This particular version of this particular thread, which generally draws a lot of interest, began with my observation that Jesus taught with authority, and not like the scribes. I want to return to this for a moment.
If we acknowledge, as all Christians must, that any given action that could be righteously done could also be done sinfully, then if it were ever proper to imitate Jesus and insult the religiously arrogant and pompous, it would necessarily follow that this same action could be done in a wrong way. And so we tend to debate the issues at this level. First, we discuss whether it is ever proper for us to imitate Jesus in this at all. Sure, Jesus might have done it, but He was Jesus, and so everyone is urged not to try this at home. There are problems with this that have been pointed out, but it has still been argued by some. But then if we get to the (proper) understanding that there is godly insulting and ungodly insulting for us, we immediately want to know the rules that will enable us to distinguish the two. What techniques shall we use to avoid the one and practice the other? And this too is kind of a reasonable question, depending on who is asking it and why.
But too often this desire for “rules,” approved throughout the Church, is a desire to control. We want schoolmarmish control over what God might want to do in His work of reformation. We don’t want the Spirit to blow whereever He wishes, because the odds are good that He will blow some of our favorite stuff over. We are fussy mussy, prim and proper. We want to lay down rules for the new wine so that it will do its appointed task without bursting the old wineskins. The problem is that bursting the wineskins is the appointed task.
So we have to return to this matter of authority. What authority did John Knox have in Scotland when he first arrived there as a preacher? None, but he still blew in like a storm off the North Sea. And when he blew in, everybody had to deal with him. And why? Because he spoke with authority. His famous “give me Scotland or I die” was a transaction with God for Scotland, not a transaction with Scotland. The establishment in Scotland was kind of left out, and was sort of miffed over it for a short time.
The thing that peeves people is this kind of authority, and not the mere fact of an insult. What gets to people is an insult delivered with authority. The prophet who strikes an authoritative blow is not at all like a court jester — even though the court jester may insult the king with greater impudence than the prophet does, everyone knows that he is still a creature of the system. This is why David Letterman can say what he says, and no one is worked up over it at all. His insults are often quite striking, but for all that, they are always at bottom tame insults.
When it starts to appear that something might be afoot to challenge the status quo (and for all our vaunted postmodern craziness, there is and remains a granite-like status quo), defenders of the system know how to mobilize and they know how to crack down. One of the things they will do here is say (quite insultingly, by the way) something like, “Oh, great. Now Wilson thinks he’s Knox. Megalomania is such a sad thing.” But I think no such thing — my claim is much more modest, and yet it still goes to the heart of all this business. All I think I have to offer is this: when God raises up another Knox (which we desperately need), I think I would understand his prophetic office and authority, and support him. I would offer to tag along after and carry some of his stuff. And I believe that there are institutions named after him that wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
If we pray for reformation, as we all should be doing, we must simultaneously recognize that God does not bring about reformations by sending tame prophets with no authority.