Outside Over There
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.
When I was growing up, there were only a couple of kids in
my neighborhood who didn’t go to some kind of church most every Sunday. Pretty much every family we knew had
some sort of religious affiliation.
It was just the way things were when I was young, and I’m sure many of
you have the same sort of memories.
In fact, membership in mainline Protestant churches reached its peak in the
mid-1960’s when I was a child.
But just a generation later, my children have had a very
different experience. It isn’t only
the fact that Rachel has grown up with children who come from many different
religious backgrounds – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. I would have to say that one of the
most notable differences between her childhood and mine is that the majority of
her friends come from families who practice no faith at all.
As far as I can tell, there’s not a lot of difference between
the children I grew up with and children today. Every one of Rachel’s friends that I’ve met have been
unfailingly kind, respectful, polite and genuinely nice people. They have always addressed us as Dr.
Rothenberg or Rev. Rothenberg.
None of them has ever raided our liquor cabinet or been arrested for
drug possession. The vast majority
of her friends have the desire to do pretty normal things – get jobs, eventually
get married, have kids, etc., etc.
They’ve grown up into good people even without the benefit of any kind
of church experience.
Many of the people of Rachel’s generation are what religious
researchers have begun calling the “nones.” N-O-N-E-S. Most
people in their 20’s or early 30’s have grown up with very casual or
non-existent connections to a religious community and now that they are adults,
they feel no particular need to join one.
Some of them are spiritual but not religious, many of them believe in
God, but few of them regularly engage in what we consider “church.”
So it was somewhat remarkable a couple weeks ago when the
new pope made news by suggesting in a sermon that Jesus Christ redeems
everyone. Everyone. Including those who are Roman Catholic
and those who are not. Those who
believe and those who don’t.
Christians, atheists, everyone.
Even the Nones. The pope went
on to say that all people are created in God’s image and all are
redeemed:
"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and
we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment
at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not
Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can... "The Lord has redeemed all of
us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics.
Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!" We must
meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’
But do good: we will meet one another there.”[1]
Vatican officials tried to put their own spin what the Pope
said, but it was pretty clear that this Pope was expressing a genuine openness to
people of other faiths or no faith at all.
One of the characteristics people have really liked about
Pope Francis is that he lived a simple life when he was a Jesuit priest. He cooked his own meals, lived in a
small apartment, and relied upon public transportation. His simple lifestyle brought him into
contact with ordinary people – fervent and not so fervent Catholics, Christians
and non-Christians, pious and not so pious people. And as it has for my children, living and working and being
with people of other faiths and non-faiths does something to a person, even a
person who has dedicated his life and work to Jesus.
For starters, spending time with people who do not believe
as you do makes you far less likely to judge or condemn. When we really get to
know people with no religious affiliation or different religious affiliations,
and see them doing good things every day – in our schools, in our
neighborhoods, and our workplaces, it becomes harder for us to believe that God
has split the world up into two categories of people – insiders and outsiders, good
and bad, saved and damned. When
your friends and neighbors are Buddhists or Jewish or atheists, it becomes more
and more possible to believe that the Holy Spirit is truly present in the good
we see them do every day. As the
Pope seemed to say, the good we do draws us together -- not the things we
believe. I’m not talking about
works righteousness or earning our way into heaven with our good works. It is about expanding our view of how
God works within every person and within different communities of faith.
The pope was preaching about Christ’s inclusive love for
everyone in the context of the story in Mark 9 where the disciples tell Jesus
that they tried to stop a man from casting out demons because he wasn’t one of
them, an insider. But the Pope
been could have gleaned a very similar homily from the text we just heard from
Luke because it is the story of another outsider becoming involved with Jesus’
ministry. In this story, the
outsider is a Roman centurion.
Centurions show up frequently in the New Testament. Which is not particularly surprising
because centurions would have been a very visible part of daily life in Judea
and Galilee. Centurions were sort
of the middle management in the Roman army. They were put in charge of about 80 soldiers, but ranked
below those who commanded larger cohorts and legions.
A centurion like the one in our text today would be
considered an outsider -- not only
is he not Jewish, but he is also a visual, daily reminder of Rome’s brutal,
occupying force. If you were a Jew
living in 1st century Palestine, a Roman centurion might seem as threatening
as a German soldier in occupied France or Italy during World War II.
Of course, in this story from Luke, we never actually meet
this particular centurion.
Instead, we hear about him from other people – first a group of Jewish
elders and then a group of his Gentile friends. The Jewish elders come to Jesus on the centurion’s behalf
and ask Jesus to heal the centurion’s slave who is very close to death. Then the centurion’s Gentile friends
come out to tell Jesus that the centurion feels unworthy to receive Jesus in
his home and that he trusts that all Jesus needs to do is speak a word in order
to heal the slave.
So it’s really sort of stunning what Jesus ends up saying
about this outsider -- “Not even
in Israel have I found such faith.”
Can you just imagine how that statement sounded to those hearing this
story in Luke’s time 30 or 40 years after Jesus’ ascension? Because if one thing hadn’t changed in those 40 years, it was
the fact of Roman occupation. Rome
was still brutally enforcing its will on every kind of Israelite. The centurion was still a potent symbol
of Rome, yet it is this outsider that Jesus considers more faithful than any of
the insiders. Jesus never meets
the centurion, yet at the end of this story, Jesus is amazed enough to exclaim,
“I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
It may be worth stopping for a moment to recall Jesus’
peculiar habit of associating with outsiders. Luke spends a lot of time documenting how Jesus drove the
religious establishment absolutely nuts on a regular basis. You remember Jesus’ first public sermon
in his hometown synagogue at the very beginning of his ministry? Jesus first
reads from the scroll of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to bring
good news to the poor…release to the captives…recovery of sight to the blind…to
let the oppressed go free.” The
crowd loves his reading and for a moment, Jesus is the hometown boy made
good.
But then Jesus goes on to remind them of Elijah’s ministry
to a widow from the wrong side of the tracks in Sidon. And then Jesus mentions Elisha’s
healing of Naaman the Syrian – an archenemy of Israel. It was like Jesus telling his friends
and family that God had become a chaplain for the Ku Klux Klan or that God has
passed over a Sunday school teacher to take care of an ailing Hindu. It is that kind of direct and intentional
identification with Israel’s enemies that makes Jesus’ hometown crowd want to
push Jesus off a cliff. Unlike the
Vatican spokespeople, the guys in charge of Jesus’ synagogue don’t even give
Jesus a chance to clarify his incendiary statements.
And after he makes it out of his hometown by the skin of his
teeth, Jesus just keeps on going – blessing and healing and eating with all
sorts of unacceptable people. A
crazy man, a mother-in-law, demonics, lepers, paralyzed people and tax
collectors. He plucks wheat on the
Sabbath – a definite no-no. And then Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on
the Sabbath in the synagogue of all places. Jesus’ actions absolutely infuriate the scribes and
Pharisees.
Have you noticed that Jesus almost always does these
controversial things right in front of the religious leaders as if he is
intentionally doing it to make sure they cannot miss it? Like when Jesus heals the leper
in Luke. First he tells the man
not to tell anyone. But then Jesus
says, “Oh, by the way, make sure to go show the priest.”
But here’s the thing -- Jesus is never telling the religious
establishment anything they shouldn’t already know. Jesus isn’t making this stuff up as he goes along. Jesus was always telling the religious establishment exactly
what was right there in their own scripture. There’s nothing particularly creative about what Jesus is
saying or doing.
But the religious establishment didn’t interpret scripture
they way Jesus interpreted it.
They used scripture to decide who was in and who was out. Then Jesus comes along to remind them
that God’s sense of community is much bigger than they think. From the beginning, God reached out not
only to Israel but also to all of creation. God loves it all.
Every time Jesus inspires faith and heals in the gospels,
someone gets angry and thinks he is out of line. Crowds get so large
Jesus has to preach from a boat, but he is rejected in his hometown of
Nazareth. The same dynamic happens to Peter and Paul in Acts. Paul
starts awakening faith and draws people in and as a result, he gets arrested
and thrown in jail. But there’s even a silver lining to that because jail
gives Paul time to write all those letters.
What was it about the centurion that impressed Jesus? What does it take to amaze Jesus? Remember the centurion’s request. The centurion asked for healing. But he wasn’t asking for himself, but
for the least powerful, least visible person in this story – the slave. Remember the slave? Did you even notice the sick guy in
this story? In all of the
fuss over the centurion and the Jewish elders and the Gentile friends and Jesus,
it is easy to forget who is really suffering in this story.
A slave could be ignored. A slave could be replaced. If the centurion had enough money to build a synagogue, he
surely could have bought himself a replacement for the sick slave. He probably could have purchased a
couple replacements slaves.
But the centurion couldn’t do that. He could have, but he
didn’t. He wanted this guy
to be healed. And I think that’s what gets to
Jesus. That’s what amazes Jesus. It is not because the centurion built a
synagogue, although that was a pretty nice thing to do. And it isn’t even about what the
centurion believes about Jesus. We
don’t hear about what happens after the slave is healed, but we have no reason
to believe the centurion becomes a follower of Jesus. In fact, the centurion doesn’t seem that anxious to meet
Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t seem
particularly interested in getting the centurion involved in the on-going life
of the faith community. All the
centurion believes is that Jesus can do something that he cannot – save the
life of his slave. And ultimately,
our faith ultimately boils down to this – the realization that we are not the
ones in charge and there are limits to what we can do or know or be.
It is the centurion’s concern for the kind of person that
Jesus is concerned about that seems to stun Jesus. Of all the people in this story, the centurion is the only one
who is truly following the commandment about loving his neighbor. Maybe the centurion never read the
commandment in the Bible or heard it in a sermon. But that doesn’t matter one bit to Jesus. The centurion is living out the
greatest commandment.
We tend to imagine that there was a time in which faith was
so much easier than the time in which we live in right now. But the truth is this – the church
today is no different from the church in Jesus’ time or Luke’s time or any
time. We believe that the
diversity we see around us now is somehow different or more threatening than
the back in the good old days – whenever you imagine those good old days
were. The truth is that most if not all of the early Christians had
family and friends who did not share their beliefs. Perhaps Luke includes this story and the many others like it
to remind Jesus’ followers that God’s love doesn’t end at our boundaries.
Jesus continually reminds the religious community that their
most hated enemies are God’s best friends. Jesus does it again and again, right in front of them and he
does it so blatantly, so in-your-face that you begin to realize that the
healings are not only for the benefit of the sick and the lame and the poor and
the rejected people. In fact, the
healings also seems designed to remind the religious people – the ones who
think they are the healthy ones – may in fact be the most needy people in the
room.
The same God who showed up in the man crucified on a cross, regularly
shows up where we don’t expect God to be and never, ever stops delighting in
surprising us. May God would
open our hearts and eyes to see that God’s love extends far beyond the confines
of our church or faith, and God’s healing power is truly for all.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
[1] Huffington Post, May 22,
2013. “Pope Francis Say Atheists
Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics.” Accessed Wednesday, May 29, 2013.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/pope-francis-good-atheists_n_3320757.html
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