Sermon: Sept. 29, 2008

Matthew 21:23-32

What is your attitude to authority? The link in the readings that we heard today is the issue of authority. In the passage from Matthew’s Gospel, the religious officials of Jesus’ time want to know by what or whose authority Jesus dares to preach, teach and heal the afflicted. And then the attitude of two sons to authority is juxtaposed in the second half of that passage.

Jesus tells the story of the farmer with two sons. The farmer asks each son to go to work in the vineyard. One says “no” and then does the right thing any way and the other says “yes” but does not keep his word. While the second son is careful to look like he is obeying the authority of his father, his heart is really not in it. Meanwhile, the first son seems less obedient but then proves that his heart really is inclined towards his father. Of the two, he may be the most contrarian, but he is also the more authentic and loving of the two.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest, I have always had a bit of a problem with authority. And I reckon that this is part of what it means to be a baby-boomer, or a person born between 1946 and 1964. To say that our generation questioned authority is an understatement. We were anti-authority, anti-institutional, anti-status quo. We were iconoclastic and bold: ready to discard tired old social conventions, to unmask hypocritical belief systems, to tear down doctrines of conformity. No one over the age of 35 could be trusted. We would make up our own minds about right and wrong.

No doubt there is something good to be said about questioning authority. We learned through the experience of the German people during the 1930s and 40s that a society with an authoritarian mindset can have catastrophic consequences. And lest we believe that there was some defect specific to the German people that led to the Holocaust, Yale social scientist Stanley Milgrim demonstrated in the 1970s that just about any human being is capable of startling acts of cruelty in the name of following orders.

So there is no virtue in blind obedience to authority. But on the other hand a complete lack of trust or respect for authority can also be disastrous. When I was a prison chaplain at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a Women’s Maximum Security Prison, I met one of the casualties of the Age of Aquarius radical thinking. Judith Clark was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society, the Weathermen, the Weather Underground and finally a supporter of the Black Panthers. Together with Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, she assisted the Black Panthers in robbing an armoured Brinks truck. The driver was killed and all those involved received harsh sentences.

Judy Clark received the harshest sentence of all and not because of her role in the crime. Her sentence was harsh because she refused to accept the authority of the court. On the grounds that the American government was an illegitimate authority, she refused to appear in court and was sentenced to forty years in prison with no possibility of parole, in her absence. Tragically, she has spent the last twenty five years or so with an almost complete lack of freedom, subject to the punitive authority of the prison system.

Interestingly, after turning her back on institutional authority in her youth, her time in prison has been characterized by a whole hearted appropriation of institutional religion, Conservative Judaism. In prison Judy spends much of her time studying the Jewish Scriptures and writings. And she has become a source of strength and inspiration for others as a chaplaincy assistant who helps to lead an interfaith worship service and provides pastoral care to other inmates. Having acted with disregard for authority in the past, she now finds meaning and comfort from the authority of her religion.

In Jesus’ time the religious authorities had a problem with his ministry because he could claim no institutional authority. He was not a priest who served in the Temple. His followers called him rabbi however. They gave him authority nd this too troubled the religious status quo. Jesus had charismatic authority. This comes from the Greek word “charis” meaning grace. Charismatic authority is bestowed upon a leader when his or her followers discern that this person is something special. Has something special. And they want to follow because of their attraction to that leader, not because he or she has the power to coerce them.

Unlike institutional authority charismatic authority depends upon an internal quality or characteristic. It is not validated by its position in the hierarchy of a human institution. It has to with a way of being, an interiority that is authentic and self aware. And this distinction between internal and external authority is really at the heart of what both Jesus and Paul are trying to get across this morning. The son who said no and then said yes. And for Paul, the people of Phillipi who could be trusted to carry on the good work even when Paul was not looking.

Paul writes in his letter to the Christians at Phillipi. “I know that you obey me, even much more in my absence than in my presence.” The Phillipians have internalized Paul’s teaching. They have no more need of his supervision. They do the right thing even when no one is looking. In other words, they have been transformed by the love of Christ.

A young woman I know was a missionary in China for a few years. And when she returned to the U.S., she reported that it is widely known in China that people have trouble doing the right thing if they think no one is watching. I’m sure that this is true everywhere in the world. But apparently it is a big concern in China, where the people were under the thumb of an external, authoritarian government for so long. A government that oppressed its people and had little tolerance for religious practice. According to a sociologist of religion that I spoke to recently, the Chinese government is now waking up and taking note of the transformative effect of Christian belief on individuals and its consequences for the moral fabric of society in general.

The Christian faith is a pilgrimage through life that begins in baptism and ends in death and resurrection, new life. But at its core it is really about transformation. An interior process, not the external adherence to a belief system and a moral code. The external authority is internalized. Paul says, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Does Paul mean that we should be afraid of God? Not at all. What Paul is telling us is that when we internalize the voice of God as we hear it in the Scriptures, in the traditions established by hundreds of generations of Christians who have preceded us and in how our God given reason makes sense of the Scriptures in light of our lived experience, when we earnestly seek to wrestle with all of these sources of authority in our Christian walk as Anglicans then we can be confident that it is the voice of God himself speaking within us, speaking to our hearts.

Today we will baptize the newest member of our church. Indeed for a brief time she will be the very newest member of the Christian faith. We baptize in the context of our communal worship, our corporate worship as the Body of Christ made manifest in the world. Because it is here, that we listen to God’s voice speaking to us through the Scriptures. It is here that we taste God, and God’s healing power in the Eucharist. It is here that we touch God in the hands we shake at the Peace in the service. And see God in the eyes that meet our own as we worship together. As we join our voices together and become one people before God our maker, our sustainer and our redeemer.

This morning’s readings are about authority, my brothers and sisters. And I would like to leave you with this. Baptism is the beginning of our life in Christ but it is only the beginning. The life of a Christian is a pilgrimage. It is a journey from baptism to the end of the time allotted to us to spend on this earth. Religious institutions, the church, can provide signposts to help us along the way, but ultimately as Paul says, each one of us must work out our own salvation. I urge you to open your heart, mind and soul to the transformative power of Christ who is the ultimate authority. Amen.