Since Pentecost this year, way back at the beginning of June, we’ve been
systematically working our way through Luke’s gospel. This is a bit of a recap
to place us in that exploration…
We looked at Jesus early ministry… following his footsteps…
we started with his baptism and his setting the agenda for his ministry by
reading from the scroll of Isaiah: that the Spirit of Lord was upon him, to
preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the bind, to free the
prisoner and bring release to the oppressed and declare the acceptable year of
the Lord. And we moved on to see how that was fulfilled in Jesus encounters
with people and how it leads him into his conflict with the religious people of
his day. We looked at what it told us of
Jesus and how we could follow his footsteps in our own lives.
Over the past two
months we’ve been focusing on two sections of Jesus teaching in the gospel.
Last month we looked at Jesus teaching on prayer in Luke
11:1-13, we took that section out of order to coincide with doing ‘the prayer
course’ here at St Peter’s. We looked at what Jesus teaching in a prayer, a
parable and a principle told us about prayer as communication with God. That the hope of prayer was found in the character of God, therefore we could be hopeful in prayer, and with shameless audacity approach God, and in the Prayer Jesus taught his disciples he encapsulated the scope of our human hope: Giving us petitions to pray, a pattern to our prayer and a priority for our prayer and our life.
Before that we had spent five weeks looking at Jesus sermonon the plain in Luke chapter 6… seeing Jesus call for his disciples to show
exceptional love in light of God’s gracious blessing. That God’s offer of blessing
was for the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, the ones who were despised and
persecuted because of the son of man… and in light of that we were to love our
enemies, not to judge to be merciful as our Father is merciful, and that the only foundation for showing such exceptional love is in knowing Jesus,
hearing his words and putting them into practise.
Today we are starting a new series, looking at four
encounters with Jesus in Luke chapter 7: The gentile centurion, the widow at
Nain, the disciples of John the Baptist and the woman who anoints Jesus feet at
the house of Simon the Pharisee. In each of these encounters with the
revolution of God grace we see how Jesus mission statement about good news and
recovery and release grows in its scope, we see how Jesus follows up his words
about showing exceptional love with exceptional ministry, and we are drawn deeper
and deeper into the identity of Jesus as God’s agent.
Today we are looking at Jesus encounter with the gentile
centurion. Up to this point in the gospel people have been surprised and amazed
by what Jesus has to say and what Jesus does, but in this narrative we find
that Jesus is surprised and Jesus is amazed at the centurion’s words and his
humble faith and he a mere gentile is held up as an example for us of faith in
Jesus Christ.
After Jesus had finished his sermon on the plain it tells us
he came into Capernaum, which had been his base of operations for the first
part of his ministry. We are told the servant of a certain centurion was ill
and about to die. A servant that was valuable to the roman officer. We are told the centurion had heard of Jesus,
Jesus had healed many people in the Capernaum and the villages and towns around
there, so the centurion sends some Jewish elders the civil leaders of the town
to Jesus to ask him to come and heal his servant. The question is whether Jesus
revolution of grace, his love and his compassion and his ministry would extend
to a gentile, to someone who was considered the enemy.
The centurion would have been the figure of roman authority
in the town. The Jewish elders present a
case for Jesus to come, that the man loved Israel and had built the synagogue
in the city. We are presented with a picture of the centurion who at the very
least did not treat the locals with contempt, who followed the roman custom of
showing respect for cultures older than their own, and saw religion as an
important part of the social fabric to be encouraged to keep order in the
empire. Even his caring for his servant may simply have been the pragmatism of
roman society where to care for sick slaves was advised because it prolonged
their usefulness. Or we are presented with a man who is genuinely kind and was
interested in things Jewish and their God. In the end we don’t know. The Jewish
elders seem to come to Jesus with a case that the roman centurion deserves
Jesus attention. He was their patron and
in the social way of doing things that meant they should repay him.
This goes against what Jesus had been teaching about God’s
revolution of grace, that god’s favour and god’s blessing is not earned but
rather freely given. We can buy God’s favour by being nice, kind and caring. It
is about God being kind and God caring and if I may be so bold God being nice…
But Jesus choses to go with them; Jesus revolution of grace is willing to go
past the social barriers between Jew and Gentile with compassion and healing.
To set foot in the home of a gentile was to face ritual uncleanness. More than
that to show such kindness to a roman office was like treason. But Jesus revolution of grace was willing to reach across those boundaries with exceptional love.
On the way another delegation comes from the Centurion, we
are told this is a different group, not the civil leaders but the centurion’s
friends. They tell us a different story, they carry the centurion’s own words
to Jesus. He does not think he has earned Jesus favour or cand emand it by right but he does trust and have faith in Jesus. The centurion addresses Jesus as Lord, he is aware of something about
Jesus that the Jewish elders are not.
The centurion is aware that he is unworthy of the favour of Jesus he
does not deserve to have Jesus come under his roof. He uses the word not trying
to earn or garner favour with Jesus, but acknowledges his humble reliance on
Jesus graciousness and mercy. He
acknowledges that has faith in Jesus authority to simply speak and the servant
will be healed. He sees in Jesus someone who has authority over sickness and
disease… he expresses it in terms of his own experience as an officer in the
roman army. He has been commissioned and given orders and he has authority over
his soldiers and expects them to do what he says. He gives orders to his
servants and they carry them out. It is
hard for us to see the authority of Jesus in the strict terms of a military
system, but the centurion acknowledges the authority of God, to do what God
chooses.
Jesus is amazed at this. He turns to the crowd that was
following him and says that he had not found such faith in all of Israel. He
here in this gentile we find great surprising faith: Faith that trusts in the
power and presence of God in and with Jesus. We are told that when the men who
had been sent return to the centurion’s home the servant is well.
Now the fact that Jesus had started to go with the Jewish
elders shows us he was going to heal the servant, it wasn’t because of the
man’s kindness or his faith but rather because of God’s grace and love, even
for the occupying forces, even for a rich powerful man. But the centurion has displayed such humble
faith in Jesus that is shown to us as an example of how we should respond to
Jesus. It is a great example of trust in God's authority and the shameless audacity Jesus says we should have when we pray.
So let’s turn and look at what this passage says to us
today.
The first thing is that one of the things that concerns Luke
in his gospel and later in Acts is that Jewish and gentile Christians can get
along. In this passage we see that expressed in the relationship between the
roman centurion and the people in Capernaum. The start of cross cultural
relationships comes with respect and kindness. The roman could have come in and
enforced his own culture and his own religion and beliefs on the local
populous, he could have treated them with contempt. But rather we see him
growing to understand and appreciate the other culture. That breaks down
barriers and actually allows for God’s grace to bring healing. It allows Jesus
to be introduced into the situation. It speaks to us in our increasingly
multi-cultural world and church, we are often used to the dominant culture
simply having things their way. I wonder if that stops the grace of God from
speaking into the situation. The
centurion shows us that in being open to what the other culture had to offer
opened him up to the grace of God.
The second thing is that the faith of the centurion is a
challenge for all of us. Firstly that the centurion realises that he does not
have the right to come into Jesus presence, there Is a humbleness that
acknowledges his unworthiness, we often have identified that idea in a negative
way, it is a putting of ourselves down, but that is not the case here, the
centurion realises the uniqueness of Jesus, the power of God. Psalm eight
expresses it wonderfully, it is a written as the poet stares up at the vastness
of heavens and the amazing awesomeness
of the God who has created all that and
realises his own insignificance, ‘who is man that you should consider us… But
there is also the wonder and amazing fact that God does and God cares.
The centurion’s faith is that Jesus simply needed to speak
the word and the servant would be healed… It is a trust in the power of God, to
do what God chooses to do, that God is sovereign, all powerful. It is the same
faith we need when we pray. A trust in God to do good. Sometimes our prayers
simply become a waffle of vague hopes and wondering if God can, the centurion’s
faith was yes that God could, yes that Jesus could, and in asking all he risked
was that Jesus would say no. But he didn’t.
The last thing is the wonderful expression of exceptional
love that Jesus demonstrates. Here we see jesus revolution of God’s grace reach
across the great socio religious divide of his day. The scope of God’s grace of
he kingdom of god as not is not just for Israel, it is not just for the people
who have historically been identified as his people, it is for all, it is
universal. It is for the gentiles, it is even for the powerful and the wealthy
as well as the poor and oppressed. It is for all who our religion and cultural
understandings can see beyond God’s care or as our enemies. Jesus not only talked the talk of love your
enemy he lived it out as well.
I couldn’t help but be moved by a story I read In the
October edition f the Voice of the Martyrs magazine. Which I think shows how
cultural respect and kindness can open the door to god’s healing and grace.
Raji was a member of a militant Hindu group in India, they were opposed to any
Christian activity in their village. One day a pastor from another town had
come to preach, and raji and twenty others had beaten him and left him in a
ditch. But Raji felt a real sense of guilt that he ahd beaten an innocent man
and after telling his wife, Aysa, what he has done, she convinced him that this was not the way their
culture tells them to treat people and to go and get the pastor so
they could tend to his wounds. So he did. The next day after he was able to
speak again, Asya asked him why he had come to their village and he told her
that he had come to talk of Jesus who cared for the poor and healed the sick.
Asya’s sister in law had been sick for months so she bought her for the pastor to
pray for and he shared the gospel and prayed for her. Two days later she was
healed and about forty people from the village became followers of Jesus
including Raji and a church was established.
Kindness opened the door to to Jesus love for our enemies and to God’s
healing and saving power.
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