St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock
Sunday, 1 February 2009, Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss
From time to time, if you are anything like me, you lose sleep, because a decision faces you that you simply cannot dodge. If you just knew what to do, you could doze off. The readings today could help with that, for they focus on authority. Don't you find decisions come more easily when you have the solid ground of certainty under your feet? Today I hope to give us help seeking that solid ground we seek.
In the first reading God tells the people to look to Moses for their authority, and after him the prophets. Authority such as this could scarcely be greater, for as God says, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet.” The question for us is this: do we have access to this kind of absolute, infallible authority? Often the decisions we face come clouded with ambiguity; who or what can cut through that for us, the way the prophets did for the people of Israel? Might it be the church? Let's look at some recent church history.
Following on the reforms of Vatican II, some devout Roman Catholics believed they had wasted their lives, and they left the Church. Nuns were among the hardest hit. Many of them had trusted the “infallible” authority of the Catholic Church. They had accepted, for instance, that non-Catholics were damned to hell; that Scripture had been interpreted once and for all by the Magisterium – meaning the Pope and bishops; so that reading the Bible smacked of apostasy. They accepted that the liturgy was set in stone and liturgical renewal amounted to heresy; that right and wrong came in an absolute code and must be accepted without question. Dialogue with other religions invited damnation. Then Vatican II happened, and opened all that to question. Those who had staked their world view and their self-understanding on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church found the rug pulled out from under them. What could they believe? Or who? They had invested too much authority in that one institution. As a result, life energies had been wasted and possibly spiritual lives had been lost.
Or take an example from the Protestant side. The evangelical pastor, Rick Warren, has written a best seller entitled, The Purpose Driven Life. If you read it you cannot help but be impressed by many of his spiritual insights. For instance, he writes, “The greatest gift you can give someone is your time.” Or this, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” Again, “When you feel abandoned by God, yet continue to trust [God], you worship [God] in the deepest way....” I don't know about you, but to that I say YES. But then at other points we draw back; for we sense that he has invested too much authority in the Bible. If, as he believes, the Bible is an infallible authority – inerrant – then he has no alternative but to keep women from exercising leadership roles in the church; no alternative but to condemn homosexuality; no alternative but to approve violence against children under the guise of discipline; no alternative but to preach that non-Christians cannot enter heaven. To such teaching as that, I say NO. So whether we are dealing with the Roman Catholic Church or the Bible, the issue of authority confronts us. How much authority can we give them? And how shall we know where to draw the line? Or more sobering, is there any authority to which we can turn without question?
In truth, the answer is no, not one. This is not an acceptable answer for some people, because their need for security demands a prophet who will speak only the words of God. Let that prophet be the Church, the Bible, or a fire-eating pastor, they must have certainty. But let us not dismiss them too fast! We occasionally see someone with a metal frame around their head to hold it up. Without that frame their head would roll helplessly on their shoulders and their neck could not heal. All of us go through periods when we need a similar spiritual framework, an authority we trust without question. In the end, however, if we come to depend on any such framework, it will weaken us where once it strengthened us. We use it while we must. We need not wear it for life, however.
While there is, in the end, no infallible authority that we can trust absolutely – who speaks only the words of God, as it were – we are far from being adrift. Both the Bible and the Church teachings do have authority. In addition, we have the authority of our own judgment, based on what we have learned and experienced in life – in every field, from science to engineering to art. So we have those three sources of authority; and for most people they have to do. There is one other, however, and everyone can have access to it if they wish. This is an authority that Jesus, himself, drew from.
When Jesus taught in Capernaum, as we read this morning, the people felt astounded at his authority. By rights they should have ignored Jesus. After all, he had no credentials – he was not a graduate of a rabbinical school, not a scribe, not a Pharisee, not a priest, not even well traveled. Why did they listen, and how did they know he had authority? How can we recognize this same authority?
The authority I am speaking of differs from the other three, because they are all in a sense external. Even the third, our life experience, comes from what we have learned in and from the world. Jesus' authority, and the authority that is available to us, too, comes from within. Perhaps in himself Jesus called it the Holy Spirit; Paul called it the life of Christ in us. Whatever name we give it – if I may be a bit fanciful - it works like a tuning fork. It tells us if we are vibrating on God’s frequency. When we go off course, we feel the discordance through our whole being, body and soul. Likewise when we are on course, we sense the harmony through and through. At least potentially we can. Perfect pitch, spiritually speaking, has to be developed; and we develop it through the practice of prayer.
There is a danger in what I am saying, possibly more serious than the earlier danger of accepting an external authority uncritically. That is the danger Paul wrote about to the Corinthians. They had developed a certain amount of the authority I am calling the life of Christ in us – enough so that they knew they were free from the authority of the Torah that prohibited eating food sacrificed to idols. But they had not developed to the point where they could tell the difference between freedom and license. So with a clear conscience they helped themselves to the food that had been sacrificed to an idol. Other, newly-hatched Christians had scarcely begun to develop the life of Christ in themselves; they still turned to the Torah for authority – as they should! Until our inner authority has matured, we must hold to the external authorities. Otherwise we shall suffer and, worse still, make others suffer. So, following the example of those who ate, these new Christians ate also; only they did so believing it was wrong. So they sinned; and they had been brought to do so by their more mature sisters and brothers in Christ – more mature, but still not mature enough to discern the difference between true freedom and license. Real discernment can only come from a daily habit of practicing the presence of God.
I want to close by saying more about that. How does practicing the presence of God make our inner authority ever more reliable? I heard a lecture recently in which the lecturer asked us, “What is probably the largest living organism on earth?” The answer: a fungus discovered in a national forest in eastern Oregon. It lives three feet underground and is estimated to cover 2,200 acres. It measures 3.5 miles across and would take up 1,665 football fields. Imagine if your toe itched and it was 3.5 miles away! Scientists estimate that the fungus is between 2,000 and 7,000 years old. The small mushrooms seen above ground are only the tip of the iceberg. Is it too far-fetched to think of the universe as one vast spiritual body and of ourselves as tiny mushrooms growing above ground?
I spoke at the beginning about finding that solid ground of certainty we seek. We shall never find it in what I am calling outside authorities – Scripture, the Church, or our own knowledge and experience. We can begin to find it in that inner authority, the life of Christ in us. I say begin to find it, because we shall never reach the level of certainty that Jesus had. Nevertheless, the more we are able to feel the truth of that connection between us and all that is, the more trust-worthy our inner, spiritual authority will grow. It must, for we would feel any harm to anyone anywhere as harm to ourselves. If you will forgive my putting it this way, to practice the presence of God is to sit, quiet and alert, like a mushroom, simply being aware of our oneness with the whole cosmic fungus.