June 2, 2013 – Luke 7:1-10
Luke 7:1-10
Amazing Jesus
2nd Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 9] – June 2, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Jesus is amazed today.
Amazement is not an emotion often associated with Jesus.
In Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, there is lots of amazement going on.
But rarely if ever is Jesus amazed: it must take quite a bit to amaze Jesus!.
Today, though, Jesus is amazed.
And what amazes him is the faith of an outsider, and not just any outsider:
a Roman Centurion, a Gentile non-Jew, a pagan, a commander in the enemy’s army of
the occupying force.
This is a man of brute force, a man of violence.
And yet, Luke’s portrait is more subtle than that, isn’t it?
We also learn that in addition to these things, the Centurion is also a good man,
capable of good deeds, of building a synagogue for the Jewish people and loving them.
On the youth gathering trip last summer, the band Lost and Found were selling great t-shirts with
nothing but the word “and” on them.
The point, they said, was that all of us are not just one thing:
we’re both lost and found, both saint and sinner, both bound and free.
We’re complicated.
And what is true for us is, apparently, true for our enemies or those we don’t like as well.
Apparently, for Jesus, no one is ever simply just an enemy.
All people, for Jesus, are capable of accepting the invitation to join God’s party.
All people are capable of being part of the peace and healing God intends.
And this is not some new revelation that Jesus brings.
This is part of God’s story in the Old Testament as well.
In his very first sermon in Luke, Jesus gets into trouble,
a theme that will continue throughout his life.
But he gets in trouble not with the enemy but with his own people.
He’s telling them that God is about to bring in the Jubilee year, debts will be cancelled,
and the land will be returned to its original owners.
The Jewish listeners are very happy at this announcement! Yay Jesus!
But wait, says Jesus, there’s more.
Remember how in the Old Testament there’s that story of the prophet Elisha?
How a general of the enemy Aramean army had leprosy?
And called for Elisha to heal him . . . and from a distance Elisha did,
even though there were many in Israel who had leprosy that Elisha did not heal?
Jesus implies in his first sermon that when the Jubilee comes, God’s intentions is for the Jews to
share the land with the enemy Romans so that peace will come.
But the Jewish listeners are not happy about this announcement: boo Jesus!
So that’s when they try and kill him.
After this, Jesus moves into his big sermon in Luke 6, the Sermon on the Plain.
And taking up this same theme he says to the crowds (which apparently includes Gentiles,
those from “Tyre and Sidon”):
I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.
And he repeats a little later, just in case we thought we didn’t hear his crazy talk right:
Love your enemies. . . . Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked:
there’s something we probably need to hear Jesus say more often!
And then he concludes his great sermon by saying that it is not good enough to
Hear these words: one has to act on them as well, one has to live as if they were true.
Many of you know, I think, that when I’m preaching, I’m not just preaching to you:
I’m preaching to myself!
I preach what I, too, need to hear.
I think it is like that with Jesus too.
He says these great, amazing things in chapter 6, and then he himself acts on them in chapter 7.
For what we get immediately following these words is
the story of the healing of the centurion’s slave.
And we’re kind of surprised at Jesus’ surprise, aren’t we?
I mean: he’s already told the story of Elisha healing the foreign general:
presumably he knows that God is at work far beyond the bounds of Israel,
even among Israel’s enemies.
So why is he so amazed?
Well, I think it’s the amazement of actually seeing something that you’ve only heard about.
Perhaps part of him is still not certain that what the story in the Old Testament says is true.
It’s one thing to hear about something, right?
It’s quite another to witness it actually happening.
So when Jesus witnesses that God is at work even in this enemy foreigner,
creating faith or trust in a God whose deepest desire is healing and life for all people,
a God who is not partial as the Roman gods were,
a God who is kind even to the ungrateful, the wicked, and the unworthy:
When Jesus sees God creating this trust in God’s goodness in an imperfect outsider,
he is amazed.
For the Centurion doesn’t credit his good works or his worthiness with the healing;
“I am not worthy,” he says, even though the Jewish leaders say he is.
Rather, the Centurion credits the goodness of God as well as
the ability of Jesus to make that goodness present.
And so Jesus acts accordingly, and brings healing and life to the Centurion’s household.
Jesus follows up his words with action, and the action brings healing.
We can’t occupy ourselves with who deserves God’s mercy and grace and healing –
and who we think doesn’t.
We are all such a confusing mixture of worthy and unworthy, saint and sinner, bound and free.
The Romans are going to put Jesus to death, and surely he can see that coming.
But he heals the centurion’s servant anyway, and from the cross will forgive them all.
And out of that forgiveness, out of that refusal to strike back, out of that insistence to
turn the other cheek a church will be born that will be
something radically new in the world: a loving, mixed, motley community of
Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, men and women, slaves and free –
Jesus’ body is always “and” – and this body, this church community will be dedicated to healing and forgiveness and love and life for all, where all are welcome at the table of God’s welcome party.
And it begins with a refusal to strike back and instead the healing of an enemy’s slave.
This refusal to strike back brings peace: Jesus knows it, and so, at their best, do his followers.
The recent film 42 had an opportunity to make this point, but missed it.
The film tells the story of Jackie Robinson,
the first black baseball player in Major League Baseball.
In the midst of tremendous, hateful racism, Jackie Robinson is chosen by the Brooklyn Dodgers’
General Manager Branch Rickey to “break the colour barrier in baseball.”
Ostensibly his reason for doing this is to make more money, for if he integrates baseball
there will be a much bigger fanbase comprised of both whites and blacks.
But what the film omits is that Branch Rickey was a devout Christian who firmly believed that
it was God’s will that he integrate baseball and change the moral fabric of the U.S. in
the same way that Abraham Lincoln had done.
And what the film also doesn’t make clear was that Rickey chose Robinson not just because
he was a great baseball player, but because of his faith and moral character.
Both, it turns out, were devout Christians.
The film does allude to this, even if it doesn’t take it very seriously.
In one scene, when Rickey is trying persuade others of the soundness of this plan, he says,
Robinson’s a Methodist! I’m a Methodist! God’s a Methodist!
And then, in a scene in which Ricky tries to persuade a sceptical Robinson that
this is a good idea, it becomes even more clear that the two shared a common faith.
Robinson resisted the idea because he knew whoever was the first black baseball player
would receive scorn, abuse, hatred, verbal and physical abuse.
And Rickey needed someone who wouldn’t fight back when that happened,
otherwise it would set the whole plan back a good ten years.
So Robinson says, You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?
And Rickey says, No. I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.
Rickey needs a person who shares his faith in
a God who amazingly brings reconciliation through love of enemies.
And by the end of the story, there’s integration in baseball,
and even a few hearts that have been turned,
even hearts that Robinson himself would have written off.
(see Eric Metaxas at http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-04/movie-about-robinson-misses-christian-dimension)
It’s kind of an amazing story. I think even Jesus would have been amazed.
But God never writes anybody off.
And that’s why God is always and ever full of surprises.
That’s why even Jesus is amazed: God never writes anybody off. And neither should we.
God’s story and God’s plan isn’t about anybody’s worthiness: it’s about God’s goodness,
and graciousness, and about the ability of Jesus in the power of the Spirit to
make that goodness and that graciousness and that life present,
even through the unlikeliest of people.
We are none of us worthy or unworthy: we are all both. We are “and.”
And we are all loved by a gracious and merciful God who simply knows no boundaries.
Last week, Pope Francis stirred up a lot of controversy by saying just that.
That God is perfectly capable of working through all, even atheists.
I think that is a good word to hear: how many of us have people in our lives we love who
may not share our beliefs, but whom we know to be good people,
people through whom good comes?
We can all meet at the place of doing good, said Francis.
Perhaps what we can offer, for our friends, is prayer and the invitation to see their
doing good in the light of a larger story of God’s desire to bring peace and
healing and reconciliation and life and integration to all creation and
to all peoples, which is an amazing story, but there it is,
and we are part of that.
Our attitude to them need not rest on whether we judge them to share our beliefs or not,
but rather on God’s goodness and God’s surprising desire to show up where
we least expect God to be.
In our enemies, in those we write off for whatever reason,
in a crucified Jewish peasant on a cross – even in ourselves.
We’re all complicated, we’re all “and.”
Our enemies are complicated, our family members are complicated,
the people we write off as hopeless are complicated,
the people we think are oh so great are complicated: we’re all “and,”
both worthy and unworthy at exactly the same time.
Jesus knows that: I’m not sure that’s a big surprise to him.
What we really need to extend to each other is not a lot of judgment, but a lot of grace.
Because it’s that – Jesus’ love for us – that makes us a community, not our worthiness.
That’s what brings us here, and that’s what brings us to this table this morning.
It’s amazing, but it’s true: God invites us all to the table,
where Jesus will once again make God’s goodness and healing present even,
amazingly, among us.
Let us be the ones to be amazed at the beauty and the wonder of that,
and together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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