Throughout the Gospels, there's only one time when Jesus is portrayed as being impressed. Oh, other people, yeah – they're often impressed by Jesus. They ooh and ahh, they marvel, they wonder, they're awestruck. But only twice is Jesus said to marvel, and one of those is a negative astonishment at the lack of faith he finds. Only once does Jesus marvel positively, with a delighted amazement. This is that story.
The setting is Capernaum, the Galilean fishing village where Jesus has been hanging his hat ever since he left behind his lifelong home in Nazareth (Matthew 4:13). Capernaum is his town now. Jesus is freshly back from delivering the Sermon on the Mount from the side of a hill outside town. The people who heard it were amazed by it, and as he strolled off the scene, big crowds hounded him like a pack of puppies at his heels (Matthew 8:1). Along the way, a leper ran ahead, fell to his knees before Jesus, and begged for healing – and was given it, then and there (Matthew 8:2-4). And then Jesus makes his way to Capernaum, this flock of followers trailing behind him. They believe; they're entranced; they can't wait to study this Jesus fellow in greater detail.
But as Jesus makes his way into town, the streets flooding with his eager followers watching him, someone else steps forward to meet with Jesus: a centurion (Matthew 8:5). A centurion might be an officer in the Roman army, a unit commander appointed over about eighty soldiers; but in this case he's likely a mercenary captain in the service of Galilee's ruler Herod Antipas, who tried to imitate the Roman military organization on a smaller scale. Matthew doesn't go into it, but Luke tells us that this Gentile centurion or mercenary captain went out of his way to be friendly to the Jewish people, to the point of using his own money to sponsor the construction of a Capernaum synagogue, and so gaining the friendship of local Jewish religious leaders, who testify that “he is worthy” to have Jesus act on his petition, “for he loves our nation” (Luke 7:5).
And this centurion continues demonstrating his positive disposition by interceding, not for his own benefit, but for his servant. As a centurion, this man couldn't be married; he was, as we say today, married to the job. So his household was him and his staff who served him, aiding him in his practical needs. The centurion's servant, however, had gotten sick. He's paralyzed, bedridden, can't get up, and is suffering badly from the condition, and perhaps is knocking at death's door (Matthew 8:6; Luke 7:2). It would have been easy, for a man trained in the military efficiency of Rome's imitators, to look at that and just post a job opening in the town square. But this centurion is attached, valuing this man not just as a tool or a servant but as a friend, as family, even as a son.
So the centurion has come to Jesus. What has the centurion heard about Jesus? We know that, before this time, Jesus “went all throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people; so his fame spread all throughout Syria... and great crowds followed him” (Matthew 4:23-25). That's what the centurion has heard. He's perhaps met people who had been healed by Jesus. The centurion's religious background was no doubt pagan – the Herods got their mercenaries from places as far as Germany, Bulgaria, and France. But one historian of the Roman military writes that “as men were shifted from one installation to the next, they would also gradually acquire new spiritual ideas and cultic practices which they would carry with them from place to place.”1 And given this centurion's sponsorship of a synagogue here in Capernaum, his old pagan ways have already been cracking to an openness to the God of Israel. And what he's seen and heard so far has given him a clear-eyed glimpse that this God is mightily at work in Jesus.
The centurion comes and presents his trouble to Jesus: there's a servant suffering at home, wherever home is – maybe that town, maybe a few towns over. Some translators render Jesus' reply as a statement: “I will come and heal him” (Matthew 8:7). Others understand it as a question: “Shall I come and heal him?” Because the thing is, there was a Jewish taboo against physically entering the home of a Gentile. Peter will later admit “how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation” (Acts 10:28) – popular Jewish thought held Gentile homes to be unclean. Jesus is certainly willing to go, just as he was willing to lay hands on a leper (Matthew 8:3). But in both cases, there is a taboo to be broken.
In the next verse, the centurion acknowledges the taboo – and he doesn't mention it with a hint of resentment; he accepts it, he acknowledges it. “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” (Matthew 8:8). Part of the reason why is that the centurion is a Gentile, yet he accepts and appreciates the purity strictures of the Jewish culture that surrounds him. He doesn't resent it, doesn't disdain it, doesn't mock it or rebel against it, the way we might take offense in his shoes. He accepts that his home is ritually unclean to his neighbors, he maybe even accepts their verdict as he's begun to catch their belief-system. But more to the point, this centurion has come, in some way, to identify Jesus with the presence of the God of Israel; and the centurion sees the vast moral and spiritual gulf between himself and Jesus, the one he addresses as 'Lord.' Where Luke envisions the synagogue elders declaring that the centurion “is worthy” (Luke 7:5), the centurion himself shuns their praise and confesses himself unworthy (Matthew 8:8; Luke 7:6).
The centurion explains, though, that Jesus doesn't even need to set foot in his house, doesn't need to get dirty, in order to make all the difference. The centurion looks at Jesus and sees a man who wields spiritual authority. In that, the centurion has a framework to understand him. Because the centurion, too, is embedded in an authority structure: the army. The centurion has people above him, like the legate of his legion and the tribune of his cohort. In that, the centurion is “a man under authority.” And so the centurion also has people below him, who answer to him, who take his orders: all the soldiers of his century, and the servants of his household. When the centurion speaks orders, his words shape reality because, bearing his authority, they move other agents to act and accomplish what he's spoken. Authority, to the centurion, is the ability to accomplish your will at a distance through delegation – through the obedience of other agents. “I say to one, 'Go!' – and he goes; and to another, 'Come!' – and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this!' – and he does it” (Matthew 8:9).
And the centurion reasons that Jesus can do the same thing. Only, all the invisible powers of the world are the servants of Jesus, the soldiers under Jesus. Jesus is no lower-level functionary who can only make a difference in the world in the places he can physically reach. Nature itself, and the spirits that indwell it, are as fully responsive to Jesus as mortal soldiers and servants are to the centurion. Therefore, the centurion believes, Jesus can give the order, and waiting angels will salute and rush instantaneously to implement those orders anywhere in the universe, vanquishing with overwhelming force any demons of sickness and paralysis, any powers of disease, that have his servant in their grip. “Only say the word,” the centurion implores Jesus, “and my servant will be healed” (Matthew 8:8). Think what an exalted view of Jesus this is, for someone to already have before his resurrection and exaltation! This centurion already sees Jesus at the top of the cosmic chain of command.
No wonder Jesus marvels, no wonder Jesus is amazed, no wonder Jesus turns to the crowds – these crowds that came to Jesus from all over Galilee and beyond, these crowds that have listened to him preach the Sermon on the Mount, these crowds that saw the contagious purity of Jesus infect a leper with health – and tell them, “With no one in Israel have I found such faith!” (Matthew 8:10). People brought their sick, their seizure-seized, their demon-ridden to Jesus – and that's a measure of some faith, but not this level of faith. People saw and listened to his words, treasuring them – and that's some faith, but this centurion has blown them out of the water. The leper that Jesus healed came, knelt before the Lord, and confessed a belief that Jesus could fix what ailed him, then and there, by touch – but this centurion says Jesus doesn't even need to touch. Peter doesn't yet have that kind of faith. John doesn't yet have that kind of faith. No disciple does. But this centurion – an outsider to the heritage of Abraham and the teaching of Moses and the promises of the prophets – he does have faith that outshines everything this generation of Israel has mustered.
So Jesus will fulfill the centurion's request, telling him, “Go, let it be done for you as you have believed” – and, Matthew whispers to us, “The servant was healed at that very moment” (Matthew 8:13). But first, Jesus offers the crowd this teachable moment. The faith that even they haven't yet measured up to, this centurion outsider, this military man, has discovered and disclosed. And he'll be the first of many – the first of many outsiders to Israel who, by having the faith Israel ought to have had, will lay claim to Israel's inheritance. “I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness” (Matthew 8:11-12). Plenty of Jesus' Jewish neighbors in Capernaum expected that, when God's kingdom came in full, it would spell the destruction of the Roman military, it would mean that the Messiah would lead them in combat to overthrow Rome; but here Jesus, the Messiah himself, says that this Gentile military man is the first of many like him who will come take Israel's abandoned seats at God's table, and will spend eternity breaking bread with Father Abraham and all the holy ones of old, dining on the delicacies of the Almighty. That's not what they expected. It may have confused the crowd. But from all those pagan nations would arise a faith worthy of dwelling under God's roof forever.
And then there's us. We are called to rise to the level of that centurion's faith. Jesus is the Lord of authority, he really is at the top of the cosmic chain of command. Through that authority, his presence and power stretch out through the whole universe. A word he whispers, be it on earth or in heaven, can launch anything into action as all the powers of nature and supernature leap into obedience. And therefore, the word of Jesus is a guarantee. He only has to give the order, and what he speaks will be accomplished. So trust him. Appeal to him for your soul and your life, trusting that he's able to abolish sin, that he's able to vanquish death, that he's able with a whisper to rearrange galaxies and rewrite the tablets of destiny. A word from Jesus, and every particle of the coronavirus would humbly dissolve into atoms or be swept up by legions of angels, if that's his will. A word from Jesus, and the raging rebellion of the nations would be overpowered and tamed. All we need to hear is what the centurion heard: “Go, let it be done for you as you have believed” (Matthew 8:13).
We are called to the centurion's faith, because we follow in his footsteps. Most of us here, I would surmise, are Gentiles – people whose ancestors, two thousand years ago as Jesus trod the world, were not Abraham's sons and daughters but were, instead, among an assortment of pagan tribes, foreigners to Israel, excluded from the kingdom of God. We here are just part of a vast crowd drawn from many nations, many ethnicities, many tribes, many languages. In this teaching, Jesus proclaims the start of people like us being included, being given a hope that – by catching faith like this – we'd win those forfeited seats at the table. Jesus' picture of eternity – a picture popular in the prophets and among the rabbis – was as a banquet, a celebration party with a feasting table. That's the image we're given. And we're all looking forward to making our way to that feast and sitting with the great heroes of faith – splitting a steak with Elijah, toasting a glass with Isaiah, singing along with David, breaking bread with Abraham. That's the joy of the age to come!
As an appetizer and a foretaste, the Lord sends down a table now, an altar of the sacrifice of the new covenant, for the church's regular meals of thanksgiving. Plucked from the end-time table of heavenly delight, we sample eternity on our tongues. As we eat the loaf and drink the chalice provided for us at the cost of the life of the Son of God, we the faithful have the precious opportunity to peek behind the curtains of eternity and taste what's in store. At this table, fused by mystery to the table that's to come, Abraham joins us, Isaac joins us, Jacob joins us, the apostles and prophets and martyrs and confessors and the righteous made perfect join us, while angels sing in stunned and wistful awe! The table of the Lord is the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
In some church traditions, for hundreds of years, one of the last things called out by the congregation before receiving this communion has been the word of the centurion's faith: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Confessing our unworthiness, yet we welcome the Jesus who speaks to us in bread and wine, in body and blood. He exchanges our roof for his roof: we are unworthy to be his hosts, so he makes us his guests. And it isn't a servant who needs healing in bed at home, but our very soul, our whole self, in desperate need of being healed from month to month and week to week and day to day. How much more zealous should we then be in coming like the centurion to Jesus, crying out these words, humbly approaching his table? All Jesus has to do is say the word. And his word is: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). “Take, eat: this is my body” (Matthew 26:26), “which is given for you: Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). “Drink of [this cup], all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:27). He used his authority... to give himself away.
Lord
Jesus, we are not worthy that you should enter under our roof,
but
only speak this word and our souls and our world shall be healed.
Amen!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 John F. Shean, Soldiering for God: Christianity and the Roman Army, History of Warfare 61 (Brill, 2010), 41.
No comments:
Post a Comment