If you think about authority do you view it as something positive or negative? Our first encounter with authority usually involves our parents. Maybe you got your hand slapped gently when you tried to put your fingers near the hot stove. Our maybe your mother or father reacted to something you did quite harshly, like the first time you ran out into the street without looking or wandered off from mom or dad at the store and they couldn’t find you. When we are little and really don’t know better, these first brushes with our parents’ authority can be tough, tearful experiences.
As we get a little older and realize we are subject to authorities besides our parents, it’s can be very easy to grow up thinking that people use their authority to keep us under their control.
After all isn’t that what happened in the Garden of Eden? Satan convinced Adam and Eve that God didn’t want them to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because He didn’t want them to be like Him. To paraphrase, “God wants to keep you down and under his control, but if you disobey God and eat the fruit, life will be so much better because you’ll be like God.”
Fortunately for us, we know how things turned out. Satan lied, as he always does, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, and life became a struggle for them and continues as one today.
So our negative view of authority tells us that authority besides our own exists for others to boss us around, make us do whatever they say, and keep us from having control over our own lives. If that is what authority is about, there’s not much to respect, is there?
But let’s look at authority from another angle.
At it’s most basic level, the purpose of authority is to provide happiness in life by making sure everyone is playing by the same rules.
For example, think of sports without rules and someone to enforce them. Hockey players would just fight all the time, football players would hold and interfere. Basketball players would constantly foul, and baseball players would get in arguments about balls and strikes.
What if there were no traffic lights or stop signs? It wouldn’t be safe drive or ride a bike. Drivers would never know when they had to stop for oncoming traffic. Then there would be mass chaos. No one would be safe.
What if there were no rules at school? Then everyone could do as they wish. Teachers wouldn’t have to teach, you wouldn’t have to go to class, you wouldn’t have to play fair at recess, you could eat at anytime, and so on. You could even cheat on tests!
But as we can see from just these few examples, life would not be much fun either. No one wants someone to get a good grade because they cheated. No batter wants a pitch outside the strike zone called a strike. No quarterback wants to throw an interception because his receiver was held.
It’s not fair, but more importantly it’s not right.
Good rules (i.e., those that conform to the moral law) are made to remind us of what is right and wrong, they set boundaries for us, and allow us to choose to do what’s right. Good rules or laws never force us to choose to do the wrong thing.
It’s the purpose of those with authority to enforce laws and rules - make sure people do what’s right, and in many cases, punish those who do wrong.
Who gives people authority? God does.
Here’s what St. Paul said about authority in Romans 13:1-3:
“ Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval.”
Because we are so singularly privileged to be made in the image of God, the moral law and knowing right and wrong are written into our nature. It’s a part of who we are as human beings.
An Englishman named Frank Sheed once wrote that “...the moral laws are in man’s structure just as the laws of diet are.” If we don’t eat the right foods, we will suffer from malnutrition and tummy aches. If we don’t follow the moral laws, our consciences will protest against us and upset our contentment by making us sad, nervous, and even fearful and afraid.
So, if the purpose of authority is to provide happiness in life by making sure everyone is playing by the same rules, how can we gain that happiness? We have to obey those in authority. Those who don’t obey mess things up for themselves and everyone else. They make sports no fun to play. They make driving dangerous. They make a mockery of their education.
Who should we look to as our model for respecting authority?
Jesus Christ.
As an adolescent in Jerusalem
The Gospel of Luke, in the 2nd chapter, tells us that when he was twelve, Jesus went to Jerusalem with his parents to celebrate the Passover. In those days, people from a village would travel together in a caravan. It was safer than travelling alone, and it provided company and entertainment during the journey. The children would hang out together and play, and this would allow the adults to visit with each other.
After the families had fulfilled their Passover obligations and it was time to go home, the caravan traveled for an entire day before Jesus’ parents realized he wasn’t with the group!
Joseph and Mary turned back to Jerusalem and spent three days looking for him. Can you imagine their worry?
They finally found him in the temple sitting among the teachers listening to them and asking questions. Mary asked him why he had done such a thing to them. HIs response: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.” They didn’t get it, but he did not try to explain himself or argue with them. He went home and was “submissive to them.” He obeyed.
As an adult
Roughly twenty-one years later, when Jesus was probably around 33 years old, he attended a wedding at Cana. Jewish wedding feasts in those days could last up to a week, so there was always a lot of food and wine around, and for the one hosting the feast, the more food and wine you had, the the greater people respected you.
Well, disaster struck at this wedding feast. With the party in full swing, the guests had finished all the wine. This was a huge embarrassment to the father of the bride, not to mention the bride and the rest of the family.
Mary, knowing full well who Jesus was and what he could do, told him they had run out of wine. That’s all she said, but He knew what she meant - “make some more wine!” Then he says something very strange to His mother, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”
Now never call your mother “woman!” You won’t like the consequences. But Jesus was not being disrespectful. The term “woman” in this context is full of theological meaning we’re not going to go into here. Try to think of him say “Madam” - still very formal, but not rude.
Jesus was saying to Mary this public miracle will begin the chain of events that would lead to HIs full-time ministry of traveling around Palestine preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God as well as His eventual execution. It was if he were saying, “Are you sure you want that to happen just yet?”
But her response wasn’t to him, but to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Thus Jesus obeyed his mother and turned roughly 400 gallons of water into wine. We see Jesus, even as an adult, respecting the authority of His mother and obeying her.
Jesus had His own authority, but still respected His Father's authority.
Immediately following the miracle of turning water into wine, Jesus’ ministry began in earnest, and He began demonstrating His own authority as the Son of God:
With the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expounded on the Mosaic Law so thoroughly that Matthew tells us in his gospel “... the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes”
He demonstrated his authority over nature when he calmed the wind and the rain on the Sea of Galilee and when he fed the five thousand from only two fish and five loaves of bread.
He showed His authority over demons and illnesses. He made the paralyzed walk and the blind see.
And He even demonstrated his authority over death through His resurrection.
But although Jesus demonstrated His authority throughout His ministry, he also showed respect for the Father’s authority over him and His obedience in following the Father’s will. He said, “My will is to do the will of the one who sent me.” And he was obedient to the Father even to His death on the cross.
So let us follow Jesus’ example by being obedient to those in authority and respecting them, whether they be our parents, teachers, the crosswalk guards, coaches, or even sports referees. We need to respect the authority of our government leaders, the laws of our country, and the rules of our school.
Let us also pray for those in authority as we did for President Obama this morning. Those with authority carry heavy burdens and need our prayers, because, being human, they make mistakes. Pray for the authorities closest in your life - your parents and teachers. Please pray for us who run the church and school.
Work hard now on respecting authority by obeying it. Then as you mature and find yourselves in positions of authority, use that authority properly and justly in your dealings with others.
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