Text: Luke 7:1-10
Theme: “Consider the Centurion!”
2nd Sunday After
Pentecost/Memorial Day Weekend
May 29, 2016
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
When Jesus had finished saying all this
to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion’s servant, whom his
master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent
some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded
earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has
built our synagogue.” 6 So Jesus
went with them.
He was not far from the house when the
centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do
not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider
myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 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.”
9 When Jesus
heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he
said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” 10 Then the men who had been sent returned
to the house and found the servant well.
Consider the centurion!
Today’s Gospel tells of a centurion. A centurion
was a military officer in the Roman army.
He was in charge of one hundred or more soldiers that were called legionnaires. Second in command to the centurion was the optiones.
If you, as a centurion, moved up the ranks you might be named a primi ordines; that would put you among
the first cohort of centurions – the “cream of the crop”, you might way. If
you continued to progress, you may even have become the primus pilus and be able to participate in war councils with the
emperor himself. In America, that rank is something akin to the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
About the centurion we are introduced to in our text, we are
not told how far up the “food chain” – or the Roman military hierarchy – this
man had gone. That doesn’t seem to be
that important. The picture that does
emerge, though, is that this centurion was a gem of a man – a “class act” if
there ever was one. Yes, he had a
servant he could order around. Perhaps
the servant was an optiones; we are
not told. What we are told is that the
centurion’s servant was “highly valued” by the centurion.
Archibald Butt was the name of the military aide who served
American presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft early in the
twentieth century. When Roosevelt and
Taft began to have stark differences of opinion, Archibald Butt was caught in the
middle – he had a painful sense of divided loyalty -- and became depressed over
the situation. President Taft ordered
him to take a vacation. Archibald Butt
did take that vacation, and part of his trip itinerary was to book passage on
the RMS Titanic. He boarded the ship in
Southampton in the United Kingdom on April 10, 1912. As the story goes, he was playing a card game
in the men’s smoking room on April 14th when the Titanic struck an
iceberg. Two and a half hours later, the
ship sank. Over 1500 lives were lost,
and the body of Archibald Butt was never recovered.
On May 2 of the same year, President Taft eulogized Archibald
Butt at a memorial service. Among other
things, he said this:
Everybody who knew him called him Archie. I couldn't prepare
anything in advance to say here. I tried, but couldn't. He was too near me. He
was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military
aide, and to me he had become as a son or a brother.
At a second ceremony three days later, President Taft
broke down and wept. He could not
complete his eulogy. Archibald Butt, as
we have seen, was highly valued.
So was the servant of the centurion in today’s
gospel. But the relationship between the
centurion and his highly valued servant was near the end, for the servant was
“about to die”, we are told.
One great mark of the centurion’s character was that
he had the capacity to highly value another human being. He was not so far gone, so narcissistic, closed-minded,
ego-driven, or self-centered that he had little regard for anyone else but
himself and his own kind. The servant
wasn’t a widget, a pawn, a tool, means to someone else’s end, or a cog in
someone else’s machine. He was a human
being, and he was highly valued, period.
There is more.
Another mark of the man, this centurion, was what he did with the time
he had. He was beneficent; he was
philanthropic. He was involved in the
surrounding community and not given to just hanging out only with his one
hundred legionnaires. He didn’t just cut
a check and call it a day. We are
informed that he actually built the synagogue in Capernaum. Luke tells of the Jewish people who reported
that he, a ROMAN centurion, loved the JEWISH nation. Maybe he was a proselyte; we are not
told. What we are told is that he highly
valued his servant. There was more to it
than just the hierarchical pecking order.
And he loved a people that were not his own and a nation that was not
his own. If you’re offended by
“Co-Exist” bumper stickers, you’ll likely be offended by this story. But then again, the gospel itself is
offensive; it’s a stumbling block.
Were this centurion to live in another time and at
another place, I’m sure this centurion would be numbered among those who paved
the dirt roads in parts of Denton where people of differing ethnic background
lived in the late 60s and early 70s. And
to think that it all started with an interracial group of mothers who simply
valued one another and their children.
It wasn’t the race or the religion, but, rather, that “We Are Broncos!”
The centurion was who he was, and he did what he was
able to do. But there is one thing he
couldn’t do, one thing that it would take a Jesus to do. He could not restore the health of his highly
valued servant. Some Jewish friends tell
their centurion friend about Jesus, and the centurion, in turn, sends a
delegation of Jewish elders to ask for help from Rabbi Jesus. Those elders gush about who this centurion
was and the remarkable things he had done for them.
Jesus didn’t hesitate.
“He went with them,” Luke reports.
Nearing Capernaum, that lovely little fishing village
on the northern short of the Sea of Galilee, the Lord Jesus is met by a second
delegation. Some of the centurion’s
friends come to Jesus, only minutes away from the house, and speak the words
they were given by the centurion to say:
Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do
not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider
myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 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.
Lord, help me get this straight: he highly valued a person of lower rank; he
loved and served a people that were not his own, and now we learn of his very
genuine humility. “I don’t deserve to
have you come…I’m not worthy. Just say
the word. You know how it works.”
Jesus is stopped dead in his tracks. Our Lord is stunned at this and amazed at
what he heard. He turns to His entourage
and declares: I tell you, I have not found such
great faith even in Israel.
There is no way of knowing that Jesus even met this
centurion. Yet nevertheless, when the
centurion’s friends returned to the house they found the servant well.
This is what the Gospel – the message of the dying, rising,
redeeming love of God – does for people and within people. It enables us to highly value another human
being or human beings – ones that often are different than we are. Second, it enables us to love and serve
people that are not our own. I have a
friend who is a chiropractor. He is a
practitioner of the Bahai’ religion.
When we lived at Sundown Ranch, he and his family were across the
street. A couple of years ago on
Christmas Day, his entire family came across the street bearing a plate of
Christmas cookies for us. He knew how
important the holiday was. What would
happen, say, if we would take the time to learn about special observances in
other traditions – even non-Christian ones – and then help adherents
celebrate? We don’t do it because we
believe everything the way they do; we do it simply because we are loving people. Third, the Gospel engenders a genuine – as
opposed to fake – humility. You know a
little about how the world works, and you know, for sure, that you’re not the
center of the universe. Even if you
built a thousand churches, you’re not the center of the universe. That spot, of course, is reserved for the
Lord whom we do not have to serve. We
get to serve.
Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. We remember those who gave the “last full
measure of devotion” to protect our country.
Finally, I’m honored to share a couple of quotes that reflect
the centurion’s story and the essence of Memorial Day. First, here are the words of Methodist
minister, Roger Wolsey:
Some 40% of homeless males in the U.S. are veterans of military
service. Many homeless people die alone on the streets due to exposure to the
elements and due to the toll on their bodies of years of drug abuse due to
PTSD. Vets who die homeless out in the elements and/or due to alcoholism (a way
to self-medicate untreated PTSD), or suicide are *every* bit as much victims of
war as those who died on the battlefield. They just took longer to die.
Something to remember on Memorial Day.
We pray for them – as we do for the military and first
responders every Sunday. Taking a leaf
from the centurion, we can also highly value them, love them, and in genuine
humility serve them.
Here, to conclude, are the words of Episcopalian
priest Barbara Brown Taylor:
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor
as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use,
change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who
can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Just say the word, Lord, and we shall be free.
Amen.
