PENTECOST VI

PROPER 8C – Saint John’s, Memphis, Tennessee – June 26, 2016

Who Can Pass Jesus’ Test?

“He set his face like flint!”  Tissot

Jesus is about to be “taken up” or crucified.  So he “set his face” or literally, “He set his face like flint” to go to Jerusalem.  This is a Semitic expression, which means opposition or contention.  What is about to happen is difficult and requires courage and will.  This is in sharp contrast to what has been going on in Galilee.  Jesus had been going from town to town, village to village, teaching, healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God. He was very successful: there were great crowds following him, around hanging on every word that he said.  People were beginning to nominate him “Messiah” (the anointed one of God).

The Kingdom of God is what scholars call a “tensive symbol” which evokes not one meaning but a whole range of meaning.  There are certain symbols that always have a one-to-one relationship to the things they represent such as the mathematical symbol pi or a red signal light at an intersection.  These are steno-symbols; they are useful precisely because they have single, clearly defined, and clearly understood meanings.

“He set his face like flint!”  Tissot

Norman Perrin writes, “Since the kingdom of God is such a tensive symbol it is a mistake to try to reduce it to any one idea or conception.”  That is why we are always frustrated when we attempt to “define’ the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God does not have a definition: it tells a story.”

People were fascinated and excited about the stories of the Kingdom: the Kingdom is like a mustard seed, the Kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field.  The Kingdom is like a party.  These images and metaphors suggest and evoke what cannot be properly put into words: the fullness of salvation wrought by God beyond this present world…

THREE TESTS

Some of the people who heard Jesus were overcome with the excitement of it all.  It is these people that we encounter in today’s Gospel lesson.  They illustrate what might be called the three tests of what it means to be a disciple:

The sentimentality test,   the tribal test,  and the conditional test.

THE SENTIMENTALITY TEST

Foxes have dens, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.                                                                                                             – Sir. Stanley Spencer 1891

 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  This person has decided to follow without counting the cost.  Excited by the Jesus movement he does not realize that Jerusalem lies at the end of the journey and that the cross is the point to which Jesus is traveling.  Jesus said to him, “foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Marshall, p. 410 …Jesus bids the man count the cost.  The Son of man experiences rejection and homelessness, and his followers must be prepared to do the same.  As one writer  [Synthesis] says, “Jesus reminds this disciple, whose boldness suggests that following Jesus is a never ending

Marshall, p. 410 …Jesus bids the man count the cost.  The Son of man experiences rejection and homelessness, and his followers must be prepared to do the same.  As one writer  [Synthesis] says, “Jesus reminds this disciple, whose boldness suggests that following Jesus is a never ending succession of kumbayas, that, if he is to follow, all financial standing and social security have to be reattached – from the world to the Kingdom of God.  For Jesus’ closest disciples, there will be no worldly security whatsoever.  Faith is not an electric blanket.  Even foxes and birds have less vagrancy than the Son of Man.

To follow Jesus requires an enlightened recklessness.

 To follow Jesus means that one gives up the traditional securities and opens oneself to rejection and homelessness that has just occurred in the village of Samaria.

THE TRIBAL TEST

Group Burial – Walking Dead

 To another, he said, “Follow me.”  But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  Marshall, p. 411, Burial of the dead was a religious duty that took precedence over all others, even including study of the Law.  To assist in burying a person who had no claims on one as a relative was a work of love that carried great reward from God both in this life and in the next world.  It follows that the burial of a father was a religious duty of the utmost importance.  To leave it undone was something scandalous to a Jew.  This does not mean that the person’s father was lying in state at the local funeral home.  He wants to wait until his father is dead so that he will not be troubled by the decision of his child to follow Jesus.  But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury the dead; but as for your, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  To follow Jesus, to be part of the Kingdom of God, takes precedence over all commitments, even burying the dead.

I knew an old couple in Lauderdale county Alabama who waited to get married until their parents were dead.  They dated for over forty years.  Then when both parents were dead they married.  Only a few years passed before the husband died.  We can’t put off following.

THE CONDITIONAL TEST

James Tissot

 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.  This is the yes, but of discipleship.  It is the Yes I will give sacrificially, Lord, only when I get a raise.  Yes, I will commit to being at worship on Sunday when I get caught up on my sleep. I will … But …Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.”  I grew up in the country.  The family had five farms that joined.  Dad borrowed a mule from Great Granddad’s place to plow the garden as it began to mature because the mule didn’t damage the crops like a tractor.  Plowing with a mule is interesting.  Plowing a straight furrow requires looking at the end of the row in front of you and moving toward it.  If you keep looking back to where you came from or at your watch to see when quitting time is the row is crooked.  That’s what Jesus is talking about.

THE CALL IS UNCONDITIONAL

The call of Jesus is unconditional.  The OT story of Elijah and Elisha illustrate the unconditional call clearly. Elijah came by and threw his cloak over Elisha, which meant that Elisha was chosen to succeed Elijah as the prophet of the Lord.  Elisha was out plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. This was a big farming enterprise.  Elisha slaughtered the yoke of oxen, broke up the yokes and plows for fuel, fired up the grill and threw a farewell barbecue.

 BELOVED, IT IS A TRUE SAYING AND WORTHY OF ALL TO BE RECEIVED, THAT IT’S HARD TO GO BACK TO PLOWING IF YOU JUST ATE YOUR OX!  JWS

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Luke 7:1-11

Almost every time Jesus appears in the Gospels he is healing or has healed or is on his way to heal.  In Luke 7:1-11 a foreigner, a gentile, sends Jewish elders to Jesus asking for help for a sick slave. The man  was a Centurion.  A bit of explanation is in order: Roman Military structure: what we call an army they called a Legion

• Basic unit – Century made up of 80 men commanded by a Centurion
• 6 Centuries = Cohort
• 10 Cohorts = 1 Legion – The first Cohort had double Centuries of 160 and thus was an elite unit – The Centurion over this Cohort was the Primus Pilus (first javelin)   highest ranking Centurion – Aside: Some believe that Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, who condemned Jesus had  been Primus Pilus thus the nick-name Pilus or Pilate.

Vegetius was an historian from the 5^th century, the period of the late Roman Empire, who wrote a book called The Epitome of Military Science. In it, he described the qualities of a centurion in rather glowing terms.  

English: Centurion (Roman army) historical reenactment Boulogne sur mer (France). Français : Centurion (armée Romaine) Reconstitution historique à Boulogne sur Mer en France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Centurions should be:

• literate, ideally
• at least 30 years old,
• With some years of military service behind them.
• A centurion is chosen for great strength and tall stature, as a man who hurls spears and javelins skillfully and strongly, has expert knowledge how to fight with the sword and rotate the shield, and has learned the whole art of armature. He is alert, sober, and agile, and more ready to do the things ordered of him than speak, keeps his soldiers in training, makes them practice their arms, and sees that they are well clothed and shod, and that the arms are burnished and bright. (Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, quoted on Cotter, p. 114)

This Centurion was an impressive man.  He likely worked his way up through the ranks, he may well have been the Primus Pilis as he has control of consideration money.

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. Excursus: First century Roman baths excavated on this site point to Roman presence in the 1^st Century.  Legions were often stationed in a place for a long time, even centuries.

2 A Centurion there had a slave whom he valued – this choice of words is utilitarian, sort of like saying, “he had this machine he valued for what it could do for him” a better translation would be a slave whom he highly honored, slavery is always bad, and people shouldn’t be “owned.” Unlike US history Roman slavery was not racial but economic.  It was assumed that at some point the slave will be freed and likely go into business sponsored by his former master.  We do not know any more of the relationship than the fact that this Centurion thought highly of this slave who was ill and close to death.

3 When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. 4 When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, 5 for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”

Thoughtful Romans rather liked a lot about Judaism and particularly appreciated its high morals and ethics. What they did not find attractive at all was circumcision and keeping the dietary kosher laws.  The most common meat in Rome was pork and they as we do like a big pork chop from time to time and as you know Pork was high on the list of kosher no no’s.

We encounter these Gentiles in the Gospels, The Acts and in Paul’s letters.  Since Paul’s understanding of the Gospel was that the resurrection spelled and end to all the very rules that turned off the Gentiles attracted to the high ethical standards and practice of the Jews so they could become Christian rather easily and they did just that.  This very man may well be a brother of ours in heaven.

This military man asked the Elders of the Synagogue he attended to approach Jesus. The Elders were glad to do it because apparently he was a really good guy, and he had paid for the Synagogue building.   They came to Jesus with the request and Jesus agreed and went with them to the Centurion’s house.

6 And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; 7 therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.”

 9 When Jesus heard this he was amazed [amazed: Astonished, his jaw dropped, the language is beyond surprised it is intensified to he just stood there dumbfounded.”]  at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Now, just go with me for a minute,  we, if we are not careful, allow our knowledge of the Jesus as the Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity and allow the equal reality that at the same time he was fully human the son of Mary.

I was reared with an heresy that unwittingly elevated Jesus’ divinity at the expense of his full humanity.  This is my thought.

“I wonder, was this the first time it occurred to Jesus to heal that he could heal at a distance?”

How cool is that?  Jesus is brought up short not by his fellows but by a Gentile of all things, who would have thought it?

That’s why he turned those with him and said, “Well, don’t that beat all, a Gentile has just taught the Son of God something about faith!”

10 When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health [in Greek the word means robust, like nothing had ever happened].

 If you notice, the Centurion never met Jesus in person.

• He knew that Jews didn’t enter the houses of Gentiles.
• He in an elegant move kept Jesus from controversy while at the same time believed that Jesus could/would heal his friend.
• He was powerless to help this man who he held in high regard
• He was not without power.
• He used his power: net-worked
• He was humble – put aside his station and power – and asked for help.

That was them then and there.  What about us here and now?

What about us?

My mentor, Bronson Bryant used to say, “John, we are always prepared for God to do nothing.”

• Where is the need in your life?
• Where are you powerless?
• How are you using the power you do have?
• When was the last time you really asked God for help?
  • And expected something to happen?
  • And when he did was surprised?

Faith is found in the strangest places.  Unfortunately, Church is often one of the strangest places to find faith. I pray that this will be the place where people meet the Living God with visible consequences.    Amen.   

“The Centurion’s Servant”  – Sir Stanley Spencer 1914

Sir Stanley Spencer – The Apple Gatherers