By What Authority?

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on Sept. 25, 2005
Text - Matthew 21:23-27

23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' 26 But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.


This question of authority is one of my favorite subjects, maybe because I was in college in the sixties when we thought questioning authority was our own, brand new idea. The fashion then was to deny that there was any legitimate authority for anything.

The chief priests and elders ask Jesus a question that someone might ask us, or that we might ask ourselves: “By what authority do you do what you do, religiously speaking? What makes you think that your way of being religious (or non-religious) is the right way?”

In a world with so many religions and people who don't want anything to do with religion, how can we say any religion is the True Religion? Why do we take Jesus' words more seriously than we take someone else's words? Why do we give him special status? Why not follow Moses, or Mohammed, or the Buddha?
Why not follow Karl Marx, who called religion the “opiate, the drug, of the masses”?

If you ask some Christians why they think as they think and do what they do, they will say, “Because the Bible says so.” But then we have to ask what makes the Bible so special? As you know, people can find a justification for a lot of things in the Bible. You can justify slavery and polygamy. You can justify the attitude that women aren't full human beings. You can find support for capital punishment and for abolishing capital punishment. In some verses, Jesus seems to say: hate your parents, pluck out your eye, cut off your hand. There's a lot in the Bible that isn't easy to deal with. But we have to deal with it if we want to be intellectually honest.

I treasure the Bible. It's a vast, rich, and challenging spiritual resource. But the Bible doesn't give us rock solid authority for any particular religious position. There is very little agreement about how to read the Bible.

Most people, I think, would agree that the Bible teaches “Worship God and love your neighbor.” But it doesn't tell us how to understand God, and it doesn't tell us in enough detail what loving your neighbor means.

If someone asked you, “Why are you a religious person? Why do you do these things - like the things we do here on Sunday morning - what would you say? I'd probably answer it with another question, just as Jesus did: By what authority does anyone do anything?

There's a hymn we sing, that has the words, “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” I really like that hymn, but it still requires us to figure out what understanding of Christ, what version of him and his life, is my solid rock? No one else can figure that out for us. There's nothing like a scientific proof, or a logical proof, that answers these questions.

Why do we sing hymns? Why do we pray? I do these things, because they work for me. They help me live. They help other people live. They help us grow in ways we wouldn't otherwise grow and meet people we wouldn't otherwise meet. They help us face the uncertainties and troubles and loneliness and sickness we have to face. We don't need any more justification, and no other justification is possible.

Now, this response may sound kind of weak in one sense. If there's no one solid rock, or basis, or rational defense, for any religious path over another, if it's really just a matter of how you grew up and where the winds blew you, or what you like at any given moment - if it's that arbitrary and inconsequential, then why bother?

There is no solid basis, in the sense of proof, for one religious path over another, but there are good reasons, or warrants, for choosing one over another.

Think of it this way. Your experience you come here to First Church will be different than if you go to a Quaker meeting, or Saint Sebastian's, or Victory Tabernacle, or a Mormon temple, or a radical mosque, or a Ku Klux Klan rally, or a crack house, or a country club, to find a spiritual community.

These are not interchangeable. You will find different things talked about in different ways, in all these places. But in that list, let's just consider the traditional forms of religion, and leave out the crack house and the country club for now.

In the history of the world there has been a lot of bloodshed committed, much of it supposedly to establish the “pure” religion or the pure religious community. We call this religious extremism.

400-500 years ago during the Protestant Reformation we had Protestants killing Catholics. We had Catholics killing Protestants. We had Protestants killing other Protestants because they weren't Protestant enough. We had Catholics killing Catholics because they weren't Catholic enough. We've had Muslims killing Jews and Christians. We've had Christians and Jews killing Muslims. We've had Christians killing Jews. All of this has been based on or justified by the certainty of being right: “We know what God wants.”

I don't want to say that religion itself or religion alone is the cause of the violence. Religion and human nature are all wrapped up together. Humans will be religious in one way or another just because it's built into our nature.
But when people feel that their knowledge comes straight from God, unfiltered by human culture, it can make them not only obnoxious. It can justify monstrous cruelty. This should make us humble and cautious about what we think we know. When it comes to religion, no one really “knows” anything.

I realize not everyone will agree with that, and some preachers would be horrified to hear me say it. But if you agree with me on this, there is a basis for choosing one religious way over another. One test - not a proof, but a useful standard - is this. Is a religious community willing to be in open, sympathetic conversation with people of other faiths? Or is it opposed, or not interested in, such conversation?

If I am sure that I'm right, and that I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell, then I'm not likely to be very open to your point of view. I'm not going to think I have anything to learn. I won't be interested. But if I am open and involved in such conversation, that's a good sign of at least some humility and a place for mystery embodied in my views. To be open is better than to be closed.

Now, you may have noticed, to say that it's better to be open than closed is itself to be closed in a certain way. There is no proof that it's better to be open than closed. I might be wrong. There is no “solid rock” upon which to base my preference for openness. But I choose to be open anyway because the world seems to need that outlook. It's warranted by the gruesome history of people who “knew” they were right.

The Christian faith offers me deep comfort and consolation and purpose. It gives me a “purpose driven life” to use the phrase from the book we read a couple years ago, a book that some of us loved and some of us hated.

But religion is also dangerous. It has a dark side. It can support a lot of sick thought and behavior.

This voice for humility, for moderation, for liberal religion (which admittedly doesn't sound very sexy) is not a loud voice these days. But when I look at the world, it seems to be a voice that the world needs.

The mission of First Church is to engage and support people in worship, learning, fellowship, and service, so that all may find in our community the Spirit of the living Christ.  We are an Open and Affirming Church: All are welcome into the full life of our community regardless of their race, age, gender, nationality, marital status, economic situation, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation.