FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

Harry T. Cook

5/27/13

Because of the dating of Easter 2013, we have not heard this gospel lection for several years. That is unfortunate in a way since it is the first of a series of stories that follows the Lukan version of the series of sayings attributed by both Luke and Matthew to Jesus. Matthew's is called "the Sermon on the Mount," Luke's "the Sermon on the Plain." The latter has three parables appended to the sayings.

Luke 7 begins with two incidents in which Jesus is depicted as "doing" as well as "saying" or "speaking": the remote control healing of the centurion's servant (a Judean aiding a member of the Roman military, not unlike a Samaritan rescuing one we are probably meant to take as a Judean from the ditch between Jerusalem to Jericho) and the more colorful episode at Nain (this is the only place in the whole of the Hebrew Bible and its Christian appendices where this place is named. It was just a bit southwest of Nazareth.)

It is important to note that this story has a parallel at Matthew 8:5ff with parts of both traceable to Q. Anyone who studied New Testament and passed the examinations will remember that the "healing of the centurion's servant" scene is closely related to a similar story told in John 4:46ff. This is not to say that the author of John cribbed from Luke -- or Matthew. It is to say that some event or imagined event must have been part of the general lore of the Jesus Judaism movement as time moved on into the post-70 CE era.

The central point of the story is the centurion's faith. Meaning what? In the Greek New Testament the word is πιστις, meaning primarily "trust" or "confidence." It does not mean "blind faith" as in believing apart from reason. Usage of the word in its various forms in Homeric Greek tends toward the idea of a covenant or bond of trust between or among persons, a shared confidence that each one will do his or her best to get done what needs to be done, to meet or survive a challenge and make the best of it.

The Romans were not generally considered by Judeans or Galileans to be their close friends, even though Luke's version of the story has them saying that centurion loved "their nation" and built them a synagogue.* In any case, one might say that a Gentile military man would have to have had plenty of chutzpah to reach out to Jesus, as he is depicted by both Matthew and Luke to have done, to save his servant. And that may be another point the unknown originator of the story wanted to make, viz. that human crises dwarf human differences. But why a centurion could summon sufficient πιστις thus to reach out is the question. All the centurion is said to have wanted was for Jesus to "speak the word" and it would be accomplished.

Would a centurion have known of the Genesis tradition of dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux -- "and God said, let there be light, and there was light"? Matthew and Luke certainly would have. The depiction of Jesus speaking a word from afar to change the course of nature is a huge thing. And the centurion, who supposedly requested that particular ministration because of his "unworthiness," may not in the imagination of the story's originator have known what kind of power he was tapping into.

What will the teacher or preacher do with this passage on a Sunday in the second decade of the 21st century? That is the question and the purpose for producing this entries in the series known as "Findings."

The options are limited: Either the homilist or teacher lets the story stand on its own and passively-aggressively allows listeners to consider seriously the fiat lux et facta est lux proposition. Or she or he helps them pick up the hints in the story that appeal to a contemporary understanding of the story.

The first of these hints comes in the first line: "After Jesus had finished his sayings ..." he entered Capernaum ..." As we have observed, he is depicted as going from speaking to doing -- being engaged in the immediacy of human need. Thus could the homilist dwell on the "faith to works" continuum, even quoting the Epistle of James in that regard at 2:17.

A second point of departure is to be found in the plea of the Jewish elders to Jesus to become involved in the deliverance from death of the centurion's servant (the word is actually "slave" δουλος, meaning that the "servant" was actually the centurion's personal property and probably filled many a need for his master). Maybe we're not supposed to think that the centurion cared more about whatever ailed his slave than he did about who was going to wash his feet and wait on table. It may also be that Luke was thinking what jerks the Jewish elders were to be detaining Jesus to deal with a Roman soldier's problem. Maybe in Luke's fiction writer's imagination, the elders wanted some insurance for themselves by brokering a favor. Just a thought to ponder.

A second clue is embedded in the centurion's behavior. Did Luke imagine him as a calculating schemer, feigning unworthiness by appealing to powers he hoped Jesus might have? "I do not deserve to have you come under my roof" -- a statement picked up in the Roman Catholic liturgy and given the faithful to pray before receiving the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Luke depicts the centurion telling friends to take a message to Jesus to the effect that he (the centurion) knew, just knew that, even as a military officer can snap out an order and trust it will be obeyed, so Jesus can do the same with whatever evil spirit is rendering the slave useless to the busy centurion. -- And what would the homilist do with that proposition?

He or she will be delivered from that difficulty by words placed on Jesus' lips by Luke: "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith as this." It is not made explicit, but the suggestion is that Jesus must have snapped out that order because the slave was restored to health -- or so Luke says the report came back to that effect. "Faith," we might ask, "in what?" The homilist might be tempted to say "in Jesus." But why would a heathen centurion have that much trust in a man whom he must have perceived as an enemy. Rome so perceived him. This couldn't possibly be a case of a preening Jesus, could it? Probably not, but the provocateur in me could not resist wondering about it, if only for a minute.

Most commentators think the story bears on Luke's universalism specifically for Israel's mission to the Gentile world -- all of the Gentile world. It is why, for example, Luke in the genealogy at 3:23-38 finds Jesus' origin in "adam" -- the collective progenitor of humankind rather than in Abraham, the supposed founder of Judaism.

This provides the homilist and teacher with a bottom line, viz. starving, persecuted, ill, poverty-stricken human beings regardless of their ethic identification, of their nation, or tribe or clan are worthy of the attention of other human beings more fortunate, regardless of the ethnic identification, of their nation, or tribe or clan. The centurion was not immediately worthy of Jesus' attention. The dying slave was worthy of that attention. That's the message, and how it gets translated from "speaking" into "doing" (see 7:1) is the challenge to each and every homilist in his or her venue. Read some liberation theology before you preach or teach this text.

In the third of the three parables appended to the Sermon on the Plain, Luke wrote this line for an exasperated Jesus: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord' and not do what I tell you?" As we have noted, Jesus went on only four verses later to dispense some of the mercies he'd been talking about.

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* Synagogues as buildings or structures for liturgical use seem to have been largely unknown in Palestine during the Second Temple period, i.e. between the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed. The word in any case means "a gathering in" or "assembly," obviously of people. Some sources say the συναγωγν as an actual structure was something like a village hall or assembly room, having less to do with religious than civil purposes. Other sources contend that such places were erected by Jews during their Babylonian exile for the purpose of reading Torah and otherwise remembering and rehearsing their pre-exilic story. In the Second Temple period, any such sites (or gatherings) may have been chapel-like outposts used by local assemblies for teaching purposes between the holy days that took them to Jerusalem. For Diaspora Jews, the places in which such assemblies gathered became known as synagogues -- the term being used interchangeably.