Trinity 1, Year C
OT Lesson: 1 Kings 8.22-23, 41-43 / NT Lesson: Galatians 1.1-12 / Gospel : Luke 7.1-10
Text: Jesus said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Luke 7.9)
Geza Vermes, the distinguished Jewish theologian who died recently, published in 1973 a ground-breaking study of Jesus the Jew. Vermes drew extensively on Jewish and Roman sources, as well as the Bible, to make a strong and illuminating case for situating Jesus within the well established tradition of the holy miracle workers of Galilee. Certainly a great part of Jesus’ public ministry was spent travelling about among the smaller towns and villages of Galilee, exercising a remarkable gift for healing. To see Jesus as a man of his time and place does not in any way diminish him. On the contrary it helps to remind us that his humanity, his experience of life as we know it, was every bit as real as the underlying divinity which only became fully apparent after his death and resurrection.
We see evidence of Jesus the Jew in the way he responds to the centurion in our gospel story this morning. In praising the centurion’s faith and responding to his request, Jesus stands squarely within that Jewish tradition of open-hearted respect for the stranger in his search for God, which was exemplified by the generous prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the temple. But Solomon’s god was the god of Israel. That was the national religious tradition into which Jesus was born, and he seems to have been content to live within it. He scarcely travelled outside Galilee and Judaea, and he was notably reluctant to heal the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Gentile, arguing that it was not right to take the children’s bread and feed it to the dogs. Like the centurion, her faith, and her quick wit, carried the day – she replied that even the dogs are allowed to eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table. And Jesus answered her prayer. But his initial reaction reminds us that he was in some respects a man of his time and place, as Vermes suggests.
The truly radical theologian in this morning’s pack of readings is St Paul. Our short reading from the opening words of his letter to the Galatians gave no inkling of what it was about their faith that they were being tempted to abandon. Paul’s words are full of fire about the distinctive character of the gospel he had preached to them, but what was it that he felt he had to defend with such energy? Christianity had begun as a sect within Judaism, but as Paul took the good news about Jesus to communities of Gentiles around the eastern Mediterranean, the question arose as to whether these new converts should be required to follow Jewish law and customs. The church in Jerusalem, led by Jesus’ brother James, was firmly of the view that they should. Peter, who had initially been quite relaxed about it, was persuaded to fall in with the Judaizers. But Paul, despite his own background as a strict Pharisee, would have none of it, maintaining stoutly that it is not the law which has the power to save us from our sins. On the contrary, the law condemns us every time we fail to live up to its high standards. What saves us is that act of faith and trust by which we respond to Jesus’s love, and allow the grace of his spirit to enter into our lives.
Jesus’ own teaching was full of wonderful insights into the kingdom of God, that parallel realm beneath the skin of daily life, where those who have eyes to see and ears to hear find God at work. But much of his teaching, sublime as it was, was not particularly radical. His summary of the law: Love God and love your neighbour is common to most of the great religions. What changed everything, giving to Christianity a radical new edge, was not so much what he said as what he did, the story of his life and death and resurrection. To love his friends – and all of us – so much that he allowed himself to be put to death for our sakes is almost beyond belief. But that is what he did. And because, in God’s world, death could have no power over one who had done no wrong, he is alive for evermore, and we who love him and are loved by him, are alive with his love. In Paul’s words, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Which of course brings us back to the centurion. He knew about authority. He was used to telling people what to do, and to knowing that because his orders carried his authority, they would be followed without further ado. He recognised that same authority in Jesus. He was entirely confident that if Jesus said his servant was healed, he would indeed be healed. There was no need for Jesus to come to the house, no need for him to see the servant or to touch him. More often than not, Jesus had to gently prompt the faith of those who came to him for healing, but here was someone who needed no prompting. “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
What the centurion could not know was that Jesus would turn the concept of authority and power upside down by laying it aside for himself and using it only in the service of others. On this day, the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation, we remember how she was invested with all the symbols of the secular authority by which we are governed. We are fortunate that she knows, as the centurion knew, the ultimate source of all true authority.
Gathered around the Lord’s table this morning, we acknowledge his authority as we kneel to receive in bread and wine the symbols of his presence, his power and authority, in our lives. With the centurion we put our trust in his power to bring healing, reconciliation and peace not just into our complicated and stressful lives, but into every situation where we – as individuals or as a church community – are entrusted with the exercise of our small portion of his gentle upside down authority.