Are you the real deal?

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 95; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

 

What makes a person an expert?  The great physicist Niels Bohr defined an expert as one “who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”  Canadian educator Laurence J. Peter, the father of the “Peter Principle,” opined that anyone who was able to make a correct guess three times in a row would be considered an expert.  I guess I have a simpler definition:  Do you get paid for giving other people your opinion?  Then you’re an expert!

 

We grant authority to others and assume it for ourselves in many ways.  Most often we do so externally—by our roles, titles, degrees, certificates and licenses; or where people are on the org chart or the corporate food chain.  There’s nothing wrong with that. Yet as most of us know from experience, these external signs of authority don’t necessarily guarantee expertise…or even competence.  There’s more to authority than that.  Being “book smart” will get you only so far without common sense, the ability to communicate well, and the respect of others.

 

As we see in today’s gospel reading there is also an important internal dimension of authority.  It comes from things like self-awareness, self-confidence, self-discipline, humility and a sense of vocation.  We see these elements on display in Jesus’ ministry in the synagogue in Capernaum.

 

The synagogue service in those days had many similarities to the Liturgy of the Word in our Eucharist; in fact, the latter is modeled on the former.  The service featured prayers, scripture readings, and teaching.  Anyone learned in what we would today call the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament could preach or teach.  There was no requirement at the time that one be an ordained rabbi.  Though he did not have the same “credentials” as the scribes, Jesus and his testimony—not only what he taught but also his liberation of the man bound by an unclean spirit—were so powerful that people were “astonished” and “amazed.”  Many saw him as “the real deal,” a genuine prophet like the one promised by Moses in our first reading.

 

Few of us are called to be prophets like Moses, and none of us are called to be saviors like Jesus; but all of us are called to be “the real deal” according to the gifts that God has given us.  When St. Paul wrote his first letter to the church at Corinth, he and many others believed that the end times and the return of Jesus were imminent.  In light of that belief, he tried to counsel people to avoid or defer marriage so that they could be free of any distractions or anxieties in advance of the time of judgment.  He wanted them to be “the real deal” as disciples, regardless of when Christ would come again.  How can we develop into such disciples?  Psalm 95 suggests several ways:  paying attention to God; praising God; placing ourselves under God’s care and direction; and submitting to God’s will.

 

Yesterday (January 31), the Church celebrated the memory of St. John Bosco, who founded the Salesian Order in 19th century Italy.  His family was so poor that when he entered the seminary the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet were donated. He never forgot who he was and where he came from; and so after he was ordained he devoted himself to the education of poor and working class boys and young men, eventually partnering with St. Mary Mazzarello to found the Salesian Sisters to carry on similar work among girls and women.  St. John and St. Mary found in their own backgrounds and the signs of the times what God wanted them to do and the authority to carry it out. I guess that made them experts, too. +