town. He was the enemy incarnate. Luke s Gospel tells us that this Centurion had a slave who is sick, indeed close to death.

Transcription

1 TRUSTING THE CATCHER June 2, 2013, The Second Sunday after Pentecost Luke 7: 1-10 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: Faith requires both belief about God and trust in God. Eternal God, beyond time and space, yet as close to us as our own breath, alert us to your presence here and now, incarnate in these ancient words of scripture. Open them to us, and us to them, so that their timeless truth may find us in life as it is. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. I was jolted when I discovered some years ago that the picture I had long had in my head of Galilee was all wrong. Galilee is the region of Israel where Jesus spent most of his life and conducted the greater part of his ministry. Today it s much of the West Bank and northern Israel. I d always imagined ancient Galilee as a bucolic rural landscape a rustic and innocent Galilee of tidy Jewish villages, green hillsides dotted with herds of little white sheep, streams and lakes a sort of Middle Eastern Ireland. Wrong! First off, Jesus Galilee was densely populated, with any number of good-sized cities. Second, perhaps half of the population was not Jewish. The region had long been a magnet for Roman and Greek Gentile settlers, who may well have been in the majority. Finally, Galilee was seething with tension. The economic system was rigged in favor of the Romans, and the Romans were, after all, foreign occupiers. There had already been one bloody Jewish revolt against Rome and two more would come. Jewish Galileans were supposed to hate Romans. Mostly, they did. And frankly, for the most part the Romans deserved to be hated. With that history in mind, the story Isabella just read to us is a singularly surprising tale. Jesus enters a Galilean town named Capernaum. In Capernaum, there s a Roman military officer, a Centurion. Centurions usually commanded about 80 soldiers. This Centurion may well have been head of the occupying army in the - 1 -

2 town. He was the enemy incarnate. Luke s Gospel tells us that this Centurion had a slave who is sick, indeed close to death. So the Centurion deputized some local Jewish leaders to approach Jesus and ask him to come and heal his slave. They appeal to Jesus, arguing that this particular Centurion is an exception to the rule, a good Roman. He loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us. He is, they say, worthy. Jesus goes with these Jewish leaders, heading toward the Centurion s doubtlessly comfortable home. At which point this curious tale grows even more curious. The Centurion sends some of his servants to intercept Jesus. They tell him not to trouble himself. Don t trouble yourself, Jesus, because our boss, the Centurion, is in his own opinion of himself not worthy. So just speak a word from afar, a prayer that the sick servant might be healed. The Centurion then has his messengers offer the strangest aside. They note that their master is a very powerful man, one set under authority, a somebody who has any number of minions scurrying about at his command. The point is that he would not presume to order Jesus around like that, so it s OK to just pray where you are. Jesus response to this surprising humility and utter trust is to be amazed. He says to the crowd, I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. The messengers return to the Centurion s house to find the sick slave much improved, indeed, in good health. It seems that Jesus never did go to the house. As I said, a curious tale, and the strangest corner of the story is perhaps this: Why does Jesus so extravagantly praise this Roman soldier? Why does he say, Not even in Israel have I found such faith. What exactly did the guy do to earn such accolades? He s not a Jew, and you really can t make him into a Christian. He couldn t have even known much about Jesus. So when Jesus says the guy has extraordinary faith, what can he mean? This Centurion knew no creeds; he had no doctrines; his praiseworthy faith could not have been abstract belief in any religious concepts. But he has one thing going for him, and it is this that draws Jesus to him. This man evidenced a profound and humble trust in that which was beyond himself God in other words. He trusted in God even if he didn t know much about God

3 Look at it this way. There are two sides to faith. One side is belief about God. The other side is trust in God. Belief about God is religious concepts; it s confessional statements and theological ideas. It s intellectual, mostly in the head. You can only guess that our worthy Centurion had little of this kind of faith. He wasn t a Jew; he wasn t a Christian. We don t know that he adhered to any doctrine or theology. But, he was richly possessed of the other side faith trust. And it s that side of faith that earns him Jesus praise. This side of faith is essentially relational, not cognitive. This side of faith is more in the heart than in the head. This side of faith is more a way of being than a way of thinking. This is the trust side of faith. Ultimately, we need both aspects of faith. If your faith is just in your head concepts it will eventually ossify into an arid and lifeless religiosity, just intricate words and noble-sounding ideas. But, on the other hand, if your faith is only of the heart, just feelings, only trust and little more, it may eventually devolve into vague and amorphous spirituality without roots, nothing firm to hold it in place. But here s an intriguing truth about these two sides of faith. On the journey to mature and well-rounded faith, the trust in side of faith usually walks a few steps in front of the belief about side of faith. Example: Jesus first disciples dropped their fishing nets to follow him long before they had any organized idea about who he was. Their faith was first a matter of trust. This is equally true of our Centurion. He trusts even though he s never gone to Sunday school much less seminary. He trusts even though he probably didn t have two theological ideas to rub together. This sequence is just as true for most of us. We usually don t set off on the faith road because we understand everything about the One we re about to follow. We set off because there is something that invites us to trust in God even before we have our belief about God lined up all neat and tidy. Father Andrew Greeley died this last week. Greeley was a maverick Roman Catholic priest, prolific author, indeed, a thorn in the side of the church establishment. The Times ran a long obit on Friday that included this Greeley quote, providentially the very point I am trying to make. The theological voice - 3 -

4 wants doctrines, creeds and moral obligations, Father Greeley wrote. I reject none of these. I merely insist that experiences which renew hope are prior to and richer than propositional and ethical religion and provide the raw power for them. Hope trusting hope is hard stuff. It had to be difficult for that Centurion, an independent and powerful man in a position of leadership, a man with an army of assistants at beck and call. To adopt a stance of humble dependence was radical for him. Centurions depended on their armed cohort of 80 men. Centurions depended on their fleet of household slaves. Centurions depended on themselves. Centurions didn t depend on God. Which is exactly why this Centurion was so extraordinary. It s why Jesus gave him a shout-out; it s why his story ended up in the Bible. You and I swim in a New York culture that idolizes independence, not dependence. We move in a world that preaches self-reliance, not reliance on God. We move in a universe that is slow to trust, to trust anybody or anything, God included. In this context, faith is veritably counter-cultural simply because it implies a relationship of trusting dependence in that which is greater than me, a trust in the One who is not me and beyond me. I recently read a fine murder mystery, a theological detective story by a former church secretary in the U.K. named Kate Charles. Church secretaries are ideal murder mystery writers; they know where all the bodies are buried! Toward the end of this novel, Miss Charles has one of her characters, a wise old Anglican pastor, utter a line that stuck in my memory. The only sin, he says, is not trusting in God. Draconian overstatement perhaps, but you get the point. Let me end with the story that inspired the title of this sermon. The Dutch spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, who taught for years at both Yale and Harvard, shared a personal experience about trust in one of his many books. Nouwen tells the story of the Flying Rodleighs, a troupe of trapeze artists who performed with the German circus, Simoneit-Barnum: When the circus came to Freiburg two years ago, Nouwen writes, my friends Franz and Reny invited me and my father to see the show. I will never forget how enraptured I became when I first saw the - 4 -

5 Rodleighs move through the air, flying and catching, as elegant dancers. The next day, I returned to the circus to see them again and introduced myself to them as one of their great fans. They invited me to attend their practice sessions, gave me free tickets, asked me to dinner, and suggested that I travel with them for a week in the near future. I did, and we became good friends. One day, I was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troop, in his caravan, talking about flying. He said, As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump. How does it work? Nouwen said he asked. The secret, Rodleigh said, is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me to safety A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him. To fly on the trapeze, Rodleigh had to trust the catcher. And for you and me to fly in life, we have to trust the Catcher the Catcher with a capital C. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen