Loving God, your power over illness and even death was shown through Jesus, even as your concern for those who are outsiders came to light.  Empower us by your Spirit, granting us the faith and compassion to live as members of your family; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    With each passage that we read in the Gospel of Luke, we continue to learn things about Jesus.  In the case of today’s gospel, we certainly learn about Jesus’ power to heal and even his power to raise the dead.  However, there is even more that we learn about the kind of community that Jesus came to initiate - things that may not be so obvious to us when we first hear these stories.

    In the first instance, we hear about the Roman centurion who has a slave who is very ill and is close to death.  As a centurion in charge of 100 soldiers, this man would have been used to ordering people around.  However, when he looks to Jesus for healing, he comes with a totally different attitude.

    First off, he doesn’t come to Jesus himself, but sends some Jewish elders to make the request for his slave.  Any idea why he would do this?...   He’s a Gentile, and he knows the Jewish laws about dealing with Gentiles, and he doesn’t think that Jesus will want anything to do with him.

    However, Jesus agrees to go with them, and before Jesus has to decide whether to enter a Gentile house or not, the centurion sends other people with a message:

Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you.  But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed (Lk. 7:6-7).

There is a tremendous amount of humility and faith in this message.  This is not a centurion who is demanding that Jesus do things for him.  Instead, he is showing a great deal of respect for Jesus and for the Jewish religion.

    And in all of this we learn that Jesus can actually be surprised.  He is amazed at this man’s faith, and tells the people with him that he hasn’t seen faith like this even in Israel.  And the slave is healed by the time the centurion’s friends return to his house.

    I have this vision of Jesus traveling around surrounded by a group of people who follow him everywhere.  It is a crowd of Jewish people who surround him, and it is in the midst of this crowd that this request from a lone Gentile comes to him.  It might have been easy to say, “No. We don’t want anything to do with them!”  However, instead, Jesus opens the group.  For the good news he brings includes Gentiles, as well.

    In the same way, the group opens up to consider the inclusion of widows.  I’m curious how much you know about what sort of options widows had in first century Palestine.... Essentially, if there was no male member of their family to support them, they were left on their own.  Either somebody had to help them out, or they starved.  There was simply no place for widows within the social structure of that society.

    And so, when Jesus comes upon a funeral procession for a widow’s only son, he knows that she is not only grieving the loss of her son, but the loss of any hope for the future.  His response is compassion, which literally means “with suffering.”  He suffers with her in her grief.  He touches the bier, which would have been a no-no for any Jew who wanted to remain ritually clean.  Yet, rather than Jesus becoming unclean, he infuses the dead man with life and gives him back to his mother.

    In both cases, Jesus not only heals and raises the dead but widens the community to include those who are outsiders and those who are vulnerable.  When we are the ones who have always felt like outsiders, this is good news indeed!  And when we are comfortable in our community and surrounded by friends and loved ones, this is a call to be aware of those on the outside and to strive to live inclusively.

    This means being open to those who are not like us.  This means being open to seeing others as precious children of God.  This means being aware of those who are on the margins and those who are on their own, and striving to include them wherever possible.  For the community that Jesus came to initiate has room in it for everyone and is always an open circle rather than a closed one.

    At the same time, it is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be able to move beyond our comfort zones and include those whom we might not normally hang out with.  It is also the Holy Spirit who gives the gift of compassion, and also the gift of faith.  For, these stories call us not only to live inclusively, but also to live faithfully, putting our trust in God.

    That centurion from Capernaum is a pretty amazing example when it comes to faith.  We can learn a lot from him about approaching God for healing and in prayer.  The first thing is that he believed with all his heart that Jesus had the power to heal his slave - and that Jesus didn’t even have to see him or touch him in order to do so.  Yet, he also knew that he was not worthy to ask such a thing.  And so, he approached Jesus with humility and respect.

    When we approach God in prayer, an attitude of humility and respect is also appropriate.  We come to God, not demanding that God do things our way, but asking that God’s will be done.  We come to God, aware that we don’t deserve any favours, but also knowing that because of Jesus, we are forgiven.  In fact, that’s why we come in the name of Jesus, for it is only through him that we have this privilege of approaching God in prayer.  And, we come believing that God is absolutely able to do what we are asking.

    In the end, these gospel stories that we have heard today call us to live “faithfully, trusting God and inclusively, caring for the least of those in our community” (Spill the Beans).  It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to do both of these things, even as we rejoice at how we have been brought into community through Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Epiphany 5 (NL 3)                                Luke 7:1-17
February 5, 2017
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2017 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved