Authority figure

One of the things I like about Mark's Gospel is how fast everything happens. Apart from the fact that everything seems to happen "immediately" or "at once", Mark starts the action right from Chapter 1. There's no Nativity story, no long genealogy, just straight into the action. Right from the word go Jesus is healing people, teaching, casting out demons (and annoying the religious hierarchy). So it's only 21 verses into the Gospel that we have the story of Jesus healing a man who is possessed by an "impure spirit." 

Jesus has gone into the synagogue to teach. This isn't some kind of open mic Sabbath; Jesus is recognised as a Rabbi, a teacher, someone who is entitled and equipped to sit and teach everyone else. And people are amazed at his teaching. They say that he has authority. What do they mean?

"Authority" in English comes from the same root as "author": someone who creates. It's from a Latin word which can be translated as "invention, advice, opinion, influence, command." So someone who has authority knows what they're talking about. Reviewers may describe a non-fiction book as "authoritative", implying that this is written by someone who is expert, whose word can be trusted; in the 13th Century the word "autorite" meant a book or a quotation that settled an argument, and people might still talk about "the authorities", meaning a book or idea that is regarded as definitive.

It's only later that "the authorities" comes to mean "the people in charge." If a person is described nowadays as having "a problem with authority," we don't believe that he or she has doubts about the academic canon. We understand that they don't like being told what to do. So an authority figure is someone who has power; this might be seen as desirable, or as paternalistic and oppressive, but a person with authority is someone who can exercise power over others.

What kind of authority does Jesus have? As it turns out in this story, he has both. He has earned the right to go into the synagogue and teach on the Sabbath, and he delivers an authoritative teaching, so that people who hear him are amazed. But then the man with the impure spirit enters the story. He (or rather the spirit possessing him) start to heckle Jesus. "I know who you are," it says, "you're the Holy One of God." And Jesus rebukes it, tells it to come out, and with a shriek, it does. Jesus has authority over spirits; he can tell them what to do and they obey him.

Jesus talks the talk; he also walks the walk. If he had simply been an authoritative teacher, he would have been forgotten by now, except perhaps by a few academics. But he has authority which allows him to exercise power, and that's why there are still Christians today who not only recognise his teachings as authoritative, but who also recognise his authority.