Authority Questions

Who do you think you are?

Who said you could do that?

Hey, what’s the big idea?

Think you’re a wise guy, huh?

You need to show a picture ID.

You’re too big for your britches.

You need taking down a peg.

We question authority all the time. Sometimes viciously – see political ads. Sometimes violently – look at street brawls and drive-by shootings Sometimes civilly – the Scots raised the question of secession, campaigned for and against it, and answered in a plebiscite. Sometimes in heated arguments – Americans engage in these a lot: take fracking (or for God’s sake, don’t!); take climate change; take Market Basket; take Malala, in India; take Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO.

We also honor authority. We salute the flag. We rise, when the judge enters the courtroom. For the most part, we stop for red lights. We accept the process of elections. And their results, even when a mess.

Jesus, in Jerusalem, but also nearly everywhere, was challenged often. What authority do you have? Who are you to teach the way you do? Who are you to change the way we understand things? Who are you to alter what we know about good and evil?

Someone always objects when he is challenging notions of good and evil, because he is shifting the ground of their souls by his words – and this is a matter of life itself, or you might say, life and death itself. Jesus – or anyone who shifts the ground of our understanding of good and evil in this world – is holding out an apple, a forbidden fruit, and like Adam and Eve, who ate and digested and were made wiser by that apple, Jesus is holding out a clarity we did not have before.

Jesus does not produce an ID, a degree, or a doctrine on which he relies.

We do that, defending him with our rationales that subtly reduce his stories to simpler terms, and we have also introduced an Authority, God the Father, white-haired and peeking through the clouds.

Jesus speaks instead about the Spirit as Author of his Words. This is a very different kind of authority. An Author is a creator, an imaginative Shaper, a Maker of Wisdom. An Authority is an enforcer of someone else’s wisdom on the rest of us.

An Author tells a story that expands the soul’s universe, making room for something new to be born, increasing our diversity by dividing our harmony. An Authority draws us into conformity of thought, in which it is supposed that we are stronger, safer, and closer to God the Father.

Jesus tells stories of heaven and earth in which all things are possible, and nothing is impossible, and invites us to join in expanding the universe of wisdom. Authorities, who speak in doctrines and write creeds, reduce what is possible to one thing only. They crowd us together in herds, grazing in a well-known pasture, without thought of the necessary journey herds must often make to new, ungrazed fields.

Jesus speaks about shepherds, good ones, bad ones, and about the risk and perils, and the lostness – and the journey – needed to become safe together. What about John? he asks them. Was his baptism from heaven, or of human origin? They are consternated. They answer, We do not know.

Well then, Jesus responds, I won’t tell you where my authority comes from (and I presume he means because they still won’t know if he does.) Instead he tells them a story: There were two sons. Their father asked both to do some important work. One said no, but did it. One said yes, but did not do it. Who was righteous? And they say the first. Just so, says Jesus, and points out that sinners and prostitutes, who live a public No, accepted John’s authority, and so were more righteous than churchgoing doubters.

Where indeed is your righteousness now? the Scots cast ballots last week. And after weeks of considering many possibilities, from the allure of legends of William the Bruce to the lingering sorrow of Culloden, from serious questions about health care and jobs, to puzzling ones about the European Union, the flag, and the role of the Queen in a separate Scotland, the Scots brought forth from their hearts and souls a decision to commit to a future together with the other residents of their islands.

And they brought forth a great deal more than this, by raising a question no one imagined could ever again be raised, and by questioning the changing role of nation states, and the changed locus of righteousness: which is better discovered by smaller groups of people rethinking things, than by doctrines and creeds.

This past weekend, the mini-Telluride Festival in Portsmouth, NH showed a pre-release film called The Imagination Game, about the brilliant, tragic, life of Alan Turing. The film was so hot in London at its premiere that over 35,000 people stood in line waiting for tickets, prompting a London paper to call it the most sought-after performance in history. Turing, a mathematical genius who decoded German transmissions in WW2, saving an estimated 14,000 lives, was homosexual. After the war, caught in a sexual liaison, Turing was tried and given the choice of prison or medication to turn off his libido. The medication interfered with his ability to do math, as well as his ability to be sexual. After two years he committed suicide. In 2011 the Queen pardoned him, and honored him posthumously.

He’s a hero now, beloved by British people. And they are no longer waiting for the churches or the law to tell them who is righteous, or what is holy. Jesus would say Amen.