The Lens

Matthew 8

“When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.’ And he said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man 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.’ When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.  I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.’ And the servant was healed in that hour.” 

Jesus and the Centurion

Paolo de Veronese 1571

We all view the world and our life in it through a lens, don’t we? Maybe, even more than one lens. It’s just our nature and we really can’t help it. We’re so shaped by so many things, including our childhood, our religion, and the circumstances of our lives. It’s just who we are and there is nothing innately wrong with it.

You can deduce my lens from the passage above. My lens has been shaped by a long military career, one in which, on a daily basis, orders are given and orders are obeyed. One in which trust in those orders is not questioned, and one in which violations of that trust are severely punished.

So, now you know who I am. I must ask you to keep to yourself that I sought out Jesus to heal my servant. It’s not that my commission to serve Caesar was violated by that request. If that had been the case, I would have let my servant remain “paralyzed, and in terrible distress.” Rather, it’s just that my peers and perhaps even my subordinates would lose respect for me if they knew I had gone to Jesus, a person considered by my comrades to be inferior to me in all respects. So please, just help me keep my secret.

One of the keys to my success in the legion is my talent for observation. It’s a skill that I have honed and refined over my career in the military, and one that has saved not only my life, but also the lives of the men serving under me.

You see, I am able to quickly discern and evaluate an opponent, or a potentially violent situation, the mood of a crowd, or the intent of an assassin. I see and I hear and I quickly assess risk and strategy. My promotion to centurion, with one hundred men serving under me, testifies to my success in reading all kinds of situations and threats.

My skills of observation apply to more than just my military career. In fact, they extend to all parts of my life. For example, I have made myself a student of the Jewish culture in which I now serve. Perhaps the fact that I am an outsider to that culture makes me a bit more objective, too, as I observe the ebb and flow of a people whose identity has evolved for over one thousand years, and which describes itself as devoted to the concept of one single creator god.

My overall observation of these Jewish people is that they view themselves as elite, better than everyone else, and special in a way that history would certainly dispute. Anyone who falls outside of their rigid views is to be excluded and exiled into a place removed from their main stream. They look down on anyone not of their “tribe” and consider them as unclean. That includes Samaritans and it also includes Greeks and even Romans. Like me.

They have laws and traditions: literally hundreds if not thousands of them, and they seem to worship some of the most obscure and trivial of them. And, they are passionate for these laws and traditions, such that any violation of even the smallest is treated as a major offense.

Oh, and one more thing. These Jews have a vision of a savior, a messiah who will raise an army to defeat us and send us back to Rome. Over the last hundred years or so, there have been a few who claimed the mantle of messiah, only to go down to ignominious defeat. Yet their hope for such a hero doesn’t fade and in fact, grows so strong as to appear obsessive to an outsider like me.

And that brings me to Jesus. Jesus, who is a product of the culture that I have just described, but who couldn’t be more distinct from it.

While so many of the Jews are proud, Jesus is humble. While worship of the many laws is deeply ingrained in the culture, Jesus speaks of a higher law, of loving their god and of loving one’s neighbor. He puts love of people above loving the laws.

And while many of the Jews look down on the sick, the poor and the downtrodden, and on anyone outside of their faith and traditions, Jesus treats them with dignity, eating with them, touching them and healing them. Which, of course, is what brought me to Jesus in the first place.

Yes, I had already been observing, watching him interact with the power structure of his people. To my amusement, he publicly criticized them. Here is one example, where he is talking about how his friend, John the Baptizer was treated, and then about himself as well:

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”

I love how Jesus called them out. And I have observed how the Jewish religious leaders try to trick him with questions whose answers they can criticize.

There is an irony in all of this. You see, Jesus is actually a devout Jew, one who follows the laws set down by their god. The irony is that he has been called out by his own religious leaders for failing to put their laws above the people.

What brought me to Jesus, of course, was his ability to heal the sick and the infirm. While I can’t explain this power, neither can I deny it. In short, Jesus possesses a healing touch that goes beyond anything that I have ever witnessed.

And of course, there is another irony in that touch. His adversaries, who are no doubt jealous of him, will not recognize the healing power of Jesus, even going so far as to relegate it to sorcery.

I had faith that Jesus could heal my servant, whom I value very much. It was not out of desperation that I came to Jesus, but out of a strong belief that he could actually heal my servant. And I weighed the risk of appearing to publicly endorse Jesus against that belief. I chose to take the risk, and if I lose face in some way as a result, let it be.

Maybe my faith in Jesus, when his own religious leaders denounce him, is another irony.

Where is all of this going? I have no doubt that Jesus understands the forces arrayed against him. And if it comes to violence, I will be able to do little to stop it before it happens.

How odd. How very odd. Here is this man, this man with remarkable powers, one who denies himself the abuse of that power, just so that he can live in humility as a servant. All he seems to want to do with his power is to love his god and love his fellow man. Without exception.

And opposing him are pretenders to power, holders of leadership positions, whose jealousy of the servant Jesus, has become an obsession. Their love is reserved for those of their own kind, and they choose to elevate themselves above all others.

When Jesus understood my faith in his healing power, he said this:

“Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

I was a bit embarrassed to hear these words. But afterward, after returning home to see my servant healed and well, I have pondered them. I mean, perhaps my life isn’t so far away from what Jesus preached, after all. I hate to admit it, but I observe a truth in Jesus, not just in his healing power, but also in his words and most of all, in how he lives, offering himself in great humility to everyone. Yes, everyone, including a Roman centurion like me. I have to confess that Jesus is nothing like the gods that I, as a Roman officer, am told to worship.

So, are my comrades correct in telling me that Jesus is “inferior to me in all respects?” No, looking through my lens of observation, I can see him more clearly than they can.

And perhaps I will, using that lens of observation, look into Jesus a bit more deeply. I will find a way to stay connected to him. I’m not sure how, but it could be that his god, whom Jesus calls his “father,” will find a way. I mean, if the power of Jesus can heal like he healed my servant, just think what his father can do!