Sermon: The Word
Luke 7:1-10
The healing of the centurion’s slave is quite a well-known Gospel story, famed for the centurion’s remarkable humility and Jesus’s acclamation of his unswerving belief. At the bed of his beloved slave, the centurion sent Jewish elders to bring Christ to his house, then sent his close friends to find Jesus and deliver the message “Do not come to me, for I am unworthy. Only speak the word and my servant will be healed.”
When I was young, I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, and attended either the Children’s Mass or of the regular Sunday Mass with my parents. At adults’ mass, I remember I loved singing very much, but for the rest of the time I was fidgety and impatient. I tried to lie down on the pew, and whenever I gave up the effort to sit up properly, my mom wouldn’t say a word; she would simply hold my left hand and write some letters on my small palm with her finger, words that I was never able to fully spell out. My mom often said, “Try to listen to what the priest says.” but I never really tried because I knew that the homilies were above my level of comprehension, and the priest was from ... Ireland..! He once said in Korean, as a joke, “Korean is a devil’s language.” But I always sat up straight for the part after the Eucharist - relieved that the mass would soon be over, but also loving the words that the people said together, “Only say one word and my soul shall be healed.” the last part of the Eucharist litany.
The message of the litany which people recited and repeated every Sunday has remained in my memory for a long time: one single word can be and is enough for us to be healed. It is a great message and a great expression of faith. It makes us think about who we are before God. Agony, sorrow, pain and suffering, these overwhelming feelings are weighed as subservient to one word, just one word, from Jesus. It humbles us.
The humility which the centurion practiced in today’s story is not what we would expect from someone of his occupation and rank. He let go of his authority as a high-ranking military officer. He let go of the power he could use from his well-established social networks, including those of Jewish elders and friends, which tells us that he was a man of good integrity; we have heard from the story that the Jewish elders said to Jesus, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”
So we have the picture of an atypical Roman, going to great lengths to save his beloved servant - but the most dramatic and powerful moment in this story is the moment when the centurion changes his mind; when Jesus is not far from his house, he rushes to send his friends to stop Jesus coming. His friends deliver the centurion’s message to Jesus; “Do not trouble yourself to come to me. Only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”
That’s why this story is amazing: he lets go of control. All humans have the subtle, deep, secret and common desire to see and direct, to have things be in our hands and before our eyes.
Have you ever had a pen pal? When I was in middle school, some of my friends had pen-pals, but I never considered it. I knew that I wouldn’t and couldn’t, because I wanted to see the other’s face in my eyes - letters appearing from nowhere would be too unreal to believe in.
Seeing is one of the most essential parts of life, not only for survival, but for deciphering our world and interacting with others. From another person’s smile, we learn warmth. From nature, seeing the glory all around us, we find metaphors to describe different aspects of our life. From seeing an artist’s work, we can imagine beyond our everyday vision. But seeing is also a way to secure how things are arranged and travel in the direction we want. By seeing, we can repress the primal anxiety and fear we would feel in a circumstance where we can’t see what’s going on.
If my son got a new teacher at school, I would want to see her, to check on her. When Peace gets back home with his report card, I can’t wait for even two minutes to open the envelope and see his grades with my own eyes. If my son gets in trouble with a classmate, I would like to go and see who that kid is. Seeing builds security. Seeing is drawing the tomorrow we would want into now. There’s a common phrase, seeing is believing. The need to see things with our own eyes is natural and necessary to run our life and work smoothly, but it can obscure spirit and healing from revealing its unknown, untamed power.
The reason why I prefer the Gospel of Luke’s account to the same story in the Gospel of Matthew is that the Luke’s account describes that the centurion did not see Jesus. He sent the Jewish elders, then his friends, but he himself didn’t come out. He could have, but he didn’t.
“Speak the word and my servant shall be healed.” is a remarkable statement, because it means that the centurion did let go of that secret and common human desire to see how things progress – how the slave, in those days, who was the property of the slave owner, though beloved, will be healed and recovered. He let go of the need to have Jesus come to his house and do the work before his eyes. He let go of seeing. He let go of control. He simply believed the power of one word – the unseen, untamed, uncontrolled, unknown power of intention of Jesus of Nazareth. In this story, we can imagine that Jesus also didn’t intend to see the centurion. The miracle happened by the faith in the one word, and the word connected the Centurion, Christ, the slave and the whole community – the Jewish elders and friends.
After all, Jesus said 12 words: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Even though we imagine Jesus said, later, the one word to accomplish the healing, we wouldn’t be able to know what the word was. I imagine the word might have been like the finger printing that my mother did on her impatient daughter’s palm at the long, incomprehensible, adults’ mass. May we be all comforted and healed by the word, one word from Jesus Christ, our saviour and healer, the untamed, unknown, unseen and present word.
Benediction
Look at this picture;
When I worked on the powerpoint slides with Cindy for pictures, she asked me,
“You know they are weeds!”
“Weeds?”
“Yes.”
“Buttercup flowers are weeds? But children love them!”
“Yeah, but they are weeds~. Like dandelions!”
I responded, “How different Canadian’s perceptions are! Koreans love them!!”
Depending on how you see, and from the perspective of God’s love, weeds can be lovely little flowers, humble and strong, spreading like blessings all around us. Go like them, like the weeds and wildflowers, and share God’s love for all.
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