Today
I want to talk about the first healing from the first reading. Not the obvious
choice to talk about perhaps because the second healing is about resurrection
and Lord, do we need a promise of resurrection in our lives these days. I do
promise we’ll get there; I just want to start in the beginning. And the reason
I feel compelled to talk about the first story is because of the matter of this
centurion, because there is something about this encounter between the
centurion and Jesus that is baffling and brilliant.
The
story goes like this. A centurion has a slave that is deathly ill, and he hears
that Jesus is coming to town. He has heard the stories about this Jesus—healing
other sick folks throughout the countryside. So he sends an envoy to Jesus,
asking him if he might heal his slave. Then, after the envoy tells Jesus about
the sick slave and asks him to come, the centurion himself appears. And so begins
a very interesting exchange. The centurion tells Jesus not to bother going all
the way to his house. In fact, the centurion explains that he didn’t even want
to so burden Jesus with his presence and this is why he assumedly sent his
envoy in the first place. Apparently the centurion is as concerned with making
sure that Jesus is not put to too much trouble as he is with his slave being
healed. For this reason I can only assume that the centurion is Norwegian. The
centurion goes so far as to explain to Jesus that he knows precisely what it is
that Jesus is going through, because he, too, has people above and under him.
All he hopes is that Jesus issues a simple command. He (the centurion) expects
nothing more than that.
We
might pause there for a moment, because if you set this stage for me and I’d
never read this story before I’m not sure what I would expect Jesus to say. I
could really see it going a couple of different ways. Is Jesus going to
admonish the centurion for not coming to him in the first place? Is he going to
go all the way to the centurion’s house all the same? Is this going to be a
story of judgment?
I
expect everybody alongside Jesus was holding their breath and chewing their
fingernails all the same. I mean, centurions are Roman soldiers and, sure, this
one apparently helped the people to build the synagogue in town, so he was
friendly with the Jews, but the question remains: Is this centurion’s behavior
appropriate in the presence of Jesus?
The
answer, apparently, is yes. In fact, the scripture says that “when 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’” (Luke 7:9). This
response begs the question, “What, particularly, is it that the centurion did that
Jesus understood to be so faithful?” Was it sending an envoy? Was it coming
himself? Was it doing both? No, it can’t be any of that, because Jesus responds
not to his appearance but to his words. So, what about those words, then? What
is it that the centurion says this that is so faithful? Let’s listen closely:
He says, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; 7 therefore I did
not presume to come to you. But only
speak the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For 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”
(Luke 7:6b-8).
Did
you catch it? The centurion understands where he actually stands; he
understands that he is unworthy, as a slave is unworthy to approach his master.
That’s humility. But it gets better. The centurion then goes on to explain that
he is, in his own work, a man who is both a slave-master and a slave himself to
authorities over him. Strangely enough, he sees Jesus in the same light; that
Jesus can both issue commands and that he is a slave to a higher
power. The centurion doesn’t know that Jesus is God, but he certainly knows
that Jesus is sent from God. That is his confession. And it’s a stunning one,
because in the Gospels pretty much the only ones who recognize Jesus for who he
actually is are the demons—demons and, perhaps, this centurion.
The
idea that we are both slaves and masters is deeply Lutheran, by the way. Martin
Luther said that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none,
and a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject
to all.: The centurion got there fifteen hundred years before brother Martin.
He got it. To be a Christian is to be free, purchased by God through Jesus
Christ on the cross, and equally to be a Christian is to be a slave to the
needs of others. We are fully slaves, fully free; fully saints, fully sinners;
and it isn’t 50% - 50%, which would allow us to hold the two in tension, as if
we are to be faithful some moments to Christ and others to our neighbors, but
100% of each and this is what the centurion grasps. This is what leaves Jesus
amazed. Unlike seemingly everyone else in the Gospels, the centurion understood
what it meant to be a Jesus-follower, and not only was he not a Christian; he
wasn’t even a Jew! He was humble for all the right reasons. This did not happen
every day in Jesus’ ministry.
But,
OK, the slave who was healed was still a slave. The centurion didn’t free him;
he didn’t free the rest of his slaves. Even a good master is still a human
being, and a slave has no choice but to be a slave. This was not a good
arrangement. The story of the centurion helps us get our foot in the door to
ask questions about what it means to be faithful to Jesus, but ultimately the
centurion is also a product of a broken world. Men should not be owning other
men. Therefore, it is appropriate that Jesus heals the centurion’s slave,
because it is a temporary healing for a temporary, flawed arrangement. The slave—like
all others healed over the course of Jesus’ ministry—would one day die. He just
put it off for a later date.
This
brings us to a crossroads in Jesus ministry. Being a healer is nice, but
healing is not universal—it’s specific to a relative few—and it’s not
permanent—they will one day get sick again and die. So, Jesus’ healing might be
miraculous but it is not ultimate. So, when Jesus enters the village of Nain
and approaches the funeral procession of a young man we start to yearn for
something more. Here, Jesus starts to deliver on the promise of something more.
Healing is one thing, but resurrection? Now that is another ballgame. We are
now at Def Con 2 in Jesus’ ministry. Not only is he healing the sick; now he is
raising the dead!
But
we’re not there yet. It’s not complete. Yes, raising the dead is fantastic,
amazing, miraculous, but it’s still too specific, too limited. Others died
whose funeral processions did not cross Jesus’ path, so did their lives matter
less? And, yes, it’s wonderful that this young man gets to keep on living when
he was dead before his time, but, ultimately, he will die again. Like Lazarus,
he just gets to die twice.
No,
we need more even than this story from the village of Nain. We need not one
particular salvation story; we need not just one healing story. This is why we
have faith not that Jesus will heal us, not even that he will heal those we
love, but that he will, even more amazingly still, save us. We need universal
healing; we need raising from the dead. We need God to save the whole stinking
thing, and it does stink, rotten from all the things we are slaves to—like the
centurion. We do not need temporary resuscitation but eternal resurrection.
I
wonder if this is why Jesus found the centurion so faithful, because he
understood intuitively that in this world we are all slaves and we are all
masters. We have those under us and those over us. We make commands and we
follow orders. To be faithful to Jesus is to follow the only master that will
lead us on a road that doesn’t have a “Dead End.” The centurion couldn’t have
known what this meant, but he believed it in his actions nonetheless. That’s
amazing. If he can, so can we. Follow the master who leads us to life.
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