Today we have two texts that involve military leaders with personal needs seeking healing through the grace of God. Naaman was a Syrian General who approached Elijah with the blessing of his King and created some frustration for the King of Israel. In Matthew’s Gospel we have an unknown person suffering from Leprosy, the same as Namaaan, and then a Centurion whose servant is paralyzed.
The reading, as it was assigned, only included the first story in Mathew, but it seemed appropriate to me to include both. Pairing the first story certainly connects the actions of God through Jesus with the actions of God through Elijah, but as I read it I could not help but notice the centurion’s faith and Jesus’ response as somewhat of an antithesis to Naaman’s.
Matthew 8 follows the sermon on the mount, where Jesus has just laid bare all that he has come to teach. There are parables and other means of teaching that follow, but the sermon on the mount sets the tone for all of it, and it ends in 7:28-29 with an astounded crowd because Jesus does not teach like the other scribes. He does not teach like someone who is copying and pasting someone else’s words. He teaches like an author – one with authority – because he is the embodiment of God’s very self.
It makes sense, then that he might heal some random face in the crowd who calls him Lord and says, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” You know, if you want to…I’m just saying you could. It’s an option. I love the idea of Jesus finding agreement with him in his place of need (and saying, “I will.”) and then commanding him to be made clean and to go show the temple priests what Jesus has done.
We don’t always think of these stories in terms of their narrative qualities, but Matthew tells a good tale. First, we have rock star public speaker Jesus laying out the foundations of belief. Then he stops to not only heal but send a message to those that are gatekeeping the faith. Then this Centurion, who represents the architecture of oppression for God’s people says, “I gotta guy who is suffering, and I see you have a packed schedule. Based on the chain of command, could you just make it so that this guy can get up and get to work?” And Jesus said, “Oh man. You get me.” In verse 13 Jesus says, “Let it be done according to your faith,” and the servant was healed that very hour.
This Centurion seems to be Naaman’s opposite in that he was humble and not expecting a direct audience and he also placed his hope and trust in the actions of Jesus over and above his own. Naaman was used to being recognized. He was a force to be reckoned with who had the ear of whatever King his patron sent him to challenge. He was magnanimous and used to making gestures of the same weight.
It was normal for sacrifices to be made or offerings of treasure, grain, or valuable incense to be brought to appease the wrath of whatever divine force were against him. Nothing was working, and his wife’s servant – captured in a raid – boasted about her God and God’s Prophet, Elijah. There are lots of things that are interesting in this statement. One is that he has the King’s blessing because Naaman has been successful in several raids. Another is that he has this slave girl as the result of a raid against a people whose God could not save them.
Of course, according to the Hebrew texts, everything is attributed to God – success, failure, rain, drought, famine, or feast – everything is either with God’s intervention or with God’s allowance. Victory and defeat were more readily connected to the faithfulness of those in charge, but as we move into the time of Prophets we find that success as a nation is as deeply connected with the character of the people as it is with the ruler.
Back to Naaman, though. This is how bad it must have been for him, a slave from a people his King had subdued and suggested that her people’s defeated God could help. As laughable as this must have been, at least it gave him the chance to make the King of Israel nervous – which it did!
Who knows if that was even part of his intent or of the king that sent him? You know, “Maybe it won’t work, but at least I get to antagonize that guy.” Clearly, he did antagonize the Israelite King, but I don’t think that is the main objective in the text – since it’s not even clear which king this was. No, his main objective was to be healed by any means necessary, which makes it no surprise that it was so off-putting not to be greeted and then be told to go jump in a river!
Again, it was the servants who told Naaman, “If you had been asked to do something hard would you have done it? What’s the harm in doing the easy thing.” Of course, he did it and was healed, and the moral of that story is that God doesn’t move on to our commands and actions. Deeper still, it is that the people of power are rarely the ones with faith in something other than themselves and their own power – which is why the centurion is such an interesting contrast.
Not only is he a person of power, but he is a person of power who is advocating for the health and well-being of someone who serves him. We don’t know enough to say what that relationship is like, and Jesus is clearly not making any kind of endorsement of the occupying power of Rome.
What Jesus is doing is acknowledging the role of faith as it connects to wholeness and healing. The story about the centurion is also important because it sets up our expectations for who Jesus is and what he can do. Of course, that’s the hard part, isn’t it?
When we face chronic illnesses for ourselves and those we love, a miraculous cure seems like a pretty reasonable request. Worse still is the question of whether or not God said, “No.” to that request, or maybe God is powerless in the face of it. These are certain questions that will be on the top of my list when I leave this mortal coil, but for now, I must be satisfied with this: God has placed us here so that we might encourage faith.
God has put us here so that we might speak to those with power over us and boldly say that there is a God and it isn’t them and their tanks and bombs and guns. There is a power in the universe, a benevolent power in the universe, and it is not the invisible hand of a greedy and soulless marketplace. There is a God in whom we live and move and have our being, and that God is seen most clearly in the presence of compassion – just as the servants for Naaman, Jesus for the strange man, and the Centurion for the working man!
It is that sense of compassion that seems to be most dear in the heart of our texts today and it is compassion that seems most missing in the world today. Pick your issue and pick your poison, but listen to see where compassion is real and true and who is trying to trick you with fear. Of course, these comments are made known in the midst of an election season as politics on every level seem more designed to divide us than to unite us.
Political strategies and propaganda are nothing new, but they have taken on new life as the ethical boundaries around the false representation of the other seem to melt into the fabric of the internet. I’m not telling you anything you cannot find online or on tv, but I am telling you that we are approaching a level of crisis like we have not seen in generations.
I cannot give you any assurance that things will get better or even that they will get worse before they get better, but I can tell you that compassion still holds the key to making it out with some sense of meaning and purpose. Compassion is the key to leaving any kind of legacy behind. Compassion is the witness and testimony of scripture today.
Think about that for just a moment. Think about those that have gone before you and what made them memorable and unique. Chances are that these memories are like pure gold. You may have heard this before, but when gold is heated the impurities – any mineral deposits or alloys that aren't gold – rise to the surface. That’s the dross we sing about in the old hymn, “How Firm a foundation.”
“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.”
The metal smith removes it time and time again until the surface becomes like a mirror and they can see their own reflection. So it is with faith, as we turn to God again and again and again. So it is with us when we offer compassion to others and find our humanity reflected in their faces and theirs in ours.
So it is when we vote our conscience as though it were a prayer for the kind of world we want to see. So it is when we gather around this table and demonstrate a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Here we find the compassion of God, and here we are recreated in the image of the one who tore the curtain in the temple that separates the holy from the common.
Here we say to Jesus, “Lord if you are willing, you can make me clean.”, and here is where he says to us, “I am willing. Be made clean!” May it be so with you. May it be so with me, and to God be the glory, now and always. Amen!
The reading, as it was assigned, only included the first story in Mathew, but it seemed appropriate to me to include both. Pairing the first story certainly connects the actions of God through Jesus with the actions of God through Elijah, but as I read it I could not help but notice the centurion’s faith and Jesus’ response as somewhat of an antithesis to Naaman’s.
Matthew 8 follows the sermon on the mount, where Jesus has just laid bare all that he has come to teach. There are parables and other means of teaching that follow, but the sermon on the mount sets the tone for all of it, and it ends in 7:28-29 with an astounded crowd because Jesus does not teach like the other scribes. He does not teach like someone who is copying and pasting someone else’s words. He teaches like an author – one with authority – because he is the embodiment of God’s very self.
It makes sense, then that he might heal some random face in the crowd who calls him Lord and says, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” You know, if you want to…I’m just saying you could. It’s an option. I love the idea of Jesus finding agreement with him in his place of need (and saying, “I will.”) and then commanding him to be made clean and to go show the temple priests what Jesus has done.
We don’t always think of these stories in terms of their narrative qualities, but Matthew tells a good tale. First, we have rock star public speaker Jesus laying out the foundations of belief. Then he stops to not only heal but send a message to those that are gatekeeping the faith. Then this Centurion, who represents the architecture of oppression for God’s people says, “I gotta guy who is suffering, and I see you have a packed schedule. Based on the chain of command, could you just make it so that this guy can get up and get to work?” And Jesus said, “Oh man. You get me.” In verse 13 Jesus says, “Let it be done according to your faith,” and the servant was healed that very hour.
This Centurion seems to be Naaman’s opposite in that he was humble and not expecting a direct audience and he also placed his hope and trust in the actions of Jesus over and above his own. Naaman was used to being recognized. He was a force to be reckoned with who had the ear of whatever King his patron sent him to challenge. He was magnanimous and used to making gestures of the same weight.
It was normal for sacrifices to be made or offerings of treasure, grain, or valuable incense to be brought to appease the wrath of whatever divine force were against him. Nothing was working, and his wife’s servant – captured in a raid – boasted about her God and God’s Prophet, Elijah. There are lots of things that are interesting in this statement. One is that he has the King’s blessing because Naaman has been successful in several raids. Another is that he has this slave girl as the result of a raid against a people whose God could not save them.
Of course, according to the Hebrew texts, everything is attributed to God – success, failure, rain, drought, famine, or feast – everything is either with God’s intervention or with God’s allowance. Victory and defeat were more readily connected to the faithfulness of those in charge, but as we move into the time of Prophets we find that success as a nation is as deeply connected with the character of the people as it is with the ruler.
Back to Naaman, though. This is how bad it must have been for him, a slave from a people his King had subdued and suggested that her people’s defeated God could help. As laughable as this must have been, at least it gave him the chance to make the King of Israel nervous – which it did!
Who knows if that was even part of his intent or of the king that sent him? You know, “Maybe it won’t work, but at least I get to antagonize that guy.” Clearly, he did antagonize the Israelite King, but I don’t think that is the main objective in the text – since it’s not even clear which king this was. No, his main objective was to be healed by any means necessary, which makes it no surprise that it was so off-putting not to be greeted and then be told to go jump in a river!
Again, it was the servants who told Naaman, “If you had been asked to do something hard would you have done it? What’s the harm in doing the easy thing.” Of course, he did it and was healed, and the moral of that story is that God doesn’t move on to our commands and actions. Deeper still, it is that the people of power are rarely the ones with faith in something other than themselves and their own power – which is why the centurion is such an interesting contrast.
Not only is he a person of power, but he is a person of power who is advocating for the health and well-being of someone who serves him. We don’t know enough to say what that relationship is like, and Jesus is clearly not making any kind of endorsement of the occupying power of Rome.
What Jesus is doing is acknowledging the role of faith as it connects to wholeness and healing. The story about the centurion is also important because it sets up our expectations for who Jesus is and what he can do. Of course, that’s the hard part, isn’t it?
When we face chronic illnesses for ourselves and those we love, a miraculous cure seems like a pretty reasonable request. Worse still is the question of whether or not God said, “No.” to that request, or maybe God is powerless in the face of it. These are certain questions that will be on the top of my list when I leave this mortal coil, but for now, I must be satisfied with this: God has placed us here so that we might encourage faith.
God has put us here so that we might speak to those with power over us and boldly say that there is a God and it isn’t them and their tanks and bombs and guns. There is a power in the universe, a benevolent power in the universe, and it is not the invisible hand of a greedy and soulless marketplace. There is a God in whom we live and move and have our being, and that God is seen most clearly in the presence of compassion – just as the servants for Naaman, Jesus for the strange man, and the Centurion for the working man!
It is that sense of compassion that seems to be most dear in the heart of our texts today and it is compassion that seems most missing in the world today. Pick your issue and pick your poison, but listen to see where compassion is real and true and who is trying to trick you with fear. Of course, these comments are made known in the midst of an election season as politics on every level seem more designed to divide us than to unite us.
Political strategies and propaganda are nothing new, but they have taken on new life as the ethical boundaries around the false representation of the other seem to melt into the fabric of the internet. I’m not telling you anything you cannot find online or on tv, but I am telling you that we are approaching a level of crisis like we have not seen in generations.
I cannot give you any assurance that things will get better or even that they will get worse before they get better, but I can tell you that compassion still holds the key to making it out with some sense of meaning and purpose. Compassion is the key to leaving any kind of legacy behind. Compassion is the witness and testimony of scripture today.
Think about that for just a moment. Think about those that have gone before you and what made them memorable and unique. Chances are that these memories are like pure gold. You may have heard this before, but when gold is heated the impurities – any mineral deposits or alloys that aren't gold – rise to the surface. That’s the dross we sing about in the old hymn, “How Firm a foundation.”
“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.”
The metal smith removes it time and time again until the surface becomes like a mirror and they can see their own reflection. So it is with faith, as we turn to God again and again and again. So it is with us when we offer compassion to others and find our humanity reflected in their faces and theirs in ours.
So it is when we vote our conscience as though it were a prayer for the kind of world we want to see. So it is when we gather around this table and demonstrate a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Here we find the compassion of God, and here we are recreated in the image of the one who tore the curtain in the temple that separates the holy from the common.
Here we say to Jesus, “Lord if you are willing, you can make me clean.”, and here is where he says to us, “I am willing. Be made clean!” May it be so with you. May it be so with me, and to God be the glory, now and always. Amen!
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