violation. Wolves frighten us because it feels as though they might have power over us. In the animal kingdom, they have authority.

The lamb on the other hand is the meekest, weakest little fluffy adorable thing you can imagine. Lambs need to be tended and cuddled and they make us smile when they frolic about in the fields of springtime. They represent all that is innocent, pure and vulnerable. Lambs are precious, as in Mary had a little one…the prophet Nathan tells King David a story about a man whose darling little lamb was taken for dinner by the mean rich neighbor, we call children “little lambs.” And yet we are afraid of them also – afraid that they are us and that we too are vulnerable, without authority.

In the new heaven and new earth, there will be no dangerous hierarchy – the symbols of inequality meet in the middle and sit down for a meal. No one will be more powerful or more innocent than anyone else. Where now is authority? It is apparently in the relationship of the opposites – freely given by both parties.
This has been quite a week in the news when it comes to power and authority. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich gave us all a glimpse of toxic power and authority running amok. Machiavelli is looking smarter all the time. My main question all week was “why was this man entrusted with authority to begin with?” By what criteria do we assign authority? Apparently we still live in a world that is conflicted about power and how to exercise authority appropriately.

Think about the word – it comes from author – one who creates or originates something. Webster defines authority as “the power to command, determine, influence or judge.” There’s an important distinction to be made here – power can be taken or assumed and fear is one of it’s henchmen – authority must be earned and granted. One rarely has authority in the absence of respect. It was the Bishop’s authority – the authority ascribed by his office – that sent me here – I have authority only to the extent that I earn your respect and hold it in sacred trust. I only have authority if you decide that I do. I believe that the true authority here – other than God – is our commitment to a vision of that holy mountain on which peace reigns and no one is hurt or abused.

Jesus was often challenged by his adversaries about the source of his authority. His words and teaching had inherent power and the scribes and Pharisees wanted to know its source and how he came to be in possession of it. Jesus knew who he was and what he came to reveal. In my often used Dictionary of Biblical Imagery it says that “authority is legitimate power. It implies freedom as well as permission to decide and to act.” Jesus’ authority came from his inner sense of who he was, what God is and he dedicated its use to the revealing of God and the empowering of humanity.

The Episcopal Church has always had an intriguing take on authority. Richard Hooker – Anglican theologian under Elizabeth I, first identified the Three Legged Stool. We give authority to the interplay of Scripture, the Traditions of Christianity and an ever evolving understanding of Reason. We invest considerable authority in the laity of this church – we are democratic, not dogmatic. Last week I spoke of the central tenet of the Protestant Reformation – sola scriptura, scripture sola which granted to the Bible the only and ultimate authority about Jesus, God and God’s will. That worked if you were a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but we are not and have always had a broader understanding of authority. Discontented voices in the Episcopal Church have conveniently overlooked this fact as they have attempted to anchor their criticism in our refusal to put all of our authority eggs in one basket. In this time of The Great Emergence questions of authority have been tossed up in the air like so many juggling balls.

Phyllis Tickle hit one nail squarely on the head as she tries to imagine what the church will look like when this period of Great Emergence has finally revealed the new way of being Christian (The Great Emergence, Baker Books, 2008). She described a church in which people understand their relationship to a congregation based on a sense of belonging instead of belief in a particular doctrine or practice. The old model was believe, behave, belong. There was a prescribed set of ideas to which one agreed which determined conduct which led to an eventual status of belonging. What appears to be coming is some form of belong, behave, believe. One simply belongs to a gathering of Christians by virtue of a shared humanity and an affinity with the individuals involved in whatever the group as a whole is doing. Those who chose to go deeper into the community will begin to engage in the behavior of the group. Out of the active engagement in the life and mission of a congregation, a sense of what one truly believes will emerge. The best experience of this I can describe happens with our children – they belong here – mostly because their parents have brought them – but they know that they belong. They take part in communion, which to them is a symbol of belonging. As they grow up and begin to ponder that sense of welcome and freely available belonging, it might lead to open hearts and compassion, welcome and generosity, as well as a sense of holy belonging to all that is. They belong; they practice communion; eventually they believe in communion.

The church that is emerging right now is suspicious of anything that would put limits on the belonging because to limit belonging short circuits the wonders that it can lead to. The Episcopal tradition is curiously well positioned to make this transition. I say curiously because it appears that we have all of the books, and prescribed behaviors and creeds that appear to come out of the old believe, behave, belong model. But I would claim that we – particularly here at Faith – are not held back by the old model. No one here is told that they have to believe a particular set of facts, no one is told that there is a right way of joining in worship or understanding our holy meal. There is nothing that stands in the way of anyone belonging. What our liturgy does is to make available practices that open us up to belonging to each other and to God. I frankly don’t care whether you say the Nicene Creed or not. The old words do not have inherent authority, their power resides in our willingness to remember and honor a shared history, they are a memory tool. What you believe about God the Creator, Jesus the divine idea and that free radical, the Holy Spirit – is for you to contemplate and decide.

In Advent, as we await that which is not yet completely arrived, we imagine the wolf and lamb at peace, we know that there is a holy. We cannot get there alone, but together we will bring the mountain of peace into the world.
Come, o come, Emmanuel.