Forney Charities
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Under Authority
I remember back to when I owned a trucking company, gathering with my trucker buddies early, early in the morning at the job site, waiting for the day’s work to begin.
We would stand about our rigs shooting the bull – I usually hauled sand, gravel, asphalt or dirt. Our group ran dump trucks. Yes, about ten years ago I finally gave up my Class-A license. As we would drink our coffee, we would often grouse about the pay or how long it took to get paid – often ninety-day money — or gripe about the truck boss on the job who scheduled our loads at the job site.
I still remember this one old guy, his name on the side door read “Grumpy.” He swore that if the truck boss on this one job complained about how slowly he was driving – we got paid by the hour – his response would be, “I’m not taking anymore time driving this rig than your company is taking in paying my freight bill.”
Another of his saying was, “No matter how stupid the boss…he’s still the boss.”
We’re all under some authority. Get used to it.
In the story from 2 Kings, we have the passing of authority from Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel, harbinger of the End Time, one filled with God’s Spirit – as the prophetic office is passed onto Elisha. Of course, we should be humming in our minds, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
As astonished Elisha, the understudy, looks on, while in the middle of their stroll, “a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind of heaven.”
With smoke and fire, drama and wonder, authority is passed. The blessing of a “double share of Elijah’s spirit” is God’s seal on this transfer. The ultimate “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” There’s a new sheriff in town, indeed!
Likewise, on the Mountain of Transfiguration, authority is similarly transferred.
Jesus, Peter, James and John on a high mountain. And now comes the Ultimate Epiphany. Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”
The frosting on this cake is the voice from the overshadowing cloud that had now come upon them, “This is my son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Again, the Ultimate Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval! “Listen to him!”
All of Torah wisdom, as represented by Moses, and all of Prophetic Righteousness and Truth, as represented by Elijah, are now bestowed upon those gathered there as benefactors of these traditions – Jesus, and by extension the disciples. And ultimately, down through the ages, the Church.
We, now, are under that very same authority. And, exercised properly, hold its power as “cooperators with God” to bring it into fruition. Day by day.
Like my friend Grumpy, we are under authority, even if we disagree and rebel against this authority much greater than ourselves.
In a lesser way, authority is passed from parents to growing children. The saying, “You can always tell a teenager…but you can’t tell them much,” rings true. Think back to when you were a know-it-all teenager. The rebellious retort, “well, all my friends get to do it.”
Unfortunately, too many parents have abdicated their authority prematurely. I remember the mother whose excuse for not bringing her son to Sunday School, but letting him zone out in front of the TV all morning was, “I want him to make up his own mind about religion.”
Fine, she would rather have him learn his core values as taught by the enticing hype of a cartoon tiger selling the latest frosted breakfast cereal on Sunday mornings? She’s okay with the exploitive predation of a soulless capitalism run amuck, teaching her child God-knows-what? As his breakfast food rots his teeth out and destroys the microbiome of his gut? Oh, did I mention an epidemic of youth obesity? Mom…you okay with all that?
Get a grip, lady. Exercise your authority!
In turn, each of us is under authority. If you don’t believe that, fail to pay your taxes this year. The IRS does not look kindly on such scofflaws.
Since the beginning, a thriving church, much as a thriving child has been under proper authority. And woe to any who abuse this authority. “It would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.”[1]
That is what I find so abhorrent and disconcerting about some of our televangelist frauds whose sole effort is to hype themselves and rake in the dough. Golden bathroom fixtures are the least of it. It’s the damage done to the message of the Gospel that is the real scandal. A stumbling block to the Word.
There’s the telling vignette as John Denver (playing a callow grocery clerk, Jerry Landers) and George Burns (who plays God) in the film, “Oh, God,” were walking by a rural country church out in the middle of nowhere. Denver’s character Jerry says, he often wonders what goes on in there, to which God replies, “I don’t know…I’ve never been able to get in.” A not-so-subtle dig at the white segregationist churches of the time. God had no authority in that place.
Such churches somehow didn’t understand a greater authority over their constricted beliefs and traditions of Jim Crow. Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker didn’t understand this. Neither did Jim Jones as he led his followers to utter disaster at Jonestown in the jungle of Guyana.
While, supposedly, he was under the authority of a mainline denomination, he went rogue — caught up in all sorts of spiritual flim-flam, founding a self-serving cult of sexual exploitation and unquestioning obedience to himself. No one exercising authority over this travesty. We all know how that ended. Gave Kool-Aid a bad name. That’s why we have bishops with the authority of oversight.
My Old Testament professor Dr. Rolf Knierim, was fond of reminding us of the reason for the success of Yahwehism over Baalism – “Yahweh had a house.” That is, an institution, which would later develop into rabbinic Judaism, of which we are a branch. Here is true and Godly authority – the authority of institutional oversight.
And as such, we of the Jesus Movement live under the spiritual authority of what took place on that Mount of Transfiguration. In the passing of prophetic authority from Elijah to Elisha. And down the line to Dr. King and Abraham Heshel. Now, to each of us.
No, we don’t get to luxuriate in the beauty and splendor of the vision. It’s not about building shrines or holy places in places of splendor.
It’s about going back down into the valley of strife, suffering, hunger. The shrine we are asked to build will be in the hearts of those lifted up, and in our own hearts as we engage the work. Any authority we have is validated as we give our lives to a Reality and Cause far greater than ourselves, Christ being our helper — yes, in taking some spiritual direction.
As J.B. Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English translates 2 Corinthians 6:1: “As cooperators with God Himself we beg you, then, not to fail to use the grace of God.” That is the true authority for what we do.[2]
When I get pushback from some well-meaning Christian folks on our addiction recovery work of House of Hope, I ask, “When it comes to recovery, what part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ did you NOT understand?”
Our authority is not grounded in fear — the fear of all the things that could possibly go wrong. But, trusting in Faith, for a better path to thriving.
Yes, recovery is hard. A most difficult life-long journey. “If this was easy, we’d already have done it,” as President Obama would often say. But it is possible. And it is Holy. Folks in recovery are in fact the living Glory of God. Their authority is transformed lives. Fruit of the Spirit that has its own authority.
Those in recovery know wondrous authority of such awakening. The epiphany that dawns, bringing them to the reality of their lives. And a saving alternative — that there is another path than that of self-destruction and degradation, isolation, loneliness, and ultimately, the death of their soul.
Fortunate are those who awaken to the potential of sobriety. A life-giving authority that assumes priority.
In his new novel, Martyr!,[3] Kaveh Akbar, a first-generation Iranian-American, narrates the journey of a young addict, Cyrus Shams, under the incipient authority of such a dawning epiphany — that his life has become unmanageable, going nowhere. This is a Godly authority. This novel is, incidentally, some of the most marvelous writing I have recently encountered.
“Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over. Clarification. Lying on his mattress that smelled like piss and Febreze, in his bedroom that smelled like piss and Febreze, Cyrus stared up at the room’s single light bulb, willing it to blink again, willing God to confirm that the bulb’s flicker had been a divine action and not just the old apartment’s trashy wiring.”[4]
As flimsy as that. Nothing more than the flicker of some decrepit wiring. A life-saving epiphany? A door to eternal life? Stranger things than this have happened.
In faith, he heeds the authority of that revelation. A Godly revelation, for the inchoate spiritual awakening it brought on wings of desperation. Like a drowning man, Cyrus reaches for this outstretched hand. The hand of God he finds? In what manor does your faith inform you of such wonders? Daily astonishment awaits, if we would but perceive it.
To what do you give authority? I give my loyalty to the vision of those guys and their Master upon that Holy Mountain of Transformation. For what they brought down from there, I have found to be most life-enhancing, life-changing. It has filled me brim-full, and sometimes broken me as well – but always, I have found it to be a saving vision.
John Wesley summed up the authority and goodliness of this Gospel mandate in this brief maxim:
With God’s help and Christ beside us, we can. ¡Sí se puede! Now, there’s an authority worth our allegiance. In this endeavor is Life Abundant. Amen.
[1] Matthew 18:6, NRSV.
[2] J.B. Philips, New Testament in Modern English (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958).
[3] Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024).
[4] Op. cit., 3.
February 11, 2024
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
“Transfiguration Sunday”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6;
2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
“Under Authority”
Forney Charities 