Monday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 13, 2021

Luke 7:1-10

When Jesus had finished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was valuable to him. When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and save the life of his slave. They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a person 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 at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

“A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was valuable to him.”  In the Roman army, a centurion commanded 80-100 men (hence, “centurion”).  The centurion held the rank of an officer, and those who held this rank were considered the backbone of the Roman army.  At the same time, the pay for a centurion could hardly be considered extravagant.  This fact makes it quite remarkable that the town synagogue mentioned in this Gospel reading was built by a centurion.  If St. Luke’s report is accurate, the centurion must have used whatever savings he had accrued during his years in the army.  Or perhaps he had come by the money immorally, say, through extortion, and had donated it for the synagogue in repentance. This man’s slave was a doulos, an adult male slave.  The centurion considered him “valuable”.  The Greek word means “honored”, “honorable”, or “precious”, implying a personal esteem rather than a consideration of his value as skillful and highly trained or experienced, although this could be part of the esteem as well.  This slave was “ill and about to die”, perhaps from a sudden illness, including a high fever.  “When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him.”  At this point, Luke’s account differs from that of St. Matthew, who seems to compress (or he remembers the occasion differently) where Luke presents a fuller version.  In Matthew’s Gospel, the centurion comes to the Lord himself.  It seems more likely that the centurion, a Gentile, and one aware of Jewish sensibilities, would not have come himself, but rather sent a delegation to the holy man.  This also makes sense when we consider that he did not expect Jesus to come to his house.  He knew that a Jew would not enter the habitation of a Gentile.  He therefore sends a delegation, and Jesus would send back the cure for the slave.

“They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come.”  The centurion sends the elders of the Jews of that location.  He knows them, as he has dealt with them in building the synagogue.  They may or may not have thought much of Jesus, but they intercede for the Roman officer as he desires them to do.  They mention the synagogue to the Lord by way of impressing on him that this was a “deserving” Gentile.  They were concerned that the Lord, if he obeyed the Law strictly, would have nothing to do with this man.  According to Luke, Jesus hears them and follows them without a word.  Did the Lord go because the elders had asked him, or because of what the centurion had done for the people?  No, Jesus went because a man was suffering.  The slave was, certainly, a Gentile as well.  But the Lord did not let these distinctions prevent him from showing his love for this slave or anyone else. We might wonder, at this point, about the reason the centurion had built the synagogue for the people.  It is quite wonderful that he did.  Typically, Roman centurions stayed apart from the people in the region where they were stationed.  They were there to put down uprisings and to guard the frontier.  They worked for the Empire.  Yet this man had become enamored of this people and their unique religion to the extent that he spent his own money to build a place where they could gather and discuss their Law and the writings of their Prophets.  Without becoming a Jew himself, he could not join in, and to become a Jew would have meant, in essence, his forfeiting his military career, since he would not be able to carry out the religious functions of his office, which included emperor worship.

“When he was only a short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, etc.”  The Jewish elders were somewhat unnerved that Jesus followed them to the house, as though he meant to enter it.  They hoped that he would stop at the door and call out a prayer or blessing on the dying slave, but the ways of holy men are hard to fathom, as they knew from John the Baptist and the stories of the Prophets.  They do not see the walls that confine the lives of others.  Jesus seemed to them to break the Sabbath.  Would he enter a Gentile’s house?  They had reason to be nervous.  The friends the centurion sent out would have been Gentiles too.  He himself does not appear physically in Luke’s account, and the fairly involved speech the friends relay to the Lord give us an idea of why Matthew simply dispensed with them and put the words in the mouth of the centurion.  The fact that he sends them to the Lord when he was only a short distance from the house tells  plainly that he did not anticipate that the Lord would come to him, or he would have not let him come this far.  He does not speak to the Lord himself out of a profound humility, as his words make clear.  

“Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you.”  The Jewish leaders told Jesus that the man was “deserving” and the man tells him that he is not.  Two different Greek words are used here in Luke’s account: the Jews use one, the centurion uses another.  This could be the matter of synonyms, or there might be something more to it.  The word that the Jews use has its roots in weighing and balancing.  It is matter of justice, then.  The centurion has earned the help of Jesus for what he has done for them.  The word the centurion uses means “sufficient”, “suitable”, and “worthy”, and so he confesses that he is insufficient or negligible in the eyes of Jesus.  The first word is about deeds, the second is about something much more personal.  This is the tax collector prostrate in the Temple, not daring to raise his head, and praying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am a sinner” (Luke 18, 13).  Through his friends, the centurion explains that he expected Jesus to remain where he had been and to cure his slave from afar.  The Lord shows amazement at this in order to emphasize the greatness of the faith the man had shown him, perhaps as a subtle rebuke to the elders who had little or no faith in him themselves.

The Lord Jesus healed the slave without laying eyes on him, in deference to  the centurion’s humility.  It is an act of love to both master and slave: to the slave, so that he lived; and to the master, so that he believed more.