A Foreigner Teaches the Faithful

                                          Luke 7: 1-10

         

 

          I have a close friend who underwent open heart surgery a few years back. I’m happy to say that the surgery, while major, did save his life. Without that bypass surgery, I don’t think he would be here today. But to get to that operating table took a considerable act of faith. If I recall correctly, my friend had seven blockages. It was too much for one surgery. So the surgeon studied and chose the four most damaging spots to repair. At his age, my friend Bill probably had one shot to do what could be done. He would have to live with the rest.

          In addition, two of the arteries were on the back side of Bill’s body, behind his heart and therefore much more complicated to reach and repair. In other words, to even attempt the surgery was a major risk. It required a substantial leap of faith for Bill and his wife to give the surgeon the green light. My friends did a lot of praying. In the end, they put their hands in the hands of a skilled surgeon and turned over the rest to the providence of God.

          There is a similar faith story in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, both curiously in the seventh chapter of those gospels. These parallel accounts are very similar and today, I will use Luke’s more gentile story to talk about faith, and not just any faith, but the kind of faith that needs no eyewitness, no advance planning. It is the kind of faith that is blind and deaf and just says “I believe.” It is the kind of faith that makes us all take a deep breath in wonder and ask whether, if confronted with that set of facts, we could perform in that way and with that depth of trust.

          Today, we look at the faith of a centurion. An odd choice if you think about it. To pick a soldier and him from another culture, a polytheistic culture at that, for a role model of faith in Jesus. First of all, some scholars differ over who he was.  The New International Commentary says that at the time, there were no Roman forces in Galilee, so this soldier might not have been Roman at all. He might rather have been one of Herod’s personal guard.  He might also have just been on special assignment. That happened to centurions too. The point is not whether he was a centurion or some other soldier, but that this man was a gentile. He lived in that other world where gentiles normally hated Jews and Jews despised gentiles. It was so bad that it was against Jewish law for a Jew to even go into the house of a gentile.

A centurion was a Roman soldier in charge of at least 100 men. Today’s modern equivalent would be a first or second army lieutenant. Centurions were the core of the Roman army. They came up through the ranks and had proved themselves in battle. They usually couldn’t make such rank before about ten years’ service. They made 5,000 denarii a year, which in todays’ currency isn’t much—about a thousand dollars—but in comparison to the common soldier, they made about twenty times more. So centurions were paid pretty well for their day.

This centurion was anything but typical. He was invested in the area. In Capernaum, he had built the Jews a synagogue.  Now, the Roman government encouraged the army to mingle with the people, but this was beyond the call of duty. And this centurion had a servant. Nothing unusual about that. But the way he treated his servant was unusual. Luke tells us that the servant was highly valued by the centurion. The Greek word for servant is doulos, but it does double duty. It also means slave. In fact, the two meanings were so closely aligned that to say one was to imply the other. Slave. Servant. The words were pretty much interchangeable. And in that day, to be a slave was to be a piece of property. Local literature about running a household recommended yearly evaluation of property. If the servant/slave was not producing, best toss him out. The owner had no obligation to take care of a non-productive slave. So for Luke to report that the centurion highly valued his servant was again an unusual situation.

The centurion was unusual in another way. He had the respect of the Jewish elders of the area. They actually went and appealed to Jesus for him. They said he loved their nation, that he was worthy of Jesus’ help. That’s a far cry from what one typically heard about a Roman soldier in Galilee.

Now, you know this story. Jesus heals the servant. More impressively, he dials it in. The centurion tells Jesus he understands authority, that Jesus has it, and that he doesn’t need to be present to make it happen. The centurion is humble. Although the Jewish elders have called him worthy, he calls himself unworthy for Jesus to come under his roof. While Jewish law says as much, this is not at all what the centurion means. He is genuine. He sees Jesus as the Son of God and he knows his place. He is a sinner and Jesus is Lord of all.

 The real take-away from this story is that the Centurion, a stranger, a foreigner, showed Jesus more faith than anyone Jesus had met in all of Israel. Why is that not surprising? The story of Jesus is the story of faith in action. The story of God is the story of faith in action. The Bible illustrates our heavenly father’s faith in action over and over and over in the most vivid of portraits and almost every time, the hero or heroine is drawn from the ranks of the unlikely, from a Bedouin named Abraham to a farmer named Amos to an unnamed Samaritan woman to a Roman soldier.

Always the most unlikely candidate. Why? Because then we know its God and not us. And in the case of the centurion, it is his acting on his belief, showing his faith, that sets him apart from all the others whom Jesus has met.

Soldiers are trained to follow orders. They learn to rely on their comrades. There is safety in the uniformity. They train so that when something does happen, they don’t freeze. They are taught to sacrifice. Today, we give pause to remember those tens, even hundreds, of thousands of men and women who, as Abraham Lincoln said of those fallen at Gettysburg, “gave the last full measure of their devotion.” As we do, we may more fully understand the words of devotion and obedience of the centurion. The Roman soldier’s understanding of authority came partially from his training, but the decision to follow that understanding came directly from his heart. He had the faith to follow his instincts.

These are troubled times. We too have servants, and friends, falling all around us, and our way can look uncertain. But it isn’t. We need only to fix our eyes upon Jesus. Like my good friend Bill, we need to put our hands in the hands of the man from Galilee. Like the centurion, we need to ask for Jesus to just say the word, and let us be healed.

The writer of Hebrews calls it the assurance of things hoped for, expected, the substance or conviction of things not seen. The centurion called it obedience to the authority of Jesus. “Say the word and let my servant be healed,” he said in true faith.

And Jesus “marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” Jesus used the faith of a foreigner, an outsider, to show the people of faith what real faith looked like.

And those who had been sent (are you one of them?) returned to the house. You know the end of this story. Healed by the Son of God, made possible by the faith of one man… just one man…they found the servant well.

Imagine what we could do together with our faith acting as one!