Saturday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 26, 2020

Matthew 8:5-17

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” He said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion said in reply, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” And at that very hour his servant was healed. 

Jesus entered the house of Peter, and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her, and she rose and waited on him. When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

In yesterday’s Gospel reading, a leper addressed Jesus as “Lord”.  Here, a centurion does so, a most remarkable act.  As an officer in a legion of the Roman army, the ordinary centurion had command of a unit of about a hundred men, although higher grades of centurion commanded larger numbers.  He was the equivalent of a captain through the rank of lieutenant colonel of today.  The ordinary centurion was promoted from the enlisted men.  As the lowest in rank of the Roman officers, he exercised his role as enforcer of discipline and so formed the backbone of the legion.  The fact that a centurion of the Roman army deigned not only to speak with one of the common people of an occupied land, but to call him “Lord”, and then to ask for his help must have have come as something of a shock to the people witnessing it.  The Roman soldiers, and especially their centurions, were hated and feared by the Jewish populace, and for good reason.  The centurion here probably did not come alone.  A small retinue would have attended him.  Presumably the centurion spoke Greek to Jesus, although he may have employed the services of an Aramaic interpreter on this occasion.  That he addressed Jesus as “Lord” could have gotten him into serious trouble if this became known to his higher-ups.  In any encounter with the general population, the centurion himself would have been addressed as “lord”, and treated with deference.  The centurion’s “lord” was Caesar.  Thus, this account, early in Matthew’s Gospel, shows how the Gentiles would convert in the years after Pentecost, and their courage in doing so.  

“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  Just as the leper humbly presented his need before his Lord, so does this centurion.  He does not attempt to persuade Jesus, he does not try to coerce him, he does not promise him money or favors.  The centurion comes before the One he acknowledges as the Lord who has care for him and simply states his need.  

“I will come and cure him.”  Jesus receives the centurion’s recognition and simply and clearly declares that he will take care of the matter.  Notice how the words and manner of the Lord compare with that of the soldier.  Jesus speaks and acts towards him in a way this man can understand, in the way he is accustomed to be spoken to by those over him.  Also, notice the Lord’s willingness to defile himself by entering the house of a Gentile, so much like his willingness to touch the leper.  This shows the Lord’s own fervent desire to save us, to “bear” the disease of our sin.

“Lord, I am not worthy.”  The centurion makes a statement that must have astonished the crowd even more than when he addressed Jesus as “Lord”.  “Lord” is a statement of faith; “I am not worthy” is a sign of the depths of his faith.  We ought to pause here to consider this man’s attitude, his motivations, his hopes.  His concern for his servant shows an admirable side to him.  Even if the slave possessed particularly rare skills, it is too much to think that his potential loss would have brought the centurion to call Jesus “Lord”.  The man’s subsequent words, “I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me”, tell us that here we have a man who understands himself, and others, in terms of his duty.  “Duty” for him means authority coupled with responsibility.  He is responsible for his slave, and Jesus, his Lord, is responsible for them both.  In addition, Jesus, as Lord, has the authority to heal whomever he wants.

Who is this slave?  The centurion describes his servant as a παῖς [pīs], not a δούλος [dūlos].  The latter is a menial slave, especially one that would work out of doors.  A παῖς, on the other hand, could mean “a boy”, “a girl”, “a child”, “a servant”, or, “a slave”.  In the Septuagint text of Isaiah 42, 1, which Matthew quotes in 12, 18, παῖς is to be understood as “servant”.  In his other usages of the word, it’s meaning as “little child” is understood, without any implications of servitude.  The parallel account in Luke 7, 2-9 describes the sick person as a δούλος, a slave of any age.  In addition, Luke provides the detail that the slave was “valuable” to the centurion, meaning that he was skilled.  It would seem most likely that the sick one is a slave of indeterminate age, but probably older than a child because he possessed valuable skills, and that the translator of Matthew’s Gospel from Hebrew into Greek simply used the two terms παῖς and δούλος interchangeably.  

Jesus registers amazement at the centurion’s faith, and he does this in order to point it up for the benefit of the onlookers: This uncircumcised man has more faith than any of you circumcised people who attend the synagogue and make pilgrimages to the Temple!  It would be on the same order of saying, This brick has more compassion than you do!  

“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”  Jesus dismisses the centurion with this assurance.  It is similar to the assurance the Lord gave to the leper: Jesus sent him to the Temple for the priests to examine him, and who will make his cure official — in this way the leper would have objective proof of his own healing, should any doubt linger.

In both accounts of the leper’s cure and that of the centurion’s slave, we see the eagerness of the Lord to save — there is no one whom he will not save, if only they would let him.