Scripture: Luke 7:1-10
After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the
people, he entered Capernaum. 2A
centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to
death. 3When he
heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and
heal his slave. 4When
they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of
having you do this for him, 5for he
loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” 6And
Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion
sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy
to have you come under my roof; 7therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only
speak the word, and let my servant be healed. 8For I also am a man set under
authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to
another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does
it.” 9When
Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed
him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10When
those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good
health.
Sermon
For several days I struggled
with what Jesus means when he says: “not even in Israel have I found such
faith.” I agonized about how to understand and preach on this, read all kinds
of commentary and scholarship, went back and forth, and then I realized
something, and my debate ended, and I had a good night’s sleep.
What I had
debated is whether or not Jesus is being ironic. The consensus view is that the
words are straightforward. Jesus is praising the Centurion's faith as greater
than any he has seen. Here is a man who, even though he is a gentile and leader
in the army of the Roman Empire, is a great friend and benefactor to the Jewish
people, having built their synagogue. And, he is respectful of Jewish rituals.
When he asks Jesus to heal the dying slave in his household, he respects the
law that prohibits Jews from visiting gentile houses, and he sends word with
his friends for Jesus not to enter the home, trusting that Jesus can heal from
a distance.
When Jesus receives the
message, he is amazed and says “not even in Israel have I found such
faith.” The centurion’s faith is great,
and Jesus heals the slave. And perhaps it is so well remembered in the gospels
because this is what the church would look like after the resurrection. Jews
and Gentiles of faith together in each other’s homes and each other’s care, and
Jesus affirms these relationships in Capernaum by his healing.
Except... What if Jesus is
amazed not at the greatness of faith but at the tragic misunderstanding of
faith? The centurion’s message says “I also am a man of authority. I tell
people to go and they go.” Does Jesus really appreciate being compared to a
military officer giving orders? Is the centurion one of these stuck up people
of privilege who’s calling in favors? “Hey, we’re both important people here,
I’m sure you can help me out. You know, I built that Jewish synagogue.” Is that
any kind of faith? “Give me a break,” Jesus must think, “nowhere in Israel have
I seen such faith as this! I’ll heal the
slave, but don’t anyone take notes on this guy.”
This was my debate: should we
adopt the centurion’s faith or renounce it? But then I realized something. The
centurion is not the point of this story. Read it one way or read it the other,
but Jesus doesn’t heal because of his great faith or in spite of his ridiculous
faith. Jesus heals, just because that
poor man was sick. Healing was a part of what Jesus did. He healed, he taught,
he restored outcasts to community and he resisted the violence of oppression
with love, and each of these was a part of the kingdom of God breaking into the
world before their eyes. That’s what
Jesus was about.
Now, I know that many of us
have a mental hurdle with the healing stories. It’s easy to for our minds to
get snagged on the miracle: How did it happen? Can we really believe it? “I
don’t buy it,” you may think. I’m here to tell you that we of the modern,
medical age, are the only ones who get caught on those questions. The people
who wrote and heard the gospels understood and accepted the healings with no
trouble. Would it be any less miraculous to them to learn of people receiving a
vaccine that prevents polio, or having an appendix removed before it ruptures,
or getting an artificial joint and being able to walk again? We understand our
healings, and they understood theirs. For them, the question was not “how did
it happen?” but “what does it mean?” And that’s a better question for us to
ask. What does the healing mean?
It means that God is at work
in this world with the will and power to restore our well-being. When we pray,
in the Lord’s prayer, “God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” that
work is about reaching out to people who are unwell (in any definition of being
unwell) just because we have the will and power to restore them to
well-being.
There are not many movies
that show the Christian church at its best. It’s easier to show the church as
judgmental and out of touch, I guess, and God knows there is enough truth to
that. But I did see a movie get to the heart of who we are at our best. Lars
and the Real Girl tells the story of a troubled young man named Lars who
lives and works in a small town while avoiding personal interaction with anyone.
At work he stays in an isolated cubicle, and he attends the local church but
leaves quickly when it’s done. Every conversation is polite but terse, with one
foot moving out the door.
One day, he shows up at his
brother and sister-in-laws house for dinner, which he never does, and he
introduces them to his girlfriend, who is, to their surprise, just a mannequin.
He acts as if she is a real girl, and he brings her inside on a wheelchair. He
asks if she can stay in their guest room, and then he takes her to church, and
at church they all say “it’s nice to meet you, and would you like to join us
for a girls lunch out, and they come and pick her up a few times a week, they
get her hair styled.” Through all of this, Lars begins slowly to open up to
other people, and as his life opens up, he begins to tell people that his
girlfriend is dying.
At his brother’s house, with
everyone pretending that she is lying ill in the guest bedroom, three women
from the church show up with lots of food. They give a plate of food to Lars
and then they sit down with him in the living room and take out their knitting.
“Is there something I’m
supposed to be doing?” he asks.
“No dear. You eat. We came
over to sit. That’s what people do when tragedy strikes. They come over and
sit.”
What beautiful, healing,
restoring work it is for this small town church to pretend that this woman is
real as a way to restore this troubled young man, to bring him healing, just
because that’s what you do. That’s what people do. They come over
and sit.
I bet some of you can relate
to that. Not to that specific story, but to the sense of doing things just
because.
Why do you spend time and
money and effort to help people, to restore their well-being?
Well, because they need help.
But why do you do it?
Because I can. Because
someone asked me.
What made you agree?
Why wouldn’t I? Just…because.
I think that if you dig down
behind that answer, there is a truth about who we really are. The truth is that
we are God’s people. The Spirit of God rests upon us. We do what we do because we are connected to
God, revealed in Jesus Christ, the one who heals whenever people are unwell.
In 1961, six-year-old Tessie
was one of four girls who integrated, by federal order, the all white school in
New Orleans. Every day, Tessie’s parents would leave early for work, and her
grandmother would get her ready for school, and then a team of U.S. Marshals
would escort Tessie as she walked to school past the angry, screaming, hate-filled
mob who waited for her each and every day. The psychologist Robert Coles was
doing research on children, and he was there at breakfast with Tessie and her
grandmother, his tape recorder on.
One morning at breakfast,
Tessie said she didn’t feel well enough to go to school. Her grandmother said
that’s fine, if she was ill. But if she was more discouraged than sick, that
was another matter. “It’s no picnic,
child, going to that school. If I could go, I would, but you have to go, and I
get to stay home and clean things up and watch television while you’re walking
past those people. But I’ll tell you, you’re doing them a service, a big
service. You see my child, you have to help the good Lord with His world! He
puts us here – and He calls us to help Him out. You belong in that school, and
there will be a day when everyone knows that, even those poor folks who are out
there shouting their heads off at you. God’s given a call to you, a call to
service. There’s all those people, scared out of their minds, and by the time
you’re ready to leave McDonogh School they’ll be calmed down and they won’t be
paying you no mind at all, child.” (Robert
Coles, The Call of Service, pages
3-4, condensed)
As grandmother spoke, Tessie
finished eating, took her bowl to the sink, and got her bag ready for
school. Coles wondered if she had said
she didn’t want to go to school on purpose, just to get her grandmother to tell
her again why she was going, and how it would all be made well in the end.
And maybe we also need to be
reminded now and again.
On the day after France
surrendered to Germany during World War II, the minister of a Reformed church
in a village in south France stood in the pulpit and reminded the congregation
that “the responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be
brought to bear.” Over the next four years, this village of 5,000 people
sheltered and hid over 5,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps.
Years later, a Jewish man who
was born in the village during those years went back to interview the older
villagers for a documentary. When he asked them how they made the risky
decision to hide the Jews, he got puzzled reactions. “It happened so naturally,
we can’t understand the fuss,” one said. Another person said “I helped simply
because they needed to be helped…. The Bible says to feed the hungry, to visit
the sick. It’s a normal thing to do.” He asked one woman why she continued to
give shelter even as the German army moved into south France and the danger
increased. She said “I don’t know. We were
used to it.” (Charles Campbell, The Word Before the Powers, pages 1-2.)
Why did they give so
generously for the wellbeing of others? Just because. That’s who they were.
Do we ever know what it does
to people when we open the doors on Sunday mornings, when we call on the God
who welcomes us all and restores us all, when we sing praises and pray for
God's kingdom on earth? It changes us. It shapes us. By the power of God, it
restores us, and through us maybe the world around us. Just because.
Just because.
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