Arlene spoke without notes, so this is a report of some of her remarks by a witness. She preached from Mark1:21-28 about Jesus’ teaching with authority, a new kind of teaching.
She gave examples of people with authority and emphasized that they had experienced what they taught. She told two stories to illustrate her remarks. The first involved a teacher who was approached by a distraught mother who wanted the teacher to lecture her son about his bad eating habits, especially his sugar intake. The teacher met her on three occasions and told her to return in a week. Finally he spoke to the boy and the mother, frustrated and angry, asked him what had taken him so long. He replied that it had taken him three weeks to give up sugar.
The next story involved two rebellious boys who thought their teacher was a know it all and wanted to stump her. One caught a small bird and held it cupped between his hands. He and his buddy planned to ask the teacher if the bird they held was dead or alive. If she said DEAD they would release the bird to fly away. If she said ALIVE, they would crush it and produce a dead bird. They brought the test to the teacher and asked her to guess. She looked into the boys’ eyes for a long time and answered:’The fate of the bird is in your hands. The congregation was encouraged to nourish the BIRD in our hands and to step out in authority from our experience of God’s presence and promises in our lives.