Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A (9-27-26)

There's a bumper sticker from the seventies that I'd bet a few of you once owned, and one or two of you may still have it holding your back bumper together: QUESTION AUTHORITY.

I understand the appeal. Given that the elected leader of this country finds new ways every day to overreach, a healthy suspicion of authority is hardly a character flaw these days. In fact, most days it feels like a spiritual discipline.

So, if that's you, you'll be relieved to hear that you're in excellent biblical company, because every one of this morning's readings features somebody questioning authority.

We start in the wilderness, where the Israelites have camped at Rephidim and discovered that there's no water. So, they do what any reasonable congregation would do, which is… go after the leadership. And things escalate until Moses is crying out to God, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me."

But the people aren't only asking about water, not really. The place is named Massah and Meribah for the question underneath all the discontent: "Is the LORD among us… or not?" That's usually the real question, isn't it?

A lot of our suspicion of authority carries a wound underneath, one left by someone who was supposed to take care of us, but who didn't. So whenever anyone claims authority, what we're really asking is whether they're with us… or merely over us.

And look at how God answers that question. There's no lightning bolt and no lecture about respecting your elders. God tells Moses to take some of the elders along, walk out ahead of the people, and strike the rock, and then says, "I will be standing there in front of you on the rock." God stands in the very place where the blow lands, and out of that place comes water.

And here we have an invitation to consider how God's authority works a bit differently.

But first, a quick etymology lesson.

The word "authority" comes from the Latin auctor, which also gives us author, and auctor comes from augere, "to make something grow." And that root tells us something about God's authority: it is not a bigger, badder version of the authorities we've learned to distrust. It's a different kind of thing altogether.

Every human authority, even a good one, works by taking some decisions out of your hands. When the town sets a speed limit, you no longer get to decide how fast to legally drive down Main Street. After the Bishop's Committee passes a budget, most of you don't get a say in how certain money is spent.

That's often a fair trade, because we give up a little say over our own lives in exchange for a common life that works pretty well. But it is a trade. Whatever say an authority gains, somebody else gives up, which is why our suspicion is so often a wise one: we're checking whether the trade is worth it.

But God's authority doesn't work that way, because God isn't another decision-maker standing beside you and claiming a share of your choices. God is the one who gave you the capacity to choose in the first place. God is the Author—the grower—of your life, so God's authority over you and your freedom to become fully yourself don't need to be traded against each other.

They grow together.

The more you let God write your story, the more "you" you become.

That's why, when the chief priests corner Jesus in the Temple and demand to know by what authority he acts, he doesn't bother defending himself. His authority comes "from heaven," from the source of everything, so it has nothing to protect.

And that's why Christ, as Paul shares in Philippians, "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself." Power that has nothing to lose doesn't need to grasp. It can pour itself out, all the way down to a cross.

Then Paul says the most remarkable thing: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you." Your own work and God's work in you, at the same time, with no trade required. Growth. Authorship. Authority.

Which brings me, a little sheepishly… to us. This community.

My pastoral authority is not the God kind. Like every flavor of human authority, it involves a trade, which means it's accountable, both to God and to you. But the church is meant to be one place where human authority at least tries to imitate God's—exercised for growth.

And living in community does mean that decisions have to get made, some of which fall to me to make on your behalf. It isn't because I'm angling for a throne, but rather because a community that can't make decisions can't survive, much less thrive. But Moses didn't walk out and strike the rock alone. He brought the elders, who also walked out ahead of a thirsty, angry people. That's what I'm trying to do, too: walk ahead of you some of the time, never above you, and always alongside the people who share this work.

So, why trust God's authority when you're rightly wary of so many others? Because, as the psalmist says, it has a track record: "That which we have heard and known, and what our ancestors have told us, we will not hide from their children."

Not "because God said so." But rather, "remember." Remember the rock, remember the water, remember the cross.

Plenty of voices want to author our lives for us, from politicians to algorithms. Keep questioning them. But the answer to bad authority is never no authority, because if God isn't writing your story, something else surely is. The answer is the one Author whose authority over you is also the very source of your freedom.

And there is real peace in that. Suspicion is exhausting. If every authority is a threat, you have to stay on guard all the time and write every line of your life yourself—and none of us is up to that.

Trusting God's authority doesn't mean you stop paying attention. It means your story doesn't depend on you alone.

So, whatever this week brings, in the headlines or in our life together here, our story is in good hands. Remember what Paul says: it is God who is at work in you.

And that, friends, is an authority you can rest in.

Amen.