From Where I Sit                                  Judith Lynch                                          Judith's website

January 28, 2012                           Which Way Authority?                       Judith's previous articles

From where I sit I wonder why it is that I find it difficult to respect so many who claim to be  authority figures. There’s something very subtle about real authority. It’s not elected or chosen by oneself. It seems to come from a deep place where personal reality and living one’s truth is embraced. Adults respond to it. Children respond to it. Many teachers have it. Lots of parents strive for it. Governments and religions try to impose it. But it’s nothing to do with loud voices or threats of punishment. Individuals who have this aura of authority are both courageous and challenging.  

Two thousand years ago the people of Capernaum recognised this in Jesus. He seemed to carry in his heart and on his shoulders the weight of people’s dreams for a better, more just world. He spoke with an authority that tapped into people’s need to connect with something they identified as truth.  “Here is a teaching that is new and with authority behind it.”  

The family and friends that Jesus grew up with were quite sure that they knew this young carpenter. But when he left home and lived as an itinerant preacher, speaking with confidence and authority they were affronted. They muttered things like “tall poppies” and “Who does he think he is?” Like most of us they believed that one’s personal experience and beliefs are the norm and anything outside that is suspect.  

There is an old saying that if you stick out you neck far enough someone will cut off your head. In other words, if someone regularly and courageously stands up for, speaks out about or lives out their belief, whatever it is, they’ll run into opposition. We call such people prophetic figures.  Sometimes we admire them, sometimes we mock them, often just dismiss them as cranks.  

Modern day prophets can be found in all walks of life - cartoonists, song-writers, the occasional politician, writers and poets, some community leaders who work for social justice. As a “good Catholic” I’ve found it difficult to accept that someone I identify as religious isn’t automatically an authority I can respect or someone whose stance I recognize as prophetic.
Prophetic figures don’t necessarily come dressed in liturgical vestments.  

Prophets don't foretell the future, they name the present properly - oftentimes in a way that exposes its faithlessness and injustice. There is a major difference between a critic and a prophet. Critics stand outside a system and mock it. Prophets remain clear-eyed and conscientious inside a system they see as flawed and love it anyway. To name something properly can be prophetic, a defiant act, an act of freedom.  That is why the true prophet is also a mystic. Prophesy is nourished by mysticism and flows out of it otherwise it is nothing more than good sense.   

It is prophetic to love the Church and to want it also to be everything it proclaims itself to be and often isn’t. This means speaking out and that’s usually a ‘thin place’. Richard Rohr likens it to living on the edge, able to move backwards and forwards, far away enough from the centre to be “free from its seductive power but also free to hear its core message in new and creative ways”.  It can be a lonely place, requiring one to go against the tide of family customs, public opinion, or established religious tradition in order to speak forth the truth with personal integrity.  

I believe that parents who live a faith-full life are prophetic figures. In the face of subtle opposition from society, or adult children who make fun of a their faith practices, or worse still, show a kind of amused tolerance towards matters of faith, many parents stand firm in their beliefs. It’s their relationship with God that supports them through the disappointment and hurt that is often the lot of the prophet. Their faith is strong, and as Jesus showed over and over again, it is faith in God that brings healing and life to the world.  

Judith Lynch   27/01/12