As One Without Authority, a sermon based on 1 Peter 5: 8-10 and Mark 1: 21-28, preached on January 28, 2024

A couple weeks ago, I was having lunch with three other pastors at Sugar Cakes on the Square. You may have heard that Marietta Community Church has a new pastor about my age named Zack Carden. I wanted to introduce Zack to David Eldridge, who is the pastor at StoneBridge Church and to my friend Brandon Owen, who is the pastor at First Baptist. The four of us were having lunch, and while “four protestant pastors walked into Sugar Cakes” might sound like the beginning of a joke, it wasn’t a joke; it was important. It's important that the pastors in this town know each other and that the religious community be as unified as possible because if churches are busy competing with each other, we’re not working as allies in the greater struggles that our community faces. One of those great struggles that we’re likely to ignore if we’re busy competing with each other for members is that half the population of Cobb County has no religious affiliation whatsoever. Did you know that half the county has no religious affiliation? Look it up. It’s in the census data. If we know that half the county has no place of worship, then we don’t really need to worry about who goes where and which is the biggest church. We need to focus on the reality that there are about 800,000 people in Cobb County and 400,000 have no church, no synagogue, no mosque, no nothing, so I love getting pastors together. It helps me remember that we’re on the same team. Besides that, the four of us have other things in common to talk about. We all have families. We have kids in sports. We love this city. We all love our churches. We all care about the same things, and we all share the same kind of stress that comes from doing ministry in a culture of division. When we had lunch, we talked about that. Zack from Marietta Community Church, Brandon from First Baptist, David from StoneBridge, and I are all anxious about the upcoming presidential election that’s already heated. We’re all four struggling with the stress that comes from serving a church made up of a variety of people who won’t all be voting for the same person in a political climate as divided as ours. I want to share that commonality with you today. All four of us are dreading November already, and I bring that up with you because when I think about leadership and how a leader should act, I look to the Bible. I read about Jesus, Who our second Scripture lesson says was different from the scribes for he spoke with authority. How was Jesus different from the scribes? And how is His Word different from the messages we are hearing now from the news, the primaries, and from the courthouse steps? What was it about Jesus that made Him sound like one who spoke with authority, so unlike the scribes? In our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark, there was a crowd of people in the synagogue, but one person was left out. We read in verse 23: Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. Did you hear that? Whose synagogue was it? It was “their” synagogue, meaning that this man with the unclean spirit didn’t belong. Just that one word, “their,” tells us so much, for in a culture of division, there are lines that separate people from each other. It was their synagogue, the scribes said, for they were well-versed in telling everyone who was in and who was out. When I read about the scribes, it makes me think of the movie Mean Girls that’s just been rereleased as a musical. These girls were good at maintaining the social hierarchy of their high school. They knew how to maintain a system of insiders and outsiders. Likewise, in the synagogue that Sabbath day long ago, there were those on the inside and there was but one on the outside, yet with compassion, Jesus went to the lost sheep and brought him back to the fold. With compassion, Jesus bridged the divide in the room. It’s as though He were blowing the horn outside the city of Jericho, for the walls came tumbling down. With compassion, Jesus was kind to the man who was possessed by a demon. Is that what would have happened in our political rallies today? Last Wednesday morning, the state’s Democratic Party Chair was here in Cobb County, and he said that this is the year to break the Republican Party’s back. When I read that, I felt sick to my stomach, but when it comes to scribes who speak without authority, that’s often the best that they can do. Rally supporters and target the opposition. It sounds like the way college football fans talk about each other, but because it’s politics, it sounds to me like the beginning of a civil war, and it certainly doesn’t sound like Jesus, for whose back did Jesus ever break? In the synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit. Jesus went right over to this man with the unclean spirit and healed him. That’s the way Jesus did it. That’s the way Jesus lived, and they said He “taught as one having authority,” yet I read about another man in the paper who said the great book debate that the Cobb County School System is wrapped up in is a matter of good and evil. My friends, if we’re going to start talking about evil, know that according to Scripture, evil is described in different ways, yet often as the voice stirring up division. From our first Scripture lesson, we read: Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Here in 1st Peter, the devil, like the snake in Genesis, is compared to an animal, but this time the animal is not a snake but a lion. Do you know how lions hunt? There are great videos of lions hunting on National Geographic, but most of the time, it’s the lionesses chasing down an antelope while the lion sleeps under a tree. The way the lion hunts is by roaring. What happens is when a group of wildebeests or water buffalo know that a lion is around, they form a circle around their young, with their horns pointed out. It looks like an image out of the old westerns when the settlers would circle the wagons with the rifles pointed out and the children protected in the center. Likewise, the wildebeests will circle around the young with their horns on the outside, and so long as the circle is intact, the lions won’t attack. They’d just be running into a bunch of horns and wouldn’t be able to get to the young that they want to eat. However, when the lion roars, sometimes the roar scares the wildebeests so much that the circle divides, and once the circle divides, the children get eaten. I bring up that image today because I see so many politicians these days harping on divisive issues to stir up their supporters. They roar, and their supports go to one side, dividing the circle, dividing our communities, dividing our families, dividing our country. The left goes this way, and the right goes that way. The conservatives stand on one side and the liberals on the other. Next thing you know, the scribes start talking as though one side is good and the other side is evil, yet according to 1st Peter, dividing this way is playing into the plan of the evil one, for once the population is divided, the children are easy prey. Friends, I’m sick and tired of division. Maybe you are too, and so maybe you can understand why the synagogue was so excited to hear Jesus speak as one with authority, for in a culture of division, where communities are divided, the voice of one who brings unity back is worthy of celebrating. Unlike the scribes who called one group good and the other group evil, if Jesus ever talked about there being two groups of people, He called one group neighbors and the other group enemies, and guess what? He said that we should love them both. That’s the truth. He’s the truth. And while I don’t always read about Christ-like leadership in the newspaper, sometimes I do, and when I see it, I’ve got to celebrate it. We must celebrate the good news just as much as we worry over the bad news. Did you read about Hodge Army Navy in the paper last week? The store was in the newspaper because it’s going to be closing, which is sad. That store has been around for 70 years now. Maybe some of you bought your first sleeping bag from there, or your first pair of hiking books. Another reason this store will be missed is that when veterans die, they often want to be buried in uniform, only putting an accurate uniform together isn’t easy after years of retirement from the military. The old uniform might not fit or might have been lost in a move. Hodge Army Navy would put accurate uniforms together so that veterans might be buried in uniform, and I bring this story from the paper up simply to say that the song goes, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Not by how well we break each other’s backs. Not by how judgmental we are. Not by how much ink we spill calling God’s children who think differently than we do evil, for once we become the ones who make the division worse, we become evil ourselves. The way of Jesus is seeking out the lost and the friendless, for when we get to heaven, St. Peter’s not going to be asking for our voting record. He’s not going to ask where we stand on the divisive issues of the day. I can hear him reading from Matthew 25, where Jesus said, “for I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was in prison, and you visited me.” The ones picketing in the street might say, “Lord, I would have laid down my political agenda, but I didn’t know it was You,” and the One with authority will say, “As you did not do it to one of the least of these, so you did not do it to me.” The One with authority said, “Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Go to the one who has been possessed by the demon, even, and love that one too.” In our world today, there are so many who are speaking without authority, so let’s stop paying them all this attention. If they stir us up and pull us apart, let’s pay less attention to them and more attention to the One who said, “Do not fear, I am with you.” Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemy. Rejoice, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. Amen.