“You Are the Holy One of God”

(from the Series: Who is Jesus? Who is Christ?)

Mark 1:21-28; Isaiah 6:1-8

Scott Huie

Westminster Presbyterian Church

March 15^th 2009

Mackerel isn’t holy, though I do like fish. Toledo isn’t holy, though I hear it’s a nice city to visit, especially if you like minor league baseball. A cow is not holy, except maybe in India—and at Chick-fil-A. Excrement is not holy in any circumstance. The one who is holy is very simply Jesus the Christ. We discover that loud and clear in our New Testament reading this morning.

In fact, it is a revelation of God that permeates the scriptures. Throughout the Bible, there is only one attribute of God raised to the third degree. There is only one adjective, I think, above all others that describes the very heart of God, and that adjective is holy. The Bible doesn’t just say that God is holy. Or that God is holy, holy. It says, God is holy, holy, holy. Emphasis is made through repetition. While there are other essential dimensions of God fleshed out in the scriptures, like God’s love, mercy, and justice, it doesn’t say that God is love, love, love, or mercy mercy, mercy, or just, just, just. Rather, God is holy, holy, holy.

We opened our worship singing about it. We just read it in our first reading, from the Old Testament. It comes, among other places, from Isaiah’s vivid description of God in a vision where God is on the throne surrounded in the temple by angels on all sides. In the presence of the Almighty, all Isaiah can do is to recognize how puny Isaiah himself is, and then all in the assembly humbly get down on their knees and say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

What is holiness? The dictionary says to be holy means to be set apart to the service or worship of God; hallowed; sacred. To be holy means to be spiritually whole or sound; of unimpaired innocence and virtue; free from sinful affections; pure in heart; godly; pious; irreproachable; guiltless; acceptable to God. I think when you boil it down, holiness is really about the saving, redeeming, reconciling activity and character of God and, to a lesser degree, God’s agents.

Mark’s gospel jumps right into the holiness of Jesus. There is no cute birth narrative here, no genealogy, no early days of Jesus’ life. Rather, Mark gets right to the action. Jesus was baptized by John as a call to action. Jesus immediately received God’s seal of approval—remember last week, we learned of his identity as the Son of God—and the Spirit descended upon him to lead him and protect him. Jesus was tested in the wilderness. He then called his little circle of kindred spirits that would learn from him and share in his work. And now it was time to launch the campaign. If a person had a message to give, the natural place to go was the church, where God’s people gathered. So that is what Jesus did. He began his campaign in the synagogue, the place of teaching, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in a place called Capernaum.

Jesus began to preach. What he actually said, we have no idea today. But whatever it was, Mark says, the people there were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as “one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Those people gathered in the synagogue that day knew it when they saw it. Whatever Jesus had, it was something the other religious leaders didn’t have—the rabbis, the scribes, and those who usually preached the Sabbath sermons there. Jesus just had something the other didn’t have. It was so clear. His teaching was so fresh, so independent. He cited no authorities and quoted no experts. When the scribes spoke with all their careful, monotone quotations, it often sounded like, “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But when Jesus spoke, it was with finality of the very voice of God. To the people it was like a cool breeze from heaven to hear someone speak like that. They knew it when they saw it and heard it. Jesus had “authority.”

And what made this first act of public ministry so amazing went beyond just the beauty, eloquence, and wonder of Jesus’ words. It was teaching backed up with action. In the middle of Jesus’ talk, a man barged into the synagogue screaming, “What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus rebuked the troubled spirit within the man, that strange spirit which knew more about Jesus than anyone else in the synagogue, and the man was healed and at peace. “What is this?” the people ask. “A new teaching—with authority! Why he even commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

Amazing, isn’t it? In this his very first recorded miracle in Mark, this Son of God is acknowledged as the Holy One of God, the one who has authority. He has authority by what he says. He has authority by what he does. The Holy One of God is set apart as something never seen on earth before.

What is it like to have that kind of authority? We expend a lot of energy on issues of authority, don’t we? Somehow authority seems to be about knowledge. We want to be “authority figures” in various areas of expertise, on matters we are passionate about. I like to think of myself as somewhat an authority on sports. I also know a little about teenagers and youth ministry and Christian music. We all have our areas of expertise. But authority is not just about knowledge; it is also about power. Almost by human nature, I think, we crave both power and knowledge.

In my other vocational life apart from the church, I am a booking agent for Christian rock bands. In that work, I have discovered that I have to deal with issues of authority. I talk to a lot of folks like myself, youth pastors. I talk to music ministers. I talk to senior pastors. Sometimes senior pastors are hard to get on the phone. I usually get their secretary.

I ask, “Can I speak with Rev. So and So?”

“May I say who’s calling?” the secretary asks.

“Scott Huie.”

Invariably the response is, “Who are you with?”

I then go through a litany of associations. “Well I’m with the H2O Artist Agency…I’m the President…I represent Christian rock bands…calling about the Newsboys.”

Sometimes I get through. Often it happens only when I mention my more popular artists. Sometimes I don’t get through. If the secretary thinks I am important enough—i.e. I have authority—I can get through. Otherwise I am tossed to the beloved youth pastor! He or she takes every call! We want authority, for sure. We want the authority that gives us power and gets us places and causes folks to pick up the phone when we call.

But to hang around the authority of Jesus even for a moment, as those synagogue-goers did that day, was to discover that such authority is not about power the way the world understands. Jesus’ teachings did not meet the ear as “power talk.” It’s about power that comes only from God. It’s holy power. That’s totally different from worldly power.

For one thing, this authority—this holiness—of Jesus moves us toward inclusion rather than exclusion. It’s not about rubbing elbows with CEOs. This authority reaches out to folks like tax collectors and sinners, prostitutes and widows, people on the margins, people who don’t look just like us, even people from Parkview! Moreover this authority values people over rules and traditions. Those scribes and Pharisees were good about keeping every dot and tittle of the law. Walking along on the Sabbath, if they witnessed someone hurting in a ditch, they wouldn’t help, because it was the Sabbath, and they couldn’t work on the Sabbath. It was against the rules. But Jesus comes along and says, “Hogwash. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to save life or to kill? Help the hurting man. Put people over policy.”

Just think about other teachings we receive from Jesus throughout his ministry, as recorded by Mark: “What does it profit one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” Later, Jesus said, “If anyone would be first, that one must be last of all and servant of all.” And toward the end of his ministry, as the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest, Jesus put a mere child in their midst and said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” And then as pressure was mounting from the authorities, Jesus said, “If you want to follow me, deny yourself and take up your cross.”

My friends, that ain’t power talk. Well, not like we talk power. But that talk is laced with holy authority. Why? Because it reflects the life of the Holy One of God, who lived in absolute obedience before the heavenly father. And because he was obedient, he had the audacity and clear vision to speak truth, to speak out against the powers of the world, and to fearlessly confront them head-on. That got him killed, but it also changed the world. Jesus, the Holy One of God, “taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”

Maybe those scribes had become so aware of their diplomas, their traditions, and their cute little sayings that they somehow reached a point at which the words of redemption had become more important than acts of redemption. Perhaps they had become so caught up in their power and prestige and comfort that they had lost sight of what it means fundamentally to obey God and worship Him.

As I recently read (Ted Wardlaw), “But Jesus modeled something altogether different. Jesus modeled what it’s like to see the world through the eyes of God. To see children as God sees children, to see those who are sick as God sees those who are sick, to see the high and mighty as God sees the high and mighty, to see the systems ‘that make the world work’ as God sees those systems, to see the demonic structures and behaviors in our world as God sees the demonic, to see the injustices and the inequities of the world as God sees them, to see the big words that mask untruth and half-truth as God sees all of that…to see the world as God sees the world—that’s what it means to live faithfully.”

For his entire ministry, Jesus saw the world through the eyes of God. And what’s more, he acted, with obedience, on what he saw. And that is probably the best description of what means to be the Holy One of God—to see the world clearly and to act on it, to act with authority.

When Isaiah came into the very presence of God, God sent his angel with a lump of coal to bring healing upon the prophet. The holiness of God gave Isaiah a new vision and left him awestruck. Wherever you are in life at this moment, whether you are flying high, cruising low, or barely hanging on, may we too be awestruck and given a new vision from God. May we see with the eyes of God and then act on what we see. May we too be able to look at Jesus and proclaim, “You are the Holy One of God,” and may our lives be changed forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.