Deut 18:15-20; 1 Cor 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.”
I think I speak for all of the faculty members at the STU when I say that I hope that as our Winter term begins next week that we all teach with authority, and that all our students are astounded! Although I also hope that there are no hostile spirits in our online classrooms heckling us….
It is a challenge, though, isn’t it––to know who is speaking with authority, to know which of the people claiming to speak the word of God are actually doing so. There are so many people in the world right now claiming to be prophets, claiming to speak on behalf of God, asserting quite strongly that God wants this, or that, or the other––many of them very earnest in their beliefs, convinced that they have a teaching from God that will change the world.
As people who earnestly desire to take in the word of the Lord and to follow Christ, we get confused and anxious when we hear so many different, and especially opposing, teachings. We don’t want to follow the wrong teacher, we don’t want to end up on the wrong side, we don’t want to be like the “weak” ones in the community of Corinth who end up compromising their own consciences by following false teachings. We yearn for one single “right” voice, one prophet, one teacher who can assure us that our interpretations, our hermeneutics, our proclamations of the Gospel, our social justice actions, our political affiliations are the ones to which God calls us. Instead, we find ourselves challenged, and sometimes exhausted, because there are too many voices, too many bloggers, too many op-ed writers, too many biblical scholars, I might even say too many theologians for us to easily discern who is speaking with God’s authority, to clearly discern whose teachings we should take as our own and, as present and future leaders in the church, pass on to others. How are we to know?
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”
There it is, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, our hermeneutical key, our benchmark, our principle for discernment, as it were: love builds up. This is the essence of Paul’s message here: we can identify those who offer true words from God when the knowledge they impart directs us to love for the sake of building up the community. Love for the building up of the community. This is what the voice of the Lord our God is teaching us over and over and over again: to love, not to tear others down, not to build us up individually, but to build up the community as a whole. Teachings that seem brilliant but pit us against one another, that belittle or disparage others, that encourage contempt––these teachings are not from God. Teachings that seem crude but encourage us to walk with one another, to lift one another up, to open our hearts to others––these teachings build up the community in love. These teachings come from God.
Prophets from God, teachers from God, they give us words that heal, that give new life. We encounter this most clearly in our Gospel reading for today, in Jesus’ visit to the synagogue in Capernaum. The heart of the action, the literal centre of the pericope, is Jesus casting out the disruptive spirit. The seven verses are presented as a chiasm, to throw a little biblical studies in there. And in the very centre is Jesus and his words that bring new life. When violence threatens, Jesus silences the spirit of hatred, and calls it out––literally out, thereby healing the man, and by extension the community. The people identify him as teaching with authority not only because he rebuked an unclean spirit, but because his rebuke resulted in healing and new life for the one possessed. Jesus’ authority came from his words and actions of love, building up the community.
“All of us possess knowledge,” as Paul writes rather sarcastically. And all of us will possess even more knowledge by the time this semester is over. But the life of a Christian-in-community is not about knowledge, thank goodness, no matter what we professors say about grades and rubrics. In the end, it is about love. It is about the love we share with the world that God shares with us through Christ. It is about the love that builds us all up together, so that we all might be healed.
As we begin our winter semester together next week, as you embark once again on the important and necessary work of Biblical analysis, of critical engagement with theology, of learning the ins and outs of preaching and liturgy and pastoral care, as you open your minds to the bottomless pits of knowledge before you, take comfort in the reminder that the teachings that come from God are the ones that assure you that you are loved, that in Christ you are given new life, and that encourage you to share that same teaching with others, for the building up of the entire community. God has not actually left us to muddle through it on our own, but has sent us a true Word, one of love and life for all. Thanks be to God, Amen.
