Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

“Because He Taught with Authority…. and not like the scribes.”
 
Today’s passage from Mark (1:21-28) addresses the unique authority that the people perceived in Jesus, when He taught them in their synagogues and on their hillsides. In today’s gospel it is referred to twice: once in the context of Jesus teaching, and later in the same scene when Jesus expels evil demons with His authority. It will recur many times throughout the gospels.
 
There are, obviously, many different types of authority: parental, civil, legal, political, academic, medical.- and others. Jesus had none of these.
 
So what made people respond to Him the way they did?
 
The authority to expel demons very clearly comes from God. But Jesus’ authority went beyond this. It was found also in his words, His teaching. People did not need to see miraculous actions to perceive this authority in Him, and to take Him very seriously.
 
I personally find the answer to my question in people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I call attention to her in large part because she is universally known, not because she is unique in the integrity between her thoughts and her actions.
 
People from the ordinary like ourselves to heads of state around the world and Popes deeply admired her and gave her a great deal of moral authority.
 
Why? I suspect it was because people found in her an extraordinary consistency and integrity between her words and her entire life. AND her life was entirely based on THE OTHER. Her dedication to the OTHER was obviously TOTAL.
 
On smaller scales we find others to whom we also give moral authority. Hopefully our own parents leap to mind: people whose dedication, time, and energy were not focused on their own welfare but on ours. And hopefully other people in our lives also leap to mind.

I suspect that this simple yet profound dynamic is what the common folks of Galilee were picking up on. And we see similar responses in our own lives and world today to given individuals.

Jesus put a laser beam focus on all of this at the Last Supper. When a debate arose among some of his disciples about primary status in the Kingdom of heaven, Jesus grabbed a towel and got down on His knees to wash their feet. Service. The Other.
 
I read once (many years ago) that the legitimacy of authority in the Christian community is based on the washing of the feet at the Last Supper. That thought has stayed with me since.
 
Pope Francis exemplified this early in his papacy on Holy Thursday.
 
“I Am the Way, the Life, and the Truth.”
 
On some intuitive level I wonder if the simple folks of Galilee didn’t “get” this somewhere in the depths of their hearts as they listened to Jesus in their synagogues and on their hillsides.