Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
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Matthew 8:5-13
The Faith of the Centurion
5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.”
7 Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”
8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10 When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour.
This story is particularly interesting for a couple of reasons, one of which is that it illustrates an understanding about the life and ministry of Jesus that’s become a central article of our faith. That understanding is that Jesus intentionally broke down walls that the Hebrew religious tradition had put up between itself and everyone else who was “other.” Jesus reached out to sinners and tax collectors and the ritually unclean and women with irregular marital histories and all kinds of other people who were excluded and rejected by the religious establishment of his time. The religious types said, “This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them,” and they meant it as criticism. Jesus, on the other hand, responded by saying that it was for sinners that he was in the world.
In our story for today, Jesus grants a request from a gentile, and in so doing he breaks down one of the highest walls the Hebrews had put up. The particular gentile was a centurion – a career officer in the Roman army that was occupying the Promised Land. The centurion commanded a unit of about 100 soldiers. That tells us quite a bit about him. In the Roman army you were promoted to that rank because you were a tough, smart, disciplined soldier with natural leadership skills – and because you could function effectively in the ranks of the world’s most highly trained and organized army.
But apparently there was more to this centurion’s character than just strength and discipline. Matthew also portrays him as a man of compassion and loyalty to others. And when Luke tells the centurion’s story in his gospel, he adds that the man was a friend to the Jews who had built a synagogue for the congregation in Capernaum. So the gospel accounts give us a fairly complete portrait of this centurion who asks Jesus to heal his desperately ill and suffering servant.
This story always reminds me of a saying that’s usually attributed to Malcolm Forbes, the late publisher of Forbes Magazine. The saying is, “Nothing reveals a person’s character more than the way they treat people they don’t have to be good to.” In this case, the Roman centurion could have had his suffering servant carried away and ordered someone to get him a new servant. But this centurion made the servant’s welfare his own personal responsibility – which is pretty much the dictionary meaning of the word most commonly translated as ‘love’ in the New Testament – the Greek word agape.
What’s more, according to Matthew, this Roman officer approaches Jesus personally to ask for healing for his servant. Think about that for a minute. A ranking officer in the most powerful military force in the world goes personally to a provincial Jewish rabbi to ask for healing for a lowly servant. In a culture that prized honor and dignity and held a prejudice against Jews, that’s a pretty startling act of humility.
And this centurion goes on to reveal even more about himself. When Jesus offers to come to the man’s house to heal the servant, the officer says: “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.”
The rationale the centurion gives for saying that is very interesting. He understands that he himself is part of a “power structure” – power comes to him from above and he exercises that power to command others. Apparently the centurion understood that power came to Jesus from above, too – from beyond this world – and that Jesus was able to exercise that power as he chose.
No wonder Jesus reacts with amazement, and no wonder he tells those around him that he hasn’t seen faith like this even among the people of Israel. This centurion had demonstrated exactly the kind of love that Jesus commanded his followers to show – assuming personal responsibility for a person the world might have considered unimportant. And along the way, this Roman officer had confessed his own unworthiness, and expressed a belief that Jesus could command the forces of nature and be obeyed. Love, confession and belief are the pillars of faith.
There are a handful of people in the New Testament who demonstrate genuinely profound and life-changing faith in Jesus. And it strikes me that lots of them would be among those the religious Jews would have considered “on the other side of the wall.” A Samaritan woman who seems to be the target of judgment and gossip. A Syro-Phoenician gentile woman. Mary Magdalene, apparently a person who had been plagued by demons (or was mentally ill). Zacchaeus and Matthew, both tax collectors.
And once his church was established, Jesus kept breaking down the walls it tried to build around itself. He even called Saul of Tarsus, the leader of the persecution of the church, to become its leading missionary.
And in today’s story, a gentile officer in a hated foreign army that was occupying the country – a man held up by Jesus as a powerful example of faith.
So this passage seems to have a couple of pretty important points to make. One is that we don’t have to be a model “religious” person to have a faith that pleases God – we just have to believe that the master we serve has the ability to change lives. And the other is that the kind of faith Jesus takes joy in is a faith that’s expressed in concern for the welfare of others – and in a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of those others.
And maybe also this: If we’re genuinely living in imitation of Jesus, a part of our life of faith should probably be that we’re breaking down walls between people, too – and that we’re on guard against any urges that might lead the church to put up walls in our own time and place.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for this centurion’s inspiring example of faith – for his sacrificial love of another, and his understanding of his own unworthiness and of the nature of the power Jesus exercised. By your Holy Spirit, give us faith like his. And strengthen us to break down walls as Jesus did. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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