June 1, 2008
Text: Matthew 7:21-29
Pr. Robert Goldstein
Speaking With Authority

The Gospel says they heard Jesus' words -with authority. What does it mean to speak or act with authority? Many have authority in our lives -and we often fear them. Are we not fearful when a police car's lights flash up behind us? Do we not dread what is to come as we pull to the curb? And what about that letter from the IRS calling for an audit? Or the doctor's grim look as he enters our room? Yes, there is authority we fear.

Then there is the authority that comes from glamour or even notoriety. Whether it is our dear mayor with his glamorous looks and hairdo, or Willie Mays, or Bill Clinton, or even Al Capone; their presence adds that liminal, that exciting edge to our moment. We bask in their aura. We are transcended beyond the ordinary.

My daughter was shopping in downtown Chicago and ran into Michael Jordan on day. As she retold this chance encounter she glowed and vowed not to wash the hand the shook his. She too had authority in her storytelling because she tapped the hunger in us all for those moments of uplifting glory, however fleeting.

When Jesus speaks of the wise and foolish homebuilders, of the one who builds on a rock and the other on sand, his authoritative voice is not laced with fear, but more likely with this same kind of aura of his growing fame. But Jesus' liminal authority crosses into engaging us ethically when he uses this story of flood and houses to speak to our behavior -or more properly, how we ought to behave, how we ought to live in true human community, the community of the Presence of God.Suddenly Jesus' words become the sword that cuts into our hearts and makes us face our all too often mixed motives. This cutting with the spiritual sword of the Word of God, the ethical, gives Jesus such profound authority because we see he speaks from a genuine purity of heart, with deep hope in God, and not in his own strength. Jesus' speaks ethical words here! This is how he truly speaks with authority!

Not as the scribes, Matthew says. Jesus doesn't teach as the scribes -who are the professional interpreters in that period of Jewish Pharisaic religious life. The scribes, perhaps speaking with condescension over their status, class, and power, numb their hearers into despair of ever fulfilling all of the purity laws and regulations, or intoxicate them into the delusion that they actually have become so completely, and so righteously observant.

The Jesus movement and the early Jewish church differed radically with the scribes. It was like automobiles replacing the horse trade, computers replacing typewriters, light bulbs replacing candles. Jesus' insight into God and human life has made the professional scribe redundant. There also is the eloquence of his authority. A new way of life is being born in the crucifixion and resurrection. Not purity from rules and observances, but purity of heart by God's power. Observing all the religious laws to perfection was the old way. The eloquent authority in Jesus' words is that such observance doesn't make you righteous if you still hate people, gyp people, or look condescendingly on those who do not or cannot observe all your legalistic rules. God now meets us in our hearts.

The Gospel we preach with Jesus' authority is, to quote St. Paul, "that a person is justified by faith apart from works of purity under the law." Jesus' crucifixion embraces our lives from the core to its uttermost edges, the liminalities of all human existence and possibility. Jesus' resurrection, reveals that the truly ethical, the truly religious person, is the one who cries to God in utter despair confessing only God alone can save us. Here we have reached the very edge of our lives. Here is Christ, arms outstretched, taking us into gracious, loving embrace. This is the reality we have all met and meet again and again and in which Jesus speaks to our hearts.

Jesus' word is authoritative to us because his loving embrace helps us let go the pain. Yet we build houses on sand when we use our religiosity, our pompous prophesying, our healing -even our good deeds of feeding and helping others, but forget that all persons, inside and outside this building, on the very sidewalks, live by grace alone, by faith alone. You can't go around putting other people down and then kneel at this altar. If you do, you haven't yet grasped the depth of the Gospel. Your house is on sand.

In the afterglow of our state supreme court emancipating lesbian and gay couples we have new scribes who, even in the name of Jesus Christ, strategize to overturn the decision of the court with a Voter Iniative that, if it passes, will change the constitution. While we must oppose this initiative, it strikes me that such a change in the constitution would contradict the Equal Protection Clause of both the Federal 14th Amendment and the State of California. But let our lawyers help us understand that. The scribal prejudice behind this voter initiative is built on sand that will wash away in the rushing waters of true justice.

We have been placed on a rock, built on a rock that is Christ, not in houses of our own making, but in a holy temple of gracious hope and loving deeds. Your deep faith, your deep hope and your deep love, gifts of God's ever-present grace, cannot live without Justice herself. Justice is always flowing around faith, hope and love. The waters that rush by the houses built on and sand and rock, these waters are the waters of Justice. Justice washes away the homes built on sands of human fear and unfaith. As we know too well from our recent history, the scribes of the ELCA stifled justice by their expediency. But by God's grace we were called to join with others to rescue Justice. We heard her call in this church.

This is just a little something of what it means to speak with authority -unlike the scribes. You speak with the authority of Jesus in your every gracious act of love toward your neighbor. You speak with the authority of Jesus when you join and support this church with your faith, your heart, mind and treasure. This is a house built upon the rock and the rushing waters of Justice will wave as they flow by. Justice knows who worships here. Amen