{"id":3449,"date":"2024-03-04T09:27:56","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3449"},"modified":"2024-03-04T09:27:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:27:56","slug":"speaking-with-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/04\/speaking-with-authority\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking with Authority"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>
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Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
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Invite a bunch of pastors to sit down together, and eventually they\u2019ll get around to a familiar question:
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Now that you\u2019ve spent a few years in church leadership, what\u2019s the one thing you wish you had learned back in seminary?\u00a0<\/em>
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The answer I\u2019ve heard most often is conflict management \u2013 an admission that from time to time church members can see things, well, somewhat differently.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s leadership and strategic planning.\u00a0 Clergy may excel in pastoral care but have no idea how to help a governing board prepare for a new phase of ministry down the road.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful to delve into both Greek and Hebrew, but most pastors I know wish they had learned a great deal more about family counseling or how to lead a high-integrity stewardship campaign.\u00a0 \u00a0
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As I look back, I wish I had learned something about exorcism.\u00a0
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It never occurred to me that I would ever come face-to-face with spiritual evil.\u00a0 After all, churches are where spiritually healthy people are supposedly to hang out, right?\u00a0
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As it turns out, the average church is one of the best places in the world to hide.\u00a0 Churches are places where people can avoid faith and avoid God by becoming religious.\u00a0 Congregations are often filled with respectable people or people who are doing their utmost to look<\/em> respectable.
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And it was the respectable people of Jesus\u2019 time \u2013 the Bible scholars, legal experts, theologians, and \u201csenior pastors\u201d \u2013 who made sure he ended up on a cross.\u00a0
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Ironically, it was the socially disrespectable<\/em> people \u2013 the lepers, prostitutes, embezzlers, and heretics \u2013 who loved him.
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In his 1983 book People of the Lie<\/em>, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck suggested that people who are afraid to face their own frailties and failures often find faith communities to be great hideouts.\u00a0 Such individuals can hate while pretending to love \u2013 and often find spiritual language (and Scripture verses) to back up their actions.
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The congregation I pastored made a serious effort to reach out to unchurched and \u201cde-churched\u201d people \u2013 individuals who had given up on the idea that Jesus was someone special.\u00a0 As a number of them began attending our gatherings, they brought with them what can only be described as the spiritual detritus of a post-Christian culture \u2013 including experimentation with witchcraft, spiritism, and Satan worship.
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Several individuals, having made previous personal commitments to \u201cspirit guides\u201d and pagan deities, were so spiritually paralyzed they needed deliverance.
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It was about that time that I began to wish I had learned something about exorcism.\u00a0
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I also began to zero in on the biblical accounts concerning spiritual evil and demonization.\u00a0 One of Jesus\u2019 earliest miracles concerns just such a confrontation in Mark 1:21-28:
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They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are\u2014the Holy One of God!” “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!\u201d The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.<\/em>
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The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching \u2014 and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.<\/em>
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It\u2019s not easy for modern people to make sense of such texts, for at least three reasons.
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First, the reality of the spirit world \u2013 including the existence of fallen or impure spirits \u2013 is simply assumed on the pages of Scripture.\u00a0
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There is no defining chapter on demonology.\u00a0 No one knows precisely how such entities came to be, and thousands of books \u2013 many of which contradict each other \u2013 have been written in a vain attempt to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
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Second, significant advances in science and medicine in recent centuries have helped us demystify some of the frightening behavior we sometimes see in our fellow humans.\u00a0 In the ancient world, any condition that caused someone to lose control \u2013 such as epilepsy, delirium, convulsions, or various nervous disorders \u2013 was assumed to be caused by invasive spiritual forces. \u00a0Today we can diagnose and treat many such conditions.\u00a0
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This is not to say, however, that science has proved that demonization is just an illusion.\u00a0 Jesus, in a holistic way, seems to have grasped that spiritual and physical afflictions are closely related.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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Third, Christians from time to time have done untold damage by attributing demonization to men and women suffering from various kinds of mental illness.\u00a0 This is truly dangerous ground.
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So, how can we read the Gospel stories about Jesus\u2019 confrontations with evil in such a way that takes them seriously, honors God, yet avoids bringing harm to others?\u00a0 Let\u2019s set aside several days this week to consider in greater detail some of these challenging texts.\u00a0
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We can begin by noting what the crowd notices in Mark chapter one: Jesus heals the man in the Capernaum synagogue by speaking with authority.\u00a0
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When it comes to defeating evil, Hollywood is fascinated with power encounters. \u00a0The only way to take down supernatural entities is by utilizing silver bullets, stakes to the heart, or by crossing the streams of proton packs in the presence of a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.\u00a0
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But Scripture is all about truth encounters.\u00a0 Jesus may be the living embodiment of all the power in the cosmos, but he acts with authority instead of force.\u00a0
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If you\u2019re driving down the street and a police officer steps into the middle of road, raising his hand and ordering you to stop, you hold all the cards when it comes to power<\/em>.\u00a0 You can do a U-turn and speed away.\u00a0 Or you can accelerate and aim directly for the cop.\u00a0 Neither of these strategies is highly recommended.
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That\u2019s because the police officer holds all the cards when it comes to authority<\/em>.\u00a0 The reason he can signal your car to stop, and expect you to obey, is that he is the authoritative representative of the overwhelming power of local government officials.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Because Jesus has the authority to do so, he simply muzzles the afflicted man in the synagogue.\u00a0 \u201cBe quiet!\u201d\u00a0 The unclean spirit is compelled to obey.\u00a0 Then he gives a direct command: \u201cCome out of him!\u201d\u00a0 The spirit departs.
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The onlookers are astonished.\u00a0 This is not how their synagogue leaders generally do things.\u00a0 When rabbis choose to speak with authority, they quote other rabbis.\u00a0
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But Jesus speaks with an inherent authority.\u00a0 With just a few words, he changes this man\u2019s life forever.
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As a pastor, I gradually came to understand that truth encounters, not power encounters, provide the pathway to freedom for those who are spiritually afflicted.
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Tomorrow we\u2019ll take a closer look at that claim.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0


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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Invite a bunch of pastors to sit down together, and eventually they\u2019ll get around to a familiar question:\u00a0Now that you\u2019ve spent a few years in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697,696,11],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-demons","tag-exorcism","tag-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3451,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions\/3451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}