Preacher: Kim McDowell

Date: June 4, 2023

Scripture: Luke 7:1-10

Audio can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CNBpUlg886zeDqGB76Q-ZoGDGEGz3wxJ/view?usp=sharing

It’s a pleasure to be part of your worship this morning, whether you’re here, or online, or reading this at some other time. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that we are gathered by God’s Spirit not only in a sanctuary but in many other ways. “Not in the dark of buildings confining,” says one of our hymns, “not in some heaven, light years away,” but here, wherever we are, now, in the moment in which we find ourselves, we’re gathered into the new community. I dropped in another Sunday a few months ago, without warning or planning, and found you scattered in places near and far, doing a community service day. No less then, or at whatever time you observed that day of service, you had been metaphorically gathered by “the fire of love in your flesh and your bone,” as the hymn puts it.

I bring greetings from the Mid-Atlantic District office and staff.  In this interim role, and this is one of the pleasures of the work, I’ve had the chance to join a number of congregations in worship, especially those in my primary areas of responsibility – here in the extended DC & northern VA metro area, on the eastern shore, and toward Baltimore. I’ve found that many churches are flourishing in some similar ways – they’re made up of deeply caring and committed people whose faith leads them to serve in varied ways, and whose communities are familial and supportive. Many are also facing similar challenges – they’re diminished in numbers and energy, and are working to adapt to the changed place of the church in our culture. The most fruitful are doing what you have done—partnering with neighbors, going outside the sanctuary instead of trying primarily to draw others in.  You are fortunate to have strong and exceptionally capable leadership, and to have the imagination to envision models of ministry that go beyond the traditional.  I’m grateful to be here with you today.

With summer’s launch over Memorial Day last weekend, Sundays outside the normal worship setting are likely to be even more common. Beach and mountains, travel and family get-togethers are beckoning. It’s a good time for today’s text from the gospel of Luke because it’s— out there. The setting is somewhere on the way to another place.  Creating a dramatic reconstruction of this one would be tough.  Honestly, it doesn’t make for great storytelling. There’s no defined set. Two of the main characters never actually appear. And Jesus doesn’t see or speak to the person who is healed.  There’s a thread here—the action between people takes place in ways beyond structure and familiarity and logical constraint.

It starts, Luke tells us, “after Jesus had finished all his sayings.”  That’s a reference to the Sermon on the Plain that he’s just given – the Lukan condensed parallel to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  Chapter six contains Luke’s version of the beatitudes along with some woes to those who thwart them, along with other sayings familiar to us in Matthew 5-7. Here, he has just gotten to Capernaum—a place right on the water, on the north side of the sea of Galilee. A place we might like to settle into for a few days of vacation. 

Before he can do anything, really, he’s interrupted. For all we know, he was hoping to take a break, sit by the lake, relax. Whatever his plan, he didn’t anticipate the group of people who showed up asking him to change his plans to go with them. 

You know what it’s like to be interrupted. A friend told me once about the day he and his family were leaving on vacation to the Poconos. They were getting an early start. The car was packed and the last details – gathering drinks and snacks, checking windows and doors – were underway.  Then there was a knock on the door. A neighbor whom he barely knew stood there. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my wife –she’s still in her pajamas– just glanced out our kitchen window and it looks like Mrs. Carter took a fall and can’t get up – would you be able to help?” Mrs. Carter was an elderly woman on the other side of the street – widowed, known to be cranky, one who had complained quite often about where other neighbors parked their cars, what they failed to do with their yards, and kids who were noisy.

Together they hurried across to her house, where they heard her calling for help from the side yard.  Following the stone path, they found her crumpled on the ground at the foot of her kitchen steps, clearly in pain, but with a relieved smile spreading across her face as she saw them. So began an 8-hour detour from his plans. It ended with Mrs. Carter safely out of surgery for a broken hip, her daughter on her way from out of town, and the vacation postponed a full day. “But,” my friend said, “I’ve never had such great contact with my neighbors as I did during that day. I saw a whole different side of Mrs Carter, too.  Something unique – almost holy?—happened. It changed the whole feel of the neighborhood for me from then on.”

In his place, I know that I’d have had significant work to set aside my frustration, maybe even resentment, at being stopped cold. I’d have hoped that it would be a simple fix and would have groaned as the time and complexity grew, worrying about the rest of the family fretting as they waited, yearning to be set free. Would I have been open to a holy encounter? 

Sometimes the interruptions to our plans and routines open the door to unexpected blessing. As was true that day in Capernaum. The metaphorical knock at the door comes from unlikely quarters –a centurion worried about his servant.  But he doesn’t appear himself. He is, after all, one of the imperial Roman oppressors, a gentile. He’s a soldier, commonly seen as among the enemies of Jesus’ people.  Lucy Lind Hogan (professor emerita of preaching and worship at Wesley Seminary) reminds us that although this centurion may have been known to the Jewish elders who came on his behalf, it might not be a surprise if Jesus refused to speak to him. So the elders go, and they intercede for him.  

One of the blessings of having a community of faith is that we act as intercessors for and with each other. Our sharing of joys and concerns invites prayer and presence with people and places beyond us. And while we can’t guarantee any particular effects, we sense the power in speaking on behalf of these.

Intercede—inter and cedere—means to go between.  Will you come? the elders sent by the centurion ask Jesus. A little like the neighbor at the door.

It’s that moment. The disruptive knock, the claim on time, the interruption, the plea. It’s the time I’m most likely to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t, I have plans already.”  Jesus goes, and apparently a crowd follows him. We might wonder whether they were suspicious of his heading to the home of a Roman, or just curious. But he sets out – and before he arrives, he gets a message from the centurion saying, “you don’t need to come here.  In fact, you shouldn’t.”  Maybe because the soldier recognized that it would cause problems for Jesus to enter his house.  Maybe because he was aware of the irony in an official of authority asking this itinerant teacher for help. “You can do this from a distance.” So Jesus stops, somewhere still on the way, not far from the house but not at it, out in the middle of the road.  

The primary parties never encounter one another.

The Roman centurion never meets Jesus.

Jesus never touches or speaks to the servant.

The action happens in that mysterious arena of the Spirit where prayer works. 

The centurion’s servant is healed through intercession. Not because he himself asks, not because Jesus lays hands on him, but because others intercede for him. First his master, then the Jewish elders, then Jesus himself. According to this story, the slave is healed by virtue, at least in part, of the concern others showed for him. 

He is healed because of their prayers of petition and the way they risked speaking on his behalf. He’s healed because they asked even when a response was unlikely. 

Some of you may remember the moving story told at Annual Conference about 10 years ago by Mark Yaconelli about a friend who had been alienated from his family for a number of years. There was longstanding bitterness and anger for him, but also deep pain. When he began to make plans for his wedding, he couldn’t imagine inviting his parents to attend. Even if he wanted to do so, a rejection would be intolerable. What I do remember is that a friend took the risky step of contacting them anyway.  And asked the groom’s parents—without telling him– whether they would consider coming. They, it turned out, were aching for a chance to build a bridge. On the day of the wedding, the groom was excruciatingly aware that he was about to take one of life’s significant steps without his family. But when he walked in, the first faces he saw were those of his parents. One can only envision the emotion, the vulnerability, perhaps the tears from either side. The friend who interceded might have failed. The parents might have declined. The groom might have been angry. Speaking up, asking, was a risk.

So it often is when one stands and speaks for those who are alone or marginalized, voiceless or in deep need. So it is when you speak on behalf of people who have been vilified or ignored or silenced. 

If we hear nothing else from this story, I hope we understand this. God hears our intercessions. When we speak or act on behalf of others, when we share concerns and celebrations, when we pray and tell the stories of those in need, it’s easy to wonder what good it does.  “Thoughts and prayers and simple words” have taken a bad rap lately, for some good reasons. In this story, there is action:  the centurion sends people, they go in person, Jesus changes his itinerary. Action of course matters. But intercession operates on many levels, by prayer and by presence — and here is encouragement: contrary to what might be expected, God’s power is poured out and the man is healed. 

Equally fascinating is what Jesus says about the centurion. “Nowhere, even in Israel, have I found faith like this.” What?      We’re meant to stop, as surely as his hearers did.

Among all the faithful in Israel, he is the example Jesus lifts up? 

Nowhere in the story, several commentators point out, are we told that the centurion repents of his complicity with the Romans. Nowhere does it imply that he decides to follow Jesus. All we have is evidence of his deep compassion, his care for one he might have dismissed, and his openness to the power of healing and life he sees in Jesus. 

You know such people. The compassionate but nonreligious. The ones beloved of God, whose good deeds are also being used for God’s purpose, and whose “faith” may be commended even without a confession of faith.  

I have two brothers who are exceptionally generous and kind men. They grew up in the church but are no longer connected to it, yet care for others consistently. I have good friends who, though they would not describe themselves as Christians, often live in ways more consistent with Christ’s way than I do. You have family, friends, and colleagues of whom the same might be said. Remember them, as you think of today’s gospel. Too often we listen to “repent and be saved” and not to texts like this one in Luke. Maybe this morning we can pray with thanksgiving for people like the centurion or others in our own lives here and beyond, who care deeply, who take risks for compassion, and who are beloved of God. 

The gospel invites us to pray that our hearts and eyes might be opened again to see that the will and work of God are unfolding out there, not far from the house but in places not within sanctuary walls. They’re finding expression in unexpected moments that interrupt our plans. That will and work are being embodied in ways that invite us to intercede for others as we anticipate the surprise and delight of God’s transforming touch in and around us. 

Let it be so!