Romans 6:18-23; Matthew 8: 5-13
Too many
Christians are apparently blind to how radically Christ challenged the conventional
social assumptions of first-century Palestine and of life as we know it today. Contrary to all expectations for the Jewish
Messiah, He asked for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman with a scandalous
personal history, engaged in His longest recorded conversation with her, and
then spent two days in a Samaritan village.
In doing so, He identified Himself with people viewed as heretical enemies
and treated a woman who was a complete outcast as a beloved child of God. He invited Himself to the home of Zacchaeus, a
corrupt tax-collector for the Roman army of occupation. And as we read today, He not only healed the
servant of a Roman centurion, but said of this man, “Truly, I say to you, not even in
Israel have I found such faith.” The
centurion was an officer of the pagan Roman Empire that controlled the Holy
Land. The
Jews expected the Messiah to destroy people like him, not to praise their
faith.
The Lord’s
statement that the faith of this Roman soldier was superior to that of any of
the Jews surely seemed foolish, treasonous, and blasphemous according to conventional
standards. With those words, He made
clear that nationality and ethnicity are not spiritually determining factors, for
“many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown
into the outer darkness…” Though it was
commonly overlooked at the time, God’s promises to Abraham were for the
blessing of “all the nations,” not merely one group of people. These promises have been fulfilled in Jesus
Christ such that all with faith in Him are now heirs to their fulfillment as His
beloved sons and daughters. (Gen. 22:18;
Gal. 3:8-9)
Our Lord’s ministry had nothing at
all to do with setting up an earthly kingdom in Palestine or anywhere else for
any group of people. Pursuing such worldly
power was a temptation that He rejected.
Before the Savior began His public ministry, “the devil
took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the
kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, ‘All these
things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.’ Then
Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is
written, ‘You shall worship
the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” (Matt. 4:8-10) The crowds
welcomed Christ to Jerusalem as a conquering hero on Palm Sunday because they
thought He was their military liberator from Roman rule. When it became clear that He was an entirely
different kind of Messiah with no interest in launching an armed rebellion,
they yelled, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
a few days later (Lk 23:21). The Savior
then told Pontius Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, which
is why His followers would not take up arms to defend Him. (Jn. 18:36)
The kingdom which
Christ proclaimed may well appear just as foolish today according to conventional
standards, for it has no geographical boundaries and is not a nation-state; it
does not require any particular ethnicity, culture, or language for its
citizens. It is not focused on the
interests of any faction or group. Even
as the promises to the descendants of Abraham have been extended to all with
faith in Christ, the ancient hope for an earthly realm in a particular part of
the world has been fulfilled in the Body of Christ in which all may participate
even now as a foretaste of the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven, regardless
of where they live or their cultural or ethnic heritage. As St. Peter wrote to the early Christians, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you
out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who
had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Pet. 2: 9-10) As
Orthodox Christians, we know that we share in the life of our Lord by His grace,
not by the power of any earthly realm or leader in any part of the world, including
our own.
We pray for God’s blessings upon our nation and all the nations
and peoples of the world. We give thanks
for all the blessings that are ours and we must be good stewards of them, not
as ends in themselves, but as opportunities to offer all the good things of
this life for purification and fulfillment in Christ. Remember that the chief priests told Pilate
“We have no king but Caesar!” as they called for the Messiah’s crucifixion (Jn.
19:15). The pagan Romans later killed
Christians because they would not worship the gods believed to preserve their
empire, including Caesar. Our Lord and
His martyrs looked like fools, or worse, to those obsessed with serving the
rulers of this world. We are certainly not immune today from the temptation to
reject our Lord and His Cross by giving our primary allegiance to those we
imagine to serve our desires for power, domination, and vengeance. This temptation, which is rooted in the fear
of death, is all the more dangerous when we convince ourselves that we are
actually serving Christ as we pursue the nationalistic and political paths that
He so clearly rejected.
Obviously, our
Lord did not view the Roman centurion according to conventional earthly terms,
even though He was well aware of the man’s role in serving the empire under the
authority of which He would be crucified.
By all outward appearances, they would have been sworn enemies, but
Christ did not see him that way or require him to quit the Roman army or become
a Jew. He simply marveled at the
centurion’s faith, granted his request, and noted that “many will come from
east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of
Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness;
there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”
Our hope is to be
among those “from east and west” who are gathered into the kingdom of heaven by
our Lord’s gracious mercy, which we receive through faith in Him, regardless of
our national, ethnic, or political identity.
Even as not all the descendants of Abraham fulfilled their calling to
receive the Messiah in faith, we cannot blithely assume that being Orthodox
Christians somehow guarantees us the blessedness of the kingdom or makes us
justified in condemning anyone. The
greatest obstacle to the healing of our souls is pride, which often manifests
itself in the belief that we are somehow better and more deserving of God’s
favor than others. Such pride is the
deadly enemy of true faith, but the centurion somehow managed to avoid that trap,
despite the high standing given to him by his rank in the armed forces of the
mighty Roman Empire. He humbled himself,
saying, “Lord, I am
not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my
servant will be healed.” Even as Christ
did not see him as an enemy, he did not see Christ as either a threat to the
empire or someone inferior by worldly standards. Quite the contrary, the centurion had somehow
acquired the spiritual clarity to know where he stood before the Lord Who would
heal his servant in such a miraculous fashion. Even as the centurion,
tax-collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, demon-possessed Gentiles, and other
outcasts received Christ in humble faith, we must never presume to declare that
anyone is beyond His love or cannot find healing in Him. We
must gain the spiritual health necessary to treat every person we encounter as
a living icon of Christ, regardless of national identity, political affiliation,
or any other human characteristic. Any Christianity
that does not call people to do so is unworthy of its name.
Like the Roman centurion, let us
entrust ourselves to Christ with such humility that our passions do not keep us
from knowing that we stand before Him in need of constant mercy, no less than everyone
else. Instead of fueling the pride that
so easily blinds us spiritually and leads us to idolatry, let us unite
ourselves so fully to Christ that His character becomes evident in us. Then we will manifest His mercy and
compassion in ways unconstrained by devotion to any of the false gods of this
world as we learn to love even strangers and enemies as God loves us. That is not and never has been the easy,
popular, and conventional way of living, but it is clearly the way of the
Savior Who conquered death itself through His Cross and glorious resurrection
on the third day. It is only by uniting
ourselves to Him in faith and faithfulness that we may hope, along with that
blessed centurion, to be among those who “come from east and west and sit at
table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
