Monday, December 19, 2022

 

Monday, December 19, 2022


Psalms 110, 111

Isaiah 19:1-18

Mark 11:27-12:12


Observance: Fourth Monday in Advent


“By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?”


The word “authority” seems to have fallen out of fashion (although the concept itself is more popular than ever). We like to think of the concept of equality as a virtue; that a healthy society is one in which no one person has authority over another. But there is always that side of human nature that likes to get one up over someone else, and so we still have things like blasphemy laws (not the spiritual type; rather, the type that protect certain interest groups), the age old mechanism of social banishment and exclusion, and myriad other ways of making sure we are able to make someone else know their place.


In the age of democracy and decolonisation, when the various Commonwealth dominions began to exercise self-determination (such as our own nation), we still had a culture-wide inclination towards certain Christian teachings, and one such of these, that nobody is perfect, influenced the design of our democratically elected system of government. The crown had, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fallen far from the days just a few hundred years earlier of the Sun King, Louis XIV, when he made the claim that “L'État, c'est moi” (“The state is me”). Although to be fair, even when he said this, not every monarch could get away with the outrageous step of removing representation and dissolving parliament, as Charles I discovered when his head was separated from his body for the effort.


Jesus was getting uppity. Travelling around the regional and rural areas and performing miracles for the country bumpkins was one thing; coming into the temple and putting some life into religion was quite another. The chief priests, scribes and elders came to Him and asked Him, in so many words, “who do you think you are?”


Well, Christian, who do you think Jesus is? He asked His interrogators about John the Baptist. What a great question, because it lifts the rug on so many other related issues and sends the cockroaches scurrying. If John the Baptist was called by God, then he really was in the line of the ancient prophets. If he really was in the line of the ancient prophets, then what he said about Jesus really was true. And if what the prophets really said about Jesus was true – well, then the game was up. They would have to admit that they were speaking to the creator of the universe.


You can access the creator of the universe without fear, Christian. There is no need for interrogation, jealousy, misplaced authority, or any other worry. Christ Jesus came into this world to bring you home, into His love. Trust that what the scriptures say about Him is true, because it is. He really is the One with the authority to make peace between you and God.





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