1 Corinthians 8:6 (NRSV Updated Edition)
yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Mark 1:21-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)
They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
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"The presence of salvation showed itself especially in the fact that as Jesus proclaimed his message, something actually happened. The effect he had was entirely different from that of other teachers: “for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). His message of salvation became a healing and liberating force. The sick became healthy; the possessed became free, and people on the margins of society experienced his loving attention. It was not the abstract content of what he said, but the total event of teaching, preaching, healing, and caring which affected people."
- Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, pg. 32
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"Well, what does “as one having authority” mean? It's an odd word because it doesn't appear very often in the Hebrew bible at all, this is a Greek word. And we tend to think of authority in two ways: someone speaks with authority, meaning someone has appointed them, they've said “I hereby name you to go and talk about... you are my authorized agent”; or we have a more charismatic sense of authority, someone speaks with a certain personal gravitas, interior quality, that makes you think they're worth taking seriously. That's the kind of thing we usually mean when we talk about someone who speaks with authority - knows what they're talking about, that sort of thing.
"Okay, well here this is where the passage from Deuteronomy, which is our first reading, is very helpful because authority seems to me actually something more than that in this sphere. ... “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it” [Deut 18: 22]. Now here's what's important about this. We're not talking about guesswork here... No, behind this is the notion that the word of the Lord is creative. It's the Creator who speaks, and if the Lord says something, that is part of bringing into being. The Creator speaks reality into being by his word. So if a prophet is speaking the word of the Lord, that thing will be. ... He's talking about someone whose word is part of the bringing into being of what is. That's the sense of authority that we're talking about here.
"So when people perceive that the one who is speaking is someone who is to do with the bringing into being of what is, they know that something different is amongst them. And that's going to be the key question: Is Jesus the one who is bringing all things into being? That's going to be the question throughout, and here we have if you like this first sense of something quite shocking about the one coming in.
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"So, at the very beginning of Jesus's ministry, we have him coming in, enacting the new word, the new teaching, the Creator speaking and the power that is the power of the Most High to remove sources of impurity. That's what's going to be acted out, and we get the two responses to it: the people being amazed and curious of what this is; and the evil spirit having too quick an idea of what it is, not yet being ready to see the Holy One of God fulfilling his role so as actually then to destroy all sources of impurity and enable death itself to be conquered, which is going to be the route that he follows."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aYnIJJ-Iu0)
[Source of Raymund Schwager quote, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany4b/]
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