Authority Figures

 

Texts: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

Last Wednesday Trish and I went to the University to attend a lecture given by our Archbishop, David Moxon, on the Millennium Development Goals, sustainable development, and the role of the Church and other faith-based groups in all that. [All of which, you may be surprised to know, was discussed at the Lambeth Conference. ] It was an inter-disciplinary event, the academic equivalent of ecumenism; the lecture was sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and the Department of Political Science.  But, more interestingly, there were staff from other disciplines present, as became clear when we got to the time for questions.

Two of the questioners were academic staff from the Science Faculty.  Both of them were very courteous in the way in which they spoke to the Archbishop, but each of them, as I heard it, were saying something between the lines.  The first hinted that perhaps the Church should confine its interest to the private realm – that it was not really the role of the Church to get involved in public issues of this kind.  The other, with equal tact, hinted that perhaps the issues were a little more complex than the Archbishop had recognised, and that the Church really should leave these issues to experts who could understand and deal with them – in shorthand, scientists like the questioner himself.

When I was reflecting on the event afterwards it was these two questions that came to the fore for me, because I realised that they had raised the very issue that is before us today in our gospel reading.  The issue is authority; and the first useful insight these two scientific gentlemen had given me is that we use that word in at least two rather different ways.  In one sense authority is about a legal right to do something.  A police officer is authorised to do certain things in the execution of his or her duty that we could not do.  The officer may have a specific warrant to search a property, for instance; that warrant confers legal authority.  So that's one sense of the word "authority" – the legal power or right to do something.

Another sense in which we use that word is expertise – we say someone is an authority on a particular topic or in a particular field.  I have never forgotten a wonderfully serious and learned science programme they had on BBC television when I was in my teens.  Each week someone like John Freeman or Huw Wheldon, someone of that ilk, would interview a learned scientist; and the one I have never forgotten is the professor who was solemnly introduced to the television audience as "undoubtedly the world's leading authority on bird nits".  That rather extraordinary example is a good illustration of the second use of the word "authority", meaning expert.

It seems to me that both those meanings were implicit in the questions put to our Archbishop by those scientists.  First of all, they were questioning the Archbishop's right to stand there and presume to lecture them.  This was their territory, and they were the resident teachers, the resident authority figures.  Who was this intruder from the Waikato?  What authority did he have to teach in their university?  And, of course, as David was there in his official capacity, the challenge was not just to him but to the Church as a whole.  And the second part of the challenge was to the Archbishop's expertise.  Who made you an authority (an expert) on these very difficult and complex issues? 

How should the Archbishop have answered these challenges?  First of all, he could have tried to justify himself as a fellow academic.  After all, he holds two master's degrees from two universities, one of which happens to be Oxford.  So his academic qualifications are pretty good.  Or he could have gone for the straight theological answer: we believe that God is the Creator of all things seen and unseen; the world is sacred, and therefore the Church's calling is to do all that we can to protect it and cherish it as God's gift to humanity.  Something along those lines would have been good theology, but it would not have been convincing to those who had asked the questions.

A third option, I guess, would have been to say simply, "Well, I'm here by invitation.  Two of the departments of your university have invited me here, so raspberries to you!"  Needless to say, he didn't take that option; and he didn't take the other two either.  Instead, he went back to the experience of the Lambeth Conference, and to an address given to that Conference by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, himself a man of deep faith and of personal commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr Brown, with all the authority of his office as Prime Minister, came to the Anglican Bishops in their Lambeth Conference, and asked for their help.  Not for their advice and expertise, but for their commitment to motivate and educate their followers on these issues.  Mr Brown said that it is precisely the democratic governments that have the most difficulty in doing the right thing in issues of world justice, assistance and aid, because their electorates will not tolerate too much taxpayers' money going abroad.  Sound familiar?  As I have said before, how many of our electorate would vote for a party whose main policy plank is to treble the amount of overseas aid?

So the Archbishop's answer to his scientific questioners went like this.  You are quite right: we do not claim any special expertise; we leave that to you and other specialists who can work out the answers to the very complex issues before us.  Our job, calling on the wisdom of our religious tradition and teaching and understanding, is to help our people accept the need for policies that will help the poorest of the poor, will reduce unnecessary deaths of infants, will raise the educational standards particularly of women and children, and will stop damaging the environment to the point where it could no longer sustain life worth living.  That is the authority we have, and in part it comes from the democratically elected leaders of the people in countries such as our own.

 

When Jesus comes to the Temple and begins teaching his authority is questioned, and it is questioned by the resident experts, the resident authority figures.  According to St Matthew: Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him.  "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked.  And who gave you this authority?"  Jesus was an outsider, coming onto their territory; he had no official credentials to teach; he held no position in the Temple.  So what gave him the right to stand in the place of a teacher? And how could he claim to be an authority on anything?

Now, of course, it must be conceded that this is not an exact parallel with the Archbishop's visit to our university last Wednesday.  Among "these things" for which Jesus is challenged was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem closely followed by the so-called "cleansing of the temple".  So far as I know, the Archbishop's entry into Dunedin was a little more low-key; and I saw no evidence that he had upturned the desks or chased anyone out of the lecture room with or without a whip!

But that issue of authority is there for Jesus as it was for the Archbishop.  Jesus answers his interlocutors by asking a question of his own.  In effect, he is saying, "my authority comes from the same source as John the Baptist's; so where do you say his authority came from?"  And St Matthew makes it clear that this posed a real dilemma for those authority figures; if they admitted that John's authority came from God they would have to admit the same of Jesus; if they denied John's authority came from God, they would infuriate the crowd who still believed that John was a prophet.

Underneath all these questions about authority is the issue of power.  That was so in the Temple for Jesus, and as Gordon Brown made clear at Lambeth, it's still about power today.  The Church stands with the powerless, or it ceases to be the Church of Jesus Christ.  We are called to challenge the powerful, inside as well as outside the Church, not instead of preaching the Gospel, but as part of preaching the Gospel.  The Gospel is good news for the poor: the Magnificat is a song of praise entirely consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.

That is all the authority we need to work for their attainment.  And when better to start than seven weeks before our election?  For us, as our Archbishop made clear, sustainable development on a global basis for the benefit of all human beings should be the number 1 election issue.  And if the politicians ask us by what authority we are doing these things we can refer them to one of their own.  His address is Number 10, Downing Street, London.