A Different Kind of Authority
Mark 11:27–33
And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
I recently watched and thoroughly enjoyed the movie The Banker. It tells the real-life story of Bernard Garrett and Joe Morris, two black entrepreneurs as they take on the racist business world of 1960s America. I won’t spoil the movie for you, though I highly suggest you go and watch it as soon as possible! There’s a scene near the beginning of the movie that perfectly depicts the unfair power dynamics and racist institutions present in our country just a few years ago. The scene opens with a young Bernard Garrett at work on an apartment building when a tenant who lives in the building stops to question him. The tenant, an old white woman, is frustrated that rent will be going up due to the renovations and forcefully tells Garrett that he can tell the owner that when he raises rent; he ain’t raising hers! Garrett who just purchased the building tells her that she has nothing to worry about, her rent will stay the same. The woman, stiffly responds, “Don’t sass me, boy. This is a white building. You can’t own this place.”
A few days later and the movie cuts to the woman promptly moving out of the building. She refused to accept the reality of a black man owning the building that she lived in. She did not want him to hold any authority or power over her.
In his gospel, the author Mark has a lot to say about the authority of Jesus. All throughout the book, Mark shows us that Jesus has the authority and power to forgive sins, cast out demons, heal the sick, make the lame walk, and here the religious leaders question him directly about his authority. They don’t like the power and authority that Jesus displays. They are the authority in their culture. They are the ones with the power and they can’t accept a world where Jesus has authority over them.
The question that Jesus asks them cuts through their facade and to their true intentions. Mark conveniently breaks the narrative to insert this detail into the story. He tells us that the religious leaders were unsure of how to answer because they were afraid of the people. They wanted to protect their status, their power, their authority.
If we’re honest with ourselves we’re that way too. We also like to be the one’s calling the shots. We want to have authority and say over our own life. And we don’t want anyone or anything to tell us different. It’s human nature. But this is where the gospel and Holy Week flip the script. In a world where people want to keep power and authority for themselves enters Jesus, the one with authority and power over everything, who willingly lays that all aside and embraces the cross. He embraces the most humiliating and powerless death imaginable. And he does it willingly. That’s a different kind of power. That’s a different kind of authority.
