May 29, 2016 | Rev. Graham McCaffrey
Scripture: Luke 7:9
“When 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.” ”
– Luke 7:9
Faith is a tricky thing. We talk a lot about it in the church, we profess it week-in and week out in the creeds, we have faith in people, in ideas, in God. And yet as much as we talk about it, as much as faith shapes who we are as Christians and as a Church – I would argue that for most of us, our Christian ‘faith’ can be hard to understand and grapple with.
Is faith belief in certain things about God? Well Yes and No. Is faith about trusting in God? Simply put yes, but we could spend the next couple of hours dissecting that and get no further? Is faith about the intention in our hearts? Yes… and probably more no than we’d like to think. Is faith about our actions? Maybe… Is faith the result of the decision we make? No and… yes. Is faith a gift that we receive? Yes, but again that is too simple an answer. As you can tell, the questions we can ask about faith are numerous, and important and they speak to the complexity and mystery that is ‘faith’ in the Christian tradition – as an aside, I want to encourage you to ask your own questions about faith, I want you to explore what this means for us as we gather, to wrestle with this faith that calls us, that binds us, that shapes us and sends us.
Despite being hard to fully grasp, faith is essential to our lives as Christian disciples, and so today as we enter into what the church calls ordinary time – the time after the great feasts of Easter and Pentecost – we are given a story in the Gospel of Luke which speaks to the nature of faith. And so let us dive into our story from Luke this morning:
See Luke 4-6 for immediate context
“When 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.” – Luke 7:9
Up until this point in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ ministry, his preaching and miracles have almost exclusively been in the midst of the Jewish community, up until this point Jesus has not interacted with Gentiles, non-Jewish people. In the sixth chapter of Luke, Jesus has just finished his ‘Sermon on the Plains’, Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, and part of that teaching is Jesus’ words about loving your enemy. And right after he is finished preaching about loving your enemies he is immediately faced with someone who would have been considered an enemy, a Roman Centurion – a high-ranking military officer in the Roman Occupation of Judea. No matter what the Jewish leaders say about this man – no matter how good he is, no matter how much he has helped the Jewish community – he was someone who would have been considered an enemy (and that’s perhaps why the Jewish leaders are so insistent Jesus helps the man). And here is this enemy of Israel, pleading for Jesus’ help, pleading for the sake of his slave who he valued highly, pleading for a miracle because he had heard wonderful things about Jesus. But he knows about Jewish purity laws, he knows, that it would be inappropriate for Jesus to enter his home, and so he tells Jesus just to say a word, to command it and it will be done.
The Centurion knows all about command, he knows all about orders and obedience: he has a company of one hundred men who listen to his words, who carry out his every order. One of the hallmarks of the Roman military was strict order to ensure that the army worked effectively, soldiers had to be obedient to their commanders. And here is the Centurion, a man who wields much authority in this little corner of the Roman Empire, a man who in a word ‘has it all’ – power, control, relative wealth, social status, authority – and yet he comes to Jesus, he comes to Jesus recognizing Jesus’ authority, recognizing that he – the Centurion – is under the authority of God, and it is God – who he encounters in Jesus – who has the sole authority to heal and bring life. The Centurion is keenly aware that for all his wealth, for all his power, for all his status and control he does not have the authority of what matters most: he does not have authority over health, he does not have authority over life and death. It is in this awareness, in this acknowledgement of not being in control, that the Centurion exhibits faith in Jesus, that the Centurion exhibits such amazing faith that had not been found in all of Israel.
“When 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.” – Luke 7:9
This is ultimately the amazing and unprecedented faith that he shows: it is in his recognition of the authority of God, in his humble submission in obedience to Jesus, in his humble obedience and recognition of the life-giving and healing authority of Jesus that the Centurion demonstrates a life-giving, a healing faith.
Humility, submission, obedience. These are not words or ideas that have much purchase in our world today – in fact our culture so romanticizes and elevates personal power and autonomy that humility, submission and obedience are dirty words, words which have no place in the repertoire or psyche of the modern human being. And yet at the heart of the Christian understanding of faith, no matter how you define it, are these three ideas: humility, submission, obedience. We come to God in humility, recognizing that on our own we cannot heal, we cannot being life – as advanced as modern medicine is, in spite of the recent controversial move towards assisted dying – we do not have the power to give life, and we certainly do not have the power to give eternal life. We come to God in submission, recognizing the will of God, recognizing that the yoke that Jesus offers is light. We come to God in obedience, recognizing that when we believe and declare that Jesus is Lord – Lord of our lives, Lord of the Church, Lord of all – our lives are transformed. Like the Centurion all of us can come to Jesus; all of us can come to Jesus recognizing him as Lord and Saviour, recognizing him as the one who brings healing and life.
It is on the Cross that Jesus brings healing to the world; it is on the Cross that God in Christ overcomes death and brings life to the world. In so doing God pours out his love and it is offered to us if we have the humility to accept it on terms that are more often than not of our own choosing. We do not get to dictate the terms of healing and life that God gives to us in Jesus, we are called like the Centurion to submit to Him in faith, to submit to Him in humility, to submit to Him in obedience. While we may pray for a specific outcome in the difficult situations we face – we cannot dictate the outcome, we must release our claim to Lordship, we must release our claim to authority. The remarkable thing is that in this release, in this submission to the authority of God, in this act of faith, healing occurs; in this act of faith life is brought into the midst of death. The healing and life may not come necessarily as you expect it, but they will come, because our God is faithful, they will come because Jesus is true.
“When 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.” – Luke 7:9
In moments we will celebrate the baptism of August Riley Smith, we will celebrate her entry into the mystery of the Christian faith, her entry into this life and healing which are offered by Jesus. In moments her parents and godparents will make promises on her behalf, will declare a faith that she cannot begin to imagine, and will embark her on a journey of life and healing following in the footsteps of her Saviour and friend, Jesus. Like the Centurion before them, her parents and godparents will act in faith on behalf of another; like the Centurion’s servant August will be caught up in the life of God on account of the faith of others – their trust in and obedience to Jesus as Lord, Healer and Giver of life. In moments we will all reaffirm our own baptismal vows, our own promises, our own submission to the authority of God, to the authority of Jesus who brings healing and life; we will affirm that we trust and obey Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the great Healer, Jesus as the one who opens for us eternal life. In moments we will witness what it means to share in the death and resurrection of Jesus as we all come in humility to share in God’s life as we break bread at this table. Let us all come, let us all come and accept the life that God offers to us, let us all come and accept the love that God pours out for us, let us all seek to have our lives shaped by the declaration of faith that Jesus Christ is Lord!
Let us Pray.
