Second Sunday after Pentecost, (4C), May 29, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

As I promised you last week, we have returned to the Gospel of Luke, the great story-teller. Today we hear that Jesus has finished all of his sayings in the hearing of the people. What were all of his sayings? Well, the beatitudes, descriptions of both blessings and curses, and Jesus’ instructions on how to live fully into the realm of God: love your enemies; give to everyone who begs from you; do not judge; forgive one another; don’t be hypocrites; don’t be like trees that bear bad fruit. Be like trees that bear good fruit. Those are familiar teachings, often read in church. But then comes a passage that is so rarely read that I don’t remember ever hearing it, and when I looked at the verses leading up to the story of the centurion’s slave, I skipped right over it. Fortunately for me (and maybe for you), my wife Joy was also writing a sermon this week to preach at her parents’ church in Independence, Missouri this morning. Joy is a trained notice. She noticed what Jesus says just before our Gospel portion for today picks up.

In chapter 6, verse 47, Jesus says, “All who come to me and hear my words and act on them, I will show you what he is like.” He continues, “That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.” Then we hear the story of digging deep and laying a foundation on something solid.” This story about the centurion’s slave doesn’t usually get called a parable, but I think it should be.

The story is that a certain centurion (that is a military officer in charge of a company of 100 men) lived in Capernaum (in Hebrew, Kefar Nahum – which means the village of comfort), and had a slave whom he considered dear. The slave was so sick he was about to die. The centurion heard about Jesus, and sent some Jewish elders to Jesus to ask him to come and heal his slave. The word for heal here is literally save or deliver or rescue. We don’t know why the centurion felt he couldn’t go himself. Maybe he was caring for the slave. Maybe he was hoping that the Jewish elders might be more persuasive. The elders went and didn’t just ask Jesus to come, they earnestly added that this centurion was a good friend of the Jewish people. He had built their synagogue for them. We don’t know if Jesus needed that encouragement or if he would have gone anyway, but as he got close to the centurion’s house, the centurion sent friends to say to Jesus, “don’t go to the trouble of coming all the way to the house – only say The Word and my slave will be healed.”

I often fuss from the pulpit about punctuation and capital letters. If I were editing this text, I’d capitalize The Word. Only speak The Word (capital T, capital W) and let my servant be healed. This time a different word for healed is used, and when understood literally, it means cured, and when understood figuratively, it means renewed or restored. The friends report that the centurion understands being set under authority, and also having authority over others, and suggests that he and Jesus are similar in that way. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at the centurion, and Jesus accepted and affirmed the great faith of this Gentile.

When the friends returned to the centurion’s house, they found the slave in good health. Here, a different word again is used to talk about healing: literally well, healthy; and figuratively, sound or accurate or right. It’s fascinating to me that in one healing story, in ten verses, three different words [1] to describe wellness are employed by Luke, that in ancient Greek are used figuratively as well as literally: healing as saving, healing as renewing and restoring; and healing as making sound or right what has been wrong. This story is about so much more than a cure.

You know, if we were staging this as a play, we wouldn’t know what the centurion and the slave look or sound like. And notice that although the centurion says, through messengers, that he knows Jesus can say The Word and his servant shall be healed, Jesus doesn’t even actually say The Word in this story – he hears The Word from the centurion via messengers and affirms it. It’s the centurion who speaks The Word (of God) from off stage. The centurion doesn’t ever appear in this scene in Luke – just his associates and friends, who report his needs to Jesus. The centurion and Jesus both save, restore, and make something right from a distance.

Seriously, and unfortunately, the slave was still a slave. It didn’t seem to occur to Jesus or the centurion or the Gospel writer, that healing and freedom from slavery might be a nice pairing. But it occurs to me and I want to name it. Luke may not notice it, but I believe that we must. According to our Gospels, Jesus never condemned slave holding. He never gave orders to slave holders to free their slaves, even though slaves were on the receiving end of physical violence and sexual abuse. But as the Body of Christ, we must insist that slavery come to an end. Although in the meantime, we are to act as slaves. As I mentioned a few weeks ago when we were hearing the Gospel of John’s story about Jesus giving a new commandment, the new commandment that Jesus gave was not a commandment to love (because that was nothing new at all). What was new was a commandment to wash one another’s feet – to behave like a slave for one another in order that people will see how we care for one another, in order that we love one another.

New Testament scholar, Jennifer Glancy, has written extensively about slavery in Early Christianity and its implications for our history of Christians as both enslaved and as slave holders. When she spoke at Brandeis at the Beyond Slavery Conference, a decade ago, she began her talk by quoting from a poem by Julia de Burgos, who wrote:

…that the slave was my grandfather
is my sadness, is my sadness.
If he had been the master
it would be my shame:
that in men, as in nations,
if being the slave is having no rights
being the master is having no conscience. [2]

Glancy points out that, while we do confront the sadness of our past enslavement, we have a great deal more difficulty confronting our slaveholding past. I think shame is why we cannot confront our slaveholding present. It’s estimated that more than one million people are enslaved in the United States alone, victims of human trafficking for labor or for sex. Another 2.2 million are incarcerated in federal, state or county prisons, which is one in every 110 adults in this country – this highest incarceration rate in the world. Our economy benefits – we benefit, everyone in this room benefits from slave labor and mass incarceration. On the eve of Memorial Day, when we honor people who have sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom, we must acknowledge that only some of us are free, and we must work to change that.

I want you to notice the role of the elders and the friends in this story in Luke because they are the real actors in this drama. The elders and the friends are going to Jesus on behalf of the centurion, first to ask Jesus to come to rescue someone who is near death, and then to communicate the centurion’s trust in the Rabbi from Nazareth’s ability to restore and renew from a distance – such great faith. You know, Biblical faith is essentially about loyalty and not about intellectual assent to theological propositions. That bears repeating: Biblical faith is essentially about loyalty and not about intellectual assent to theological propositions. Biblical faith is about trusting and being loyal to the spirit of Love. And these elders and friends are being loyal to their friend who is in trouble. And isn’t that what we are so often doing here – in this place in our prayer – speaking to God – addressing the needs of our friends and associates, entrusting them and ourselves to the power of Love. According to Luke, this healing doesn’t take place without the intercessions of the elders and the friends.

I find a great deal of hope in the fact that Jesus didn’t set any conditions or require anything from the centurion. There’s no talk of religious conversion, of the centurion leaving his hundred men behind or order his hundred men to follow Jesus. Jesus didn’t say, “sell all that you have,” or “quit the army because Caesar claims to be Lord and he is not.” He doesn’t say, “hey, I was sent to the House of Israel, not to the Roman Empire.” He doesn’t say, “sorry, that’s political; I’m spiritual.” He says, “wow. This kind of trust amazes me. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” An outsider is affirmed and included. Although the Gospel of Luke in general deplores slavery and Caesar, Jesus was perfectly willing to go to the home of a slave-owning employee of the army at the behest of the elders, without question or condition. Boundaries of class, race, and religion are crossed, and healing is accomplished. This is good news. It seems to me to be teaching us that whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done – Jesus is perfectly willing – even eager — to be present. So let’s not hesitate to call upon him on behalf of our associates, our friends, and even our enemies. Let’s see (and do) what Jesus is trying to show us about digging deep, and laying a solid foundation by inviting him in to rescue, to restore and to right whatever is wrong.

I have another poem for you by a poet named Derek Tasker. It’s called Miscellany:

I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with. [3]

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