Second Presbyterian Church

"A Gentile's Faith:
Preaching From the Gospel of Luke"
June 27, 2004

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Sermons Homepage » Sermons for 2004 » Sermons for June 2004 » Sermons from the Series on Luke

#22 in the Series on Luke
The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.

• I Kings 17: 8-16
• Luke 7: 1-10

This Gospel, like the other Gospels, is complex. These ten verses tell a simple story about the tremendous faith of a Gentile warrior who believed in God. And the point of my sermon is about the Centurion's great faith. But I want to first share with you the complex layers of contexts in which one finds this simple miracle story.

The first context I want to mention is: how this story helps to lead up to the story about John the Baptist. That story follows this one and the one about raising the widow's son from the dead. Even chapter 6 of Luke, with all those teachings that we touched on over the past 5 sermons is also a part of this first context. These three sections summarize the teaching (the preaching good news to the poor), the healing, and the raising of the dead. So that when John sends two of his disciples to ask Jesus is he the one, or should they look for another, we can understand Jesus' answer:

Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. (verses 22,23)

And that brings us to the second layer of the context. The entire Gospel of Luke is to demonstrate to the reader that Jesus is the Messiah and that salvation comes through belief in him. Jesus is telling John (and us!) that. And, as we shall see later, the disciples come to believe Jesus as the Messiah; only they have to learn it through the experience of Jesus' arrest, crucifixion and resurrection (as do we).

So the context is telescoped, complex; each layer built upon the previous layer but all centered around the fact that Jesus is the Christ who brings salvation to both the Jews, and the entire world!

And that brings us to looking a little more closely to these ten verses of Chapter 7. The Centurion had a very remarkable faith. Who was the Centurion? He was a Roman officer who was in charge of a company of soldiers. At this point in time the Centurion was working under the rule of Herod Antipas who was a ruler of that region; who ruled in the name of Caesar of Rome. The Centurion was Gentile; he was not a Jew. But most likely he was a believer of God, who accepted the religion of the Jews as the true religion, but was not going through the ritual of becoming a Jew himself. And he was a good man. The Jews in the region considered him in high esteem. Now, this was unusual. Jews had no love for non-Jews at that time. And Non Jews, or Gentiles, had no love for the Jews. But it is recorded that this Centurion loved the Jews and had even built a synagogue for them so they could pray and read the scriptures.

As is expected the Centurion had people who served him. And one of his servants became very ill. He was worried that the servant was going to die. He had heard about Jesus and the many wonders that he had done for others who had been ill and he believed in Jesus.

Now that latter statement is not obvious; it needs some explanation. This Centurion was aware that there were magicians all around proclaiming that they could heal. That Jesus was one who went around healing was not that unusual. As we just noted, the Centurion was a believer in the God of Israel. This means that he understood that there would be a Savior, a Messiah who was to come and redeem His people.

So, it was out of the Centurion's belief that Jesus was from God, that, yes, Jesus was the Messiah, that he sent the elders of Capernaum (Re: The Jewish leaders in the city) to beg for the life of his servant who was ill. He knew that Jesus was more than just a wonder worker. He knew that Jesus was one with authority - the authority of God himself! Indeed, this man had such faith in the Power of God through Jesus that he did not presume that Jesus had to come and touch his servant in order to heal him. The Centurion knew that Jesus could heal his servant from afar.

And Luke made note of the Centurion's faith, the faith of a Gentile. He reported that Jesus marveled at the Centurion's faith, a faith that was so strong that no one in Israel could match it!

Luke was trying to make a couple points here. One, as mentioned, he was leading up to John the Baptist's doubts and demonstrating just how Jesus was the Messiah. Two, Luke, very importantly, wanted the readers (us!) to realize that the power of God to redeem and heal was for EVERYbody, not just one particular group of people. In fact this, and other passages reflect the contrast between believing Gentiles and curious, but doubtful Jews. Jesus, in other words, is a Messiah for all who need redemption, not just one group who wish to be liberated from a foreign political power!

This is Good News for us, since most of us must be counted as Gentile, not Jewish. But a word of caution: Do not misunderstand Luke, or me, as putting down Judaism. Our Redeemer, Jesus Christ was a Jew. He is the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish people are the first chosen people of God whom God brought forth to provide us with a Savior. It's just that here, in the context of Jesus' time, he was rejected by many of his people's leaders who were afraid to give up their idea of a political rescuer and a messiah who would restore the nation of Israel, as it was in the time of King David.

In conclusion, as I understand this passage, it gives us a couple of challenges. One, if we do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah, who has the power of God to heal and redeem, then we are being called by God, through Luke, to reconsider, to believe in the Messiah who can heal and save us!

Second, if we already believe in Jesus as the Messiah, as our Redeemer, then this passage challenges our faith to grow. Do we, can we really trust that the power of God, the love of God, can transform us into the healed and whole people we are called to be?

I believe that one of the reasons that our denomination has been faltering in the last decades (with over a million loss in membership) is because we have been contented to be Sunday morning worshipers and little more. We are afraid to live and walk in the faith that Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit is walking with us, trying to lead us in our lives the way God would have us to live and witness. At least I have been. As Christians, we posses the most wonderful news possible: that we are redeemed by God, because God loves us and desires for us to be complete human beings, through him! There should not be a day, nor an hour, that goes by in our lives that doesn't reflect and rejoice in the wonder of God's redemption and regeneration of our lives. We have been afraid of looking superstitious and silly. When the truth of the matter is that rational explanations are no longer adequate. Rational explanation is not sufficient to explain the evil in our world. Rational explanation is not adequate to explain who God is and how God works. For too long now we have lived in the trap of believing that God has limited himself through the laws of nature and we have given up the reality that miracles can and do happen. And in that process we have rejected the power of God that is available to us.

The Centurion had no problem with accepting that God has power beyond sickness. Can we believe that? Don't get me wrong. Physical healings at this point in our lives are only temporary, until the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead. But where is our faith? We know the ultimate outcome. Evil loses; God wins. Death dies; life with God wins. So, even if we are not healed completely now, we shall be in the future. Amen.

The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.