A Sermon Based Upon Luke 7: 1-10
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
2nd Sunday After Pentecost, May 29th, 2016
“I tell you not even in Israel have I found such faith” (Luke 7: 1-10).
Do you realize that Jesus was also someone who could be surprised? I hope your own faith still has room for a ‘Jesus’ like this. I hope you also have a faith that can still be surprised!
This is exactly what happens in today’s Bible story from Luke. Jesus is surprised by the faith of a Roman centurion who puts his own life at risk for the sake of someone else. This centurion puts his life and his career at risk when he sends a request for Jesus to bring healing to his much loved and deathly sick servant. This centurion was a man in charge of occupying soldiers, but steps out of that role, to make a request that would risk put him into a questionable relationship that could compromise his own authority. That was a big risk for a man of his time and caliber. It was the kind of ‘faith’ that Jesus said was rare even among his own people, who were called, people of ‘the faith’.
ILL AND CLOSE TO DEATH
But what would you do for a sick employee? What would you do for a sick friend, or family member, especially a sick child? This is where this story comes close to home. I’ll never forget running into a school friend, when I was home from Germany and visiting Baptist hospital. His own infant daughter was having opened heart surgery. I had known him since I had moved from Statesville to northern Iredell County, and entered the third grade at Harmony School. I could see an anxiety he had, which I had never seen on his face before. It was the concern of parent, worried about the outcome for his child. I don’t know that Michael and I had ever discussed any kind of religious question before. I had been his long-time classmate, but not his pastor. But in that moment, my friend knew the calling I had answered with my life, and he too was a believer, and he asked, “Joey, would you mine saying a prayer with me for my daughter?” “Of course, I’d be glad too,”, I answered rather shocked at his candor. For you see people who knew each other in school are not always able to talk about such sensitive matters. We should be able to, but unfortunately, most often we don’t.
I grew up watching the Arthur Smith show every weekday morning, as I was eating breaking and preparing for school. I recall that one of Arthur’s Smith’s major advertiser’s was Bost Bakery, and I can remember Arthur Smith saying, over and over, “If it’s better than Bost’s, it’s still in the oven.” When later, I moved to Shelby to be the pastor of wonderful church there, I learned that Mr. Bost was a citizen of Shelby, and at that time his wife was seriously ill with Cancer. Many times I read in the local paper, The Shelby Star, about where in the world Mr. Bost had flown his wife to try to find a cure. There was no doctor he wouldn’t visit. There was no place he wouldn’t fly. There was no amount of money he would hold back. And he had a lot of money. He made ‘bread’ with ‘bread’. He built a gymnasium for Gardner-Webb. Basketball great Artis Gilmore, got his start playing basketball there. When I went to college there, I went to chapel in that gym too. For that day and time, it was a nice gym, Mr. Bost and Bost Bread had built. But later, Mr. Bost spent a lot more some of his money doing whatever he could, going wherever he could to try to find a cure for his wife’s sickness, but unfortunately that cure was not found. Like all of us, one day there will be no healing in this world for the sickness that we will know---the sickness of dying and death. But we will try to do whatever we can for those we love.
One of our greatest pains in this life will not always be the pain we feel in our own bodies, but it will be the pain we have when we hurt with and for another. This should not be a surprise for us, because when we hurt for others, we are also hurting for ourselves. You just cannot separate the two. When you care for someone, and you know they care for you, you cannot bear the thought of losing them, or of them losing you. The threat of dying and death looms over all of us in this life. Because when we hurt for others, we also hurt for ourselves and because we hurt for ourselves, we also hurt with and for others.
…I ‘M NOT WORTHY,…I’M SET UNDER AUTHORITY
What is strange about this ‘pain’ or ‘threat’ of death when it comes into our lives is how people react to it differently. Some people are threatened or threatened or injured by suffering or dying, and they become angry, bitter or hostile. Others are threatened by suffering or dying, and they become humble, meek, or compassionate. What makes the difference? Why do some people face the harshest realities and become better, more caring and compassionate people, and why do others face the harsh realities of life and become careless and hateful?
We saw the ‘strangeness’ of this in the pain of civil rights in the south, didn’t we? During those terrible times of prejudice, some people realized what was happening and became enraged and engaged for the rights of others; while others in the south, fueled by ignorance and fear, and selfishness, became enraged with hate and engaged in violence. One can only think of Dylan Roof, whose hate turned into murder only a year ago at a very innocent Charleston congregation meeting in a Bible Study. One could also think of what happened to young people attending a concert in France, who were brutally murdered by radical, home-grown terrorists, or what also happened, last year in San Bernardino, California, when two terrorists in our own country, when to a party at work, and unleashed a barrage of bullets on innocent people.
What causes some people to turn out this way, but other people to turn toward the hurting and helpless of the world and become missionaries, humanitarian workers, or to have compassion, give monies, and to reach out to them in prayer and with aid? What makes the difference? We all face the same fears, the same worries, the same threats, and the same inevitable fate of weakness and death. What makes some of us be filled with humility and compassion or others to be turned outward with anger and hate?
In today’s text this Roman ‘centurion’ was someone whom you would not expect to be a person filled with such compassion, neither for a sick ‘servant’ nor for a sick ‘slave’. But not only does he have feelings of compassion for this servant, but also, as a Gentile with all kinds of authority and power, he shows an astounding humility and respect for this very non-Gentile and Jewish Jesus. Why did this powerful man, love his servant so much to do this? Why does he approach Jesus---who was someone entirely different and counter-culture to him---with such humility, grace, and compassion?
When you grow knowing love, love can do some ‘strange’ things to you can’t it? Have you ever seen someone who loves an animal or even an inanimate object which such ‘strange’ or ‘unusual affection’? People can love things, a country, a political idea, or a job, or a way of life, with very ‘strange affection’. You have seen that haven’t you? I have. I have even felt some of it myself. I’ve found myself attached to a sunset at a certain spot, or attached to an animal, a job a place, an activity, or especially a people, a person, or a people. There are things that draw us into them, and people who draw us close to them. How does this happen? Why does it happen? It certainly doesn’t happen everywhere, for everything, or for everyone. How do we come to love the people we love, or to cherish the things we cherish, or to become a person, like this one Roman Centurion, who out of all those other Roman soldiers and officers in and around Jerusalem at that time, came to Jesus when so many others mocked Jesus, stayed away, or only admired him at a distance. Why is this one of the very important Romans leaders who was humble enough to put his whole career and perhaps even his very life at risk or his servant? Why did he react this way and not another?
This week, I was reading an article about Teri Ott, who serves as chaplain at a Presbyterian college in Illinois. She tells about the challenges of working with college students, especially those who come with no church background at all. One of those students recommended to her for counseling was Jeff, who had been drinking too much and was making poor decisions. Professors said this was ‘out of character’ for him.
When Jeff came into her office, the first thing he said was that ‘he was not very religious’, wasn’t raised in church, and said he ‘didn’t know what he believed about God’. She wondered why Jeff would even wanted to talk to her, a Christian chaplain. Then it finally came to her, ‘You must want to talk to me about death, don’t you?’ As the tears began to flow, Jeff began to share that he didn’t know what was going to happen to his mother. He asked the chaplain, “What do you think happens when people die?” “What do you believe?”
Here’s where you have to figure out, not just what you believe, or what you want to believe, the Chaplain said, but you have to answer in a way that is real without churchy, religious language, that someone does not have a background for. How to you tell someone what is behind the faith you have, which they do not yet have?
The chaplain began to tell Jeff, not about what the church says, what Scripture says, or even what it means to believe in Jesus, but she began telling him about experiences she had had, sitting beside the beds of people who were dying, named Frank, Flossie, or Barbara, and how after they had slipped away from this life, how in those moments there was, among many, a profound presence of love. Sometimes the love felt was as thick as molasses in the room, like you had to swim through it to come close to the bedside. “This love is what I believe is waiting for your mother, and what I believe is waiting for us.” With this affirmation, Jeff’s eyes began to show some relief, even hope (The Christian Century, Jan 6th, 2016, p. 28).
….NOT EVEN IN ISRAEL, HAVE I FOUND SUCH FAITH.
However you look at how this Roman Centurion who came to Jesus and whatever conclusion you come to concerning the loving jester he made in behalf of his servant, you must come to grips with this as quite surprising for a person in his position. Maybe you could understand, as other gospel stories put on display, a desperate father coming to Jesus, or a woman who comes, because an angry mob was about to stone her, and we might even understand a religiously confused Nicodemus, or why the poor, the outcastes, or the heavy-burdened came to Jesus, but a man in his position?
Whatever conclusion you come to, you must agree that he must have been a powerful person who understood and knew the limits to his own power, but even more than that he was a man who actually did have compassion for his employee whom he deeply cared about as another human being. We read in the text that this Centurion ‘loves our people and he built our synagogue’ (Lk. 7.5). He cared about others enough, to sacrifice his time and his reputation to help them. What kind of love does this?
Well, perhaps, just perhaps, it was not only the love he had for his servant, but perhaps it was also because of the love and devotion his servant had also shown him which motivated him. And perhaps also, it is this story of selfless love which connected with Jewish elders (7:3), which also connects with Jesus, because this is God’s story too, isn’t? God’s story, when you reduce it down to its most common denominator, is a story of God’s love for us.
When we come to the end of this story, we come to the challenge of Jesus, not to this Roman Centurion, but to his own people. As the Centurion admits that, even as a person of great power and authority, he does not ‘deserve’ to have Jesus come to him and asks Jesus to ‘just say the word’ and his servant would be healed (7:6-8), Jesus is pleasantly surprised, but immediately turns it back to his own people as a challenge, “I tell you, even in Israel I haven’t found faith like this” (7:9).
What becomes most ‘challenging’ about his story for us today, is not only that love is the motivation for deep faith, but also that this ‘love’ and ‘faith’ can go beyond national, cultural, racial, religious and social boundaries. In other words, true love, real compassion, and genuine faith, is not bound by religious traditions—even our own.
While we can’t know just how surprised Jesus was when encountered a “Gentile” having ‘such faith’, we do know he is shocked that he can’t find this ‘faith’ among God’s people. Sometimes the faithful are not as faithful as they should be, and other times people of other faiths, or no faiths at all, can be more faithful and more loving than us. This, perhaps, can still be shocking for you to learn; that people can have ‘faith’ and can ‘love’ outside of the religious traditions we have. In other words, sometimes ‘strangers’ turn out to be less strange to us than we thought, and sometimes our own people can become strangers to us. Isn’t this what happened to Jesus, when he was rejected by his own, but from now own, the Scripture says, ‘as many as received him, became the sons and daughters of God (John 1:12). What is going on in the gospels of Luke and John is that God’s love is making all kinds of new discoveries in the world about love and faith.
One of the persistent surprises in Biblical history is God's invitation to the outsider. Drawing on some of the great prophets, Jesus began to teach that God was not the exclusive possession of the chosen people. Jesus knew what Isaiah meant when he said:
“See, they come; some from far away, These from the north and those from the west and these from the Soutland. (Isaiah 49:12, CEB). He was also acquainted with Malachi's prophecy: “From furthest east to furthest west my name is great among the nations.” (Malachi 1:11) While Jesus may have begun his ministry with Israel, he soon expanded his vision to include the work of God throughout the world, even among strangers and enemies.
Very often we in America have made a too-easy assumption that God is on our side, that he always will give us victory and prosperity because we stand for righteousness, truth, and morality. But we need to also consider the scandals, the fraud, the embezzlements, the sexual abuse and harassment charges laid at the feet of many of our national business leaders and politicians, at home and abroad. Strangely, sometimes so-called "enemy" nations and businesses may demonstrate a higher morality than our own. Consider the Rev. Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, 77, and his wife, Elizabeth, 80. Dr. Van Dusen, headed Union Theological Seminary of New York, doing much for the institution, but in recent years Dr. Van Dusen lost his speech due to a stroke and Mrs. Van Dusen suffered severely from arthritis. Consequently, just a few years ago, in their Princeton, New Jersey, home they wrote a suicide note, and then ended their lives with a massive dose of sleeping pills. The note explained their physical weakness and emotional desperation, then ended with the prayer: "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace."
While only God is the final judge in such tragic situations, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually executed by Hitler, rightly wrote years ago: "God has reserved to himself the right to determine the end of life, because he alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. Even if (a person's) earthly life has become a torment for him, he must commit it intact to God's hand, from which it came.” (As Quoted by Maurice Fetty from, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "Good Death?" Time, March 10, 1975, Vol. 105, p. 84).
The Van Dusens were insiders, leaders at the very heart of Christianity. By contrast, consider another woman alone, frail, weak, sickly: an outsider, unknown in important circles. Yet she found her purpose and life-work praying from her wheelchair. Every day she prayed for the church, the ministers, those in need. She was so weak in body, she hardly could speak. Nevertheless, when God adds it all up, he may count the work of prayer during her feeblest years as the most significant work of all. Like Jesus, we sometimes find deep faith and unselfishness in the most unlikely people.
As Jesus observed long ago, "Many, I tell you, will come from east and west to feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who were born to the Kingdom will be driven out into the dark, the place of wailing and grinding of teeth" (Matthew 8:11-12). Faith and Love is not a matter of being an insider, said Jesus, not a matter of religious pedigree, but it is a matter of the kind of faith based upon love which is open and possible for all. As the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, once wrote:
Earth's crammed with heaven And every bush a flame with God.
But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries
Or, as New Testament scholars Major, Manson and Wright have written, "The window lets in the light, but not to the blind. It reveals the wide-stretching landscape, but not if we close our eyes .... The whole universe is sacramental, but only if we are spiritually awake."[2]
This Centurion, outsider that he was, had his eyes open. He was spiritually aware. Whereas the insiders, the religious types, were puffed up with intellectual pride and were blinded with the cataracts of their conceit. Here is the irony of ironies and the surprise of surprises, for Jesus and for us; Here it is the stranger or the outsider who is “in”, and it is the insiders who are ‘out’. The wise are humbled, the humble are made wise; the powerful are made weak, the weak are made powerful; the righteous become sinners, the sinners become righteous; the first are last, and the last are first. Faith can be found among anywhere, and it can found in unlikely people, even when it can’t be found from who you would expect it most. Faith knows no ‘respect of persons’, because love has no bounds. Amen.
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