It was known as the Roaring Twenties. It was a time very much like to the Soaring Nineties. Morals were being turned upside down. The Stock Market was rocketing to new heights. "Let the good times roll" was the national motto.
Perhaps the biggest name of the decade was a man named Babe Ruth. He had single-handedly put baseball on the map and made it the national pastime. The major league owners realized they needed a Commissioner to oversee the game of baseball and preserve its integrity. In 1921 they appointed as their first Commissioner, Judge Kennesaw "Mountain" Landis. Before Judge Landis took the position, he made one huge non-negotiable demand. It had nothing to do with money, nothing to do with benefits, nothing to do even with power in the raw sense of the term. This was his demand.
He wanted a moral covenant with ownership to steadfastly support the Commissioner, by which they say, "We will stand behind you come thick or thin, regardless of what you do, regardless of what our individual personal feelings might be about its rightness or wrongness. We have given you a tough job, and we will stand behind you and we will support you. There will be no knives in your back". What Judge Landis demanded in one word was - authority.
The Gospel reading about Jesus and the centurion, which we heard from Luke's Gospel earlier in this service, is a story about hope, especially the hope we have when we submit to the ultimate authority of God. Death is the opposite of hope. Hope energizes us to explore every possibility, just like the centurion's hope in Jesus led him to seek out the Great Physician and Healer for his sick servant. Death and despair pull their victims under in a sea without hope, but hope allows us to persevere in times of suffering and despair, just like hope recently allowed a woman to survive for 17 days in the rubble of the collapsed clothing factory in Bangladesh.
Slavery in Jesus' time was nothing like the slavery in 17th and 18th century England and America. Some masters did treat their slaves like animals, but most slaves were treated with respect and dignity. In addition, while most centurions were hated, the centurion in today's Gospel reading had earned the respect of the Jewish community. The centurion did not treat the Jews with kindness to earn their respect. As an officer of an occupying army, he was part of the enemy. He had the power to control the Jews. Instead, he was kind to them. He was concerned about God's opinion of him as well as the recovery of his servant. He was inspired to act out of faith in Jesus. It is not surprising therefore that the Jewish leaders approached Jesus on the centurion's behalf.
The centurion did not go to Jesus himself for several reasons. First, the centurion was a Gentile, and at that time Jews and Gentiles did not get along. The Jews did not realize that the Gospel message was for everyone-both Jews and Gentiles. Even Gentiles can have a faith that is acceptable to Jesus. Second, the centurion did not feel worthy to receive Jesus' kindness. In addition, the centurion knew that if Jesus came into contact with a Gentile, Jesus would have to undergo a purifying ritual under Jewish law, since Gentiles were considered to be unclean people.
The main reason why the centurion did not go to Jesus himself is because the centurion knew that he did not have to be in the presence of Jesus to receive his miracle. He asked for the miracle of healing in pure, honest, humble faith. He had confidence in Jesus' healing power. Jesus was encouraged by the centurion's humility and confidence. Just like the centurion had the authority from his commanding officers to command those who served under him by telling them what to do and where to go, Jesus has the authority from God that he can use simply by saying the word.
During the 1770s Dr. William Withering was one of the best doctors in England. As a scientist, he didn't believe in ghosts. Yet one day while he strolled through the village fair, he thought he saw a ghost . . . and then another one . . . and still another. He stared in amazement. All of these people had been very ill with a disease called dropsy which caused liquid to form around a person's heart, leading to a heart attack. He had worried about them. But as good a doctor as he was, he had no way to treat them, and when they left his office, he was sure he'd never see any of them alive again. But there they were, and they all looked very healthy. They told him about a wonderful "witch woman" who lived in a nearby wood. This "good witch," they said, had prepared a special brew which, they insisted, had cured them.
Dr. Withering was a very good scientist who knew the importance of investigating anything that sounded like a cure. He also knew that many remedies and medicines used by midwives and women healers (who were often called witches) could help cure illness and heal injuries. So, he decided to visit the "witch" and see what brews she was concocting. Sure enough, when he got to her cottage, she was busy making up her dropsy remedy out of some twenty plants, roots, berries, and herbs. Dr. Withering asked for samples of many of her plants to study and after several tests, he decided that the most powerful plant in her brew had to be the herb foxglove. He thought, "What if there was something in the foxglove that cured the dropsy? And if so, what is it?"
Thanks to the "good witch," who was a healer, Dr. Withering was able to use his knowledge of botany to isolate the ingredient in the foxglove plant called digitalis, which may well be one of the most important natural products ever discovered for medicinal use. Today, digitalis in different forms is still a lifesaver used by doctors all over the world to help people with heart problems.
Many doctors would have looked with scorn on this crude form of "alternative medicine" performed by these witch doctors, but Dr. Withering was a humble man in the best sense of the word. He had an open mind. He was willing to accept their help.
Is there any quality more appealing in a man or woman than genuine humility? I'm not talking about that odious form of low self-esteem that causes persons to become doormats and allow others to walk all over them. Certainly the centurion was no doormat. But he recognized Jesus' power and he was humble enough to ask Jesus' help. If the centurion had been a proud man, he might have never sent for Jesus. But he was a caring man, he was a man who respected the beliefs of others, he was a humble man. But there is one final thing that must be said about this centurion: he was a man of faith.
The centurion's faith was simple but not simplistic. He understood that all authority comes from God. He was familiar with the chain of command because of his military background. Orders are received and passed to others, both to those of similar rank and those of lower ranks. The centurion understood that God's own power rested in Jesus, and that this power could flow through the centurion's own faith to heal his servant. The centurion is a model for all of us. He wanted to be a channel that was open at both ends---open to receive power from God and eager to let that power flow to others.
Faith is about the authority that will decide the outcome of our situations. We must not allow the storms of life to blur our view of the situation. The situation may seem hopeless and it might hurt us, but the storm can be the chance for us to see God's vision for our lives. Faith begins when we make the choice to suspend our disbelief and open the door to what might be and what has never been before. Amazing faith believes that only Jesus can decide the outcome of our situation. When we have faith, other people will realize that we are real and will seek us out during the storms of life, just like the centurion sought out Jesus. Jesus saves us from our sins and sets us free from being slaves in this world, just like the centurion's slave was set free from the grip of sickness and death.
The centurion understood who Jesus was and what Jesus could do for him. The centurion did not know that he was talking to the Creator of the universe, but he did know that Jesus was more than a man, a carpenter or a good teacher. He saw Jesus for what Jesus really was, and his great faith came from that insight. Because he saw Jesus as the absolute authority, he knew that Jesus' words were absolutely authoritative. He knew that Jesus did not have to be physically present for his servant to be healed.
Just like the centurion was educated by God through the suffering of his servant, we must also allow God to educate us through trials. It is through trials that faith is exercised and developed. If we do not allow our physical bodies to get physical exercise, they will get flabby and useless. Similarly, we must allow our faith to be exercised and developed more and more through the exercise called life's trials.
Faith does not mean that we do not see the future clearly. It is a relationship with God, and because of that relationship we have trust. Faith has been described as trusting God and his power. Some prayers that appear to us to go unanswered are simply times where God has lovingly overruled our wishes. He knows that what we have asked for is not the best for us. In other cases our timing is not his timing, he has an even greater purpose in mind for us. We must remember that in Luke 22:42 even Jesus prayed to God, "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours"
The Gospel reading ends with another unusual thing. Jesus healed the centurion's slave without saying a word. He did something beyond what the centurion suggested. Jesus didn't go, he didn't touch the servant, he didn't offer a public prayer, he didn't do anything outwardly. He just healed him, plain and simple. It was truly a miracle. We don't know how he did it, but we do know why he did it. He did it to prove beyond a doubt that he is the Son of God with all authority given to him over sickness, disease and death.
Jesus did not expect to find great faith outside of Israel. The Gentiles did not have centuries of interaction with the Jewish God Yahweh to prepare them for Jesus' coming. The centurion, who was a Gentile, expressed the greatest faith found to this point in Luke's Gospel. Jesus' affirmation of the centurion's faith is the main point of the story, not the healing miracle itself.
While Jesus may have begun his ministry with a rather exclusivistic view of God as Israel's sole possession, he soon expanded his vision to behold the amazing work of God throughout the world, even in the Romans, the enemies. What a breakthrough. Up until this time, with the exception of some of the prophets, God was seen as a national deity. The Jews were not alone in this belief. Most nations had their special god or gods. He was theirs exclusively, and devoted his divine powers to gaining victories and prosperity for them.
Very often we as Canadians have had the too-easy assumption that God is on our side, that he always will give us victory and prosperity because we stand for righteousness, truth, and morality. Freedom is God's aim for man, and since Canada extols and celebrates freedom, God will always spare her, or so we sometimes think. But consider the recent scandals involving Canadian senators and their expense claims. Almost every day for the last several weeks we have heard new revelations about the excesses.
If we truly understand who Jesus was, what he did for us on the cross and what he can do for us today, we will not be satisfied with a shallow faith. We will realize that he was the divine Son of God who gave his life for us, and in return we will want to give our lives to him. We will then realize the meaning of Paul's words in Galatians 1:4---"Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age".
There are heroes of faith in every walk of life. There are heroes of faith who work as clerks in grocery stores, stay-at-home parents or in the many roles in our churches ranging from priest to janitor. Each and every one of us can be heroes of faith. All we have to do is invite Jesus to help us make the most of our lives. We have to ask him to do the right things in life and act accordingly. When we do, we will become a hero of the faith, and our lives will be a blessing both to everyone we touch and ourselves as well.
