“Amazing Faith”

June 6, 2010

Luke 7:1-10

Jesus is amazed.

The One on whom the Spirit of God descended in bodily form like a dove, the One tempted by the devil in the wilderness, the One who cured the sick and healed the lame is amazed. In the only incident in all four Gospels that describes Jesus in this way, Jesus marvels and says to the multitude following him: “Not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Why did this faith cause such amazement?

Why did Jesus find it in a Roman soldier in Capernaum and nowhere else?

And how does this story help us in our own lives of faith that usually don’t seem amazing at all?

Faith begins with concern.

And we all know concern. We’re concerned about our families, about our health, about our jobs. We’re concerned about oil continuing to spew into the Gulf with no end in sight; we’re concerned about war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight; we’re concerned about the financial upheaval of our nation and the rest of the world with no end in sight.

Our concerns are the first things we think of in the morning. President Obama recently told about his daughter Malia coming to him while he was shaving to ask if the oil leak had been stopped yet. Concern wakes us up in the middle of the night. Concern leads us to worry, to plan, to pray, to act—to seek a solution to the problem.

Luke tells about a centurion who is concerned about his slave. This centurion is a Roman soldier stationed in the village of Capernaum on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. He is an outsider—part of an occupying army spent to keep peace in this obscure corner of the Roman Empire. The title “centurion” tell us that he knows about power—he has some 100 soldiers under him. He says to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come,” and he comes.

The centurion has power.

He also has a concern.

His slave is ill, to the point of death. We hear that this slave is “dear” to the centurion—but don’t imagine an affectionate or sympathetic master. It could just mean that the slave was “valuable” to him—an asset that he might soon lose.

Whatever the reason, the centurion is concerned about the slave.

This is where Jesus comes in. And Jesus comes into this story in the same way that he comes into our lives: the centurion has heard about Jesus.

He didn’t encounter Jesus directly. He didn’t see him on the street. He didn’t listen as Jesus taught. He didn’t watch as he healed.

The centurion heard about Jesus.

That’s our experience, isn’t it? We heard about Jesus—at a church or in a book or from our parents or a friend or a teacher. We weren’t filled with understanding about Jesus. In fact, to this day we are all still trying to figure out just who this Jesus is, aren’t we? From the newest members who joined us today to the long-term members who have been a part of this congregation for decades; from the youngest to the oldest among us, we’re all trying to better understand just who this Jesus that we’ve heard about is.

He comes to us in our concern—about ourselves, about others, about our world. He comes to us, as Albert Schweitzer famously said, “as one unknown.” And we have heard enough of him to pursue him further, to walk in his ways “known and to be made known” as our church covenant says. Indeed we hope that as we walk along that path those ways might be better known to us. We hope that Jesus might be better known to us.

In our concern we hear of Jesus, much like the centurion.

He has heard of Jesus.

Does he seek him out? Does he run to Jesus and throw himself down in front of him, making a desperate plea as others did?

No.

He sends a delegation of Jewish elders to ask Jesus to come and heal his slave. What an amazing act!

This Roman soldier seems to have some sympathy for the descendants of Abraham and Sarah in the village he occupies. He built their synagogue so that the people might have a place to worship God together. Perhaps he is a Gentile believer not yet converted to Judaism. The Jewish elders say that he is someone who loves their nation. He is an outsider, but in their eyes he deserves whatever good Jesus might do for him.

Here, near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, barriers are already starting to come down. Jewish leaders recognize the power that this Jewish Jesus seems to have—and they urge him to use this power on behalf of  a Gentile soldier who himself has acted on behalf of their community. The usual suspicion, and even enmity between different, groups is absent.

Now, watch as this scene unfolds. Faith begins with concern and develops through imagination.

As Jesus approaches the centurion’s house, this soldier engages in an act of the imagination. He looks at his life, his work, his relationships with other people. As a military leader, he says, “Go,” and people go. He says, “Come,” and they come. He says, “Do this,” and his word is done. He imagines Jesus’ power in the same way. “Only speak the word,” the centurion tells Jesus, “and let my servant be healed.”

Faith looks at the hard realities—our concerns. It also looks at the new possibilities—imagining what might be.

The danger here, of course, is that our contemporary imagination is so stunted. Time and again we hear of failures of the imagination leading to disastrous consequences. No one could have imagined, we were told, that terrorists would hijack planes and fly them into buildings. That oil would gush into the Gulf is a result, the New York Times tells us, of a combination of unimaginable human and mechanical error.

An inability to imagine leads to a dangerous faith. Last Sunday’s Times article on “America’s Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill,” quoted William Jackson, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, saying: “At this time in history we have great faith in having the technological ability to solve problems, and that faith has proved incorrect in this place.”

Authentic faith is more than the wishful thinking that closes eyes and crosses fingers and hopes—in the worst sense of that word—hopes for the best.

Authentic faith develops as we look at our concerns and fully imagine both the beneficial and the detrimental possibilities. Authentic faith develops as we imagine new connections between our lives and the God who gives us life. As Jesus advises, we count the cost of our actions, we weigh outcomes. We imagine—and we commit.

As Jesus begins to walk toward the centurion’s house, concern, nurtured by imagination, grows into commitment. We can be concerned about many things—and often at some distance. Commitment bridges that gap.

Perhaps it was out of respect—this Gentile soldier, familiar with Jewish traditions, didn’t want Jesus to defile himself by entering his house—perhaps out of respect the centurion sends that second delegation to the approaching Jesus. They speak for him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”

Do you hear the good news for us in those words?

One person put it this way: “In not coming into direct contact with Jesus, the centurion anticipates all followers of Jesus to come who, not seeing, believe in the power of his word—that is to say, people like you and me.”[1] We find ourselves in this story, people who have heard of Jesus, people who think he might be important to our concerns, people who want to trust in a power that is greater than the power we know. Out of our concern we find ourselves committing to a particular path.

The centurion reaches this point when he sends that second delegation to Jesus. He knows about power and authority in his life and career. He senses that in this Jesus he hears of One whose power and authority is far greater than his own. And in sending a second delegation with the plea, “Only speak the word and let my servant be healed,” he commits himself to a certain course of action.

It is not that he has faith in a set of ideas about Jesus.

It is not that he is trying to work up some sort of religious sentiment or trying to will himself to believe something that he can’t believe.

He commits himself to a way of relating to this Jesus, trusting that his power as a greater power, trusting that his love was a healing love, hoping—in the best sense of that word—hoping that the God of the Jewish people among whom he lived, the God whom he has come to dimly understand, might be active in and through this teacher and healer.

The faith of the centurion—the faith that amazed Jesus—is shown not in a creed, in words about Jesus, but in how he lived. He lives out that mixture of concern, imagination, and commitment that we know in our own lives and which we call “faith.”

We find no certainty in this story. There is no guarantee that if we believe certain things that we find it difficult to believe our concerns will be addressed, our problems will be solved. What we find is the invitation to move toward the unknown Jesus with all of our concern, imagination, and commitment.

Such acts of faith take us out of the past and the Bible and into our present lives before God. We move beyond what Jesus once said and did and begin to glimpse what God might be doing in our lives and in our world today.  We find faith—concern, imagination, and commitment—faith for living in these uncertain times.

In this centurion with his amazing faith, we see ourselves. We, too, have no direct contact with the earthly Jesus, but we trust his word, his power. We, too, are trying to sort out our faith in a pluralistic culture. Like the centurion who supported the Jewish community and sought healing for his slave while at the same time being a Roman occupier and a slave owner, we are trying to do the right thing while at the same time knowing that we, too, are compromised by our own historical context. In our complex lives we still have an impulse toward Jesus. And we can trust that impulse, knowing that we are not perfect, but that Christ responds to the concerns, the imagination, the commitments—the faith—of the imperfect. We might even dare to imagine that such audacious faith on our part still brings delight and amazement to God.