March 27: Jesus’ Authority Questioned
♫ Music:
Day 42 - Tuesday, March 27
Title: Jesus’ Authority Questioned
Scripture: Mark 11:27-33
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 began saying to Him, “By what authority are You doing these things, or who gave You this authority to do these things?” And Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question, and you answer Me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven, or from men? Answer Me.” They began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘From men’?”—they were afraid of the people, for everyone considered John to have been a real prophet. Answering Jesus, they said, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
Poetry: Christ as a Gardener
By Andrew Hudgins
The boxwoods planted in the park spelled LIVE.
I never noticed it until they died.
Before, the entwined green had smudged the word
unreadable. And when they take their own advice
again—come spring, come Easter—no one will know
a word is buried in the leaves. I love the way
that Mary thought her resurrected Lord
a gardener. It wasn’t just the broad-brimmed hat
and muddy robe that fooled her: He was that changed.
He looks across the unturned field, the riot
of unscythed grass, the smattering of wildflowers.
Before he can stop himself, he’s on his knees.
He roots up stubborn weeds, pinches the suckers,
deciding order here—what lives, what dies,
and how. But it goes deeper even than that.
His hands burn and his bare feet smolder. He longs
to lie down inside the long, dew-moist furrows
and press his pierced side and his broken forehead
into the dirt. But he’s already done it—
passed through one death and out the other side.
He laughs. He kicks his bright spade in the earth
and turns it over. Spring flashes by, then harvest.
Beneath his feet, seeds dance into the air.
They rise, and he, not noticing, ascends
on midair steppingstones of dandelion,
of milkweed, thistle, cattail, and goldenrod.
THE QUESTION
The question: “By what authority are You doing these things?”
In and of itself, the question seems so earnest and searching. The crowd following Jesus no doubt asked the same, awed by the wild abundance of His power. And yet that question, mouthed by the priests and scribes claiming authority over all, is laid bare by Jesus as a death gasp from a brittle vine.
In the moments before this confrontation, Jesus and the disciples passed by a fig tree that, the previous day, Christ had cursed to never bear fruit again. Its utter lack of life, withered from the roots, shocked those who saw it. The previous day, Jesus had walked toward it, looking for fruit and finding none. His curse was to make that fruitlessness visible to all. Its lack of life-sustaining fruit was now open, public, and permanent.
Jesus’s handling of the religious leaders’ seemingly innocent question deftly, immediately, publicly strips away their pretense of God-given authority and insight.
The response: “We do not know.”
A lie that exposes so much truth. That these rulers have no authority, that they have no ability to discern God’s presence, that they have no interest in the answer to the question itself. That their dry hearts have no fertile ground for the blooming mystery of God's incarnate flesh to take root. In an instant, the green camouflage of their supposed righteousness is stripped away, and their fear—of the public, of the truth, of their soul-killing pride—is exposed, in all its snarled twisted-ness.
Christ the Gardener has stripped bare this particular weed. Yet, though brilliant and effective in disarming those who would kill him, this momentary triumph is merely a foreshadowing of the victory to come. In the context of Passion Week, his crucifixion imminent, his authority over death glimmering on the horizon, past the encroaching storm, Andrew Hudgins’ vision of a victorious Christ, enmeshed in a vibrant landscape, fully transformed, is both a celebration of the reality of Christ’s open tomb and the new life flowing from it, as well as a reminder of the promise of our own moment of transformation to come, through death, to a infinite bloom.
In the painting by Alvaro Sánchez, we find such a vision. In the moment of being submerged in the fractured broken present, we see past death toward glimmers of renewal. An imperfect beauty, blossoming shoots of the golden eternal. Though death confronts us constantly in this life, it has lost its authority.
When we are asked where our authority comes from, we can speak from this vantage point: from a place of freedom and joy, from a place of power over death. Though we are often tempted to see the small victories in life—whether they be rhetorical, political, or otherwise—as ends unto themselves, all of these moments point beyond themselves to the ultimate struggle, of victory over death and damnation brought on by Christ’s sacrifice. Those searching for authority and power in this life will find themselves in the place of the priests and scribes, in full control of their small corner of the world, and utterly powerless to see beyond it. Day to day, Christian devotion is to look through the present moment back to the open tomb, and forward to the moment we join Him, as dancing seeds in an endless field.
Prayer:
Lord, as the cultivator of our hearts, root out all pride and longing for power in this world. Give us an ever-clear vision of your kingdom come, and cause the joy of that knowledge to spread wildly through our hearts and the hearts of those around us. Sustain us daily as we weather the storms of the moment in the name of Your son, Jesus Christ.
Amen
Luke Aleckson
Associate Professor of Art
Director of the CCCA
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Baptism
Alvaro Sánchez
2011
Digital print
20.32 x 33.02 cm
This image is from the holocaust series of works that Alvaro Sánchez did in collaboration with French artist Isabelle Cochereau. There is mystery in this piece, which seem to make it appropriate for this text from Mark 11. The title Baptism, most often associated with traditional paintings of water and doves, is abandoned here for what is overall, an image of suffering more akin to the description of baptism found in Romans 6:4 that reads, “…we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
About the Artist:
Alvaro Sánchez (b. 1975) is a self-taught graphic artist based in Guatemala City. He is a regular contributor to online and print art, and design magazines from around the world. He has had many exhibitions in Guatemala, as well as Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, Italy, and Spain. He says of his art; “My work is a very personal vision about the fragility of humanness, that is to say a reflection on the human condition; it’s a celebration dedicated to our errors and disgraces and that we remember that we are imperfect and how finite we are. I want the person who sees my work to experience something similar to the sensation that you get when you listen to a punk song at full volume.”
About the Music:
“Losing the Light” from the album The Wilderness
About the Composer/Performer:
Explosions in the Sky is an American post-rock band from Texas. The quartet originally played under the name Breaker Morant and then changed to the current name in 1999. The band has garnered popularity beyond the post-rock scene for their elaborately developed guitar work, narratively styled instrumentals - what they refer to as "cathartic mini-symphonies" - and their enthusiastic and emotional live shows. Members include Chris Hrasky on drums, Michael James on guitar/bass guitar, Munaf Rayani on guitar and keyboards, and Mark Smith on guitar. The band's music is almost purely instrumental.
About the Poet:
Andrew Hudgins (b. 1951) is an American poet. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry and essays, many of which have received high critical praise, such as The Never-Ending: New Poems, a finalist for the National Book Award; After the Lost War: A Narrative, which received the Poets' Prize; and Saints and Strangers, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Commended by critics for his striking ability to embody the Southern Gothic tradition of American literature, his poetry is filled with sanguinary images of guilt, sacrifice, and powerlessness.
About the Devotional Writer:
Luke Aleckson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Biola University and is currently the Executive Director of the CCCA. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in sculpture and a BS in art from the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, Minnesota. Past positions have included serving as Department Chair and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Northwestern and the Director of Denler Gallery in St. Paul. Past exhibitions of his artwork have been held nationally, at venues such as the Chicago Cultural Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois. He maintains an active art practice in which he explores sculpture, digital modeling, video art, and installation art.