All Authority

Here’s a preacher’s secret: it’s actually pretty difficult to preach through the life of Jesus. If you take out his teachings—the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, the parables in the Gospel of Luke, for example—and focus on his actions, it’s mostly a series of healings and miracles, each one slightly more impressive than the one before. In the Gospel of Mark in particular, first Jesus casts out an impure spirit. Then Jesus heals the sick. Then Jesus heals someone with leprosy, then someone who was paralyzed, then the man with the shriveled hand. Then Jesus calms the storm, then frees the man with the legion of demons. Then Jesus raises the girl from the dead.

            Each of these is a marvelous story of Jesus’ power over the forces in this world that threaten to undo us. Preaching any one of them is a testament to Jesus’ power over the forces that bring fear into our lives and that can lead to a tremendous sermon. Preaching them in order, however, is exceedingly challenging—by the third or fourth week, the message becomes pretty repetitive. Yes, we know, Jesus has power over the forces of evil in this world—yes, even the forces a little bit greater, a little bit stronger than the forces we talked about last week…tell us something we don’t know, preacher... For this reason, I try to avoid preaching more than one or two sermons in a row on the healing miracles of Jesus.

            But when Elizabeth and I were in Israel, we went to the top of Mt Arbel. Mt Arbel is a sharp cliff face rising up over the shores of the Sea of Galilee. From there, you can see where almost 80% of Jesus’ recorded earthly ministry took place. You can see where Jesus cast out the impure spirit and the general area where Jesus healed the sick. You can see where the village was where Jesus healed the paralyzed man. You can see where Jesus calmed the storm since you can see pretty much all of the Sea of Galilee. You can even see where Jesus freed the man possessed by demons. And where Jesus raised the girl from the dead.

            In the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus is raised from the dead, he tells Mary to tell his disciples to go to Galilee and he will meet them there. And the place where Jesus meets them is on a mountaintop. It may well have been Mt Arbel—and if not, it was someplace very similar. A place where you could look down and see the place where Jesus had healed the sick, the place where Jesus had calmed the storm, the place where Jesus had cast out the demons, the place where Jesus had raised the dead. And it is here, on this mountaintop, overlooking the places where Jesus progressively showed his power over each and every evil that threatens to undo us, that Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me…”

            Authority over sickness. Authority over the storms of life. Authority over demons. Authority even over death. It might not be easy to preach from week to week to week, but it’s a critically important lesson to remember. Especially in these uncertain times: Jesus has authority over all things.