“A Soldier’s Faith”
Second Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 4 (Year C)
2 June 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
Second Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 4 (Year C)
2 June 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
The
Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
A friend of mine, when hearing that I
was to be ordained, told me that he had once thought he was being called to the
Roman Catholic priesthood. “But that was
long ago, and I was so wrong. I don’t
really know if I have any faith in God today, and perhaps I’m an atheist. It all got so very confusing when I started
facing up to who I was and where my life was headed when I was just out of
college. I realized I was gay, and that that wasn’t ever going to change. And ‘Mother Church’ teaches my urges are deep,
deep sin, that I am “objectively disordered.”
So I am unworthy, and ever will be.
I tried to do better, to conform to the rules, but I finally gave
up. And I lost my faith in the Church,
and along with it, faith in God, I guess.”
In a recent conversation with an
elderly friend, I heard this: “I was so blessed for so long. I’m still
so blessed. But I have so much pain in
my body now, and in my life so many cherished things and people that I have
lost. I am depressed all day, every day. I try to mediate and think positively, but
it’s useless. I pray, but God just doesn’t
seem to hear or care. I’m afraid I’m
losing my faith and giving in to despair. I’m so unworthy, and it seems it will
only get worse. I’m helpless and
hopeless. What can I do?”
“We’re not worthy! We’re not
worthy!” I hear this phrase often enough
to wonder at times whether I am in some kind of reality-imitates-art warped replay
of the 1992 film “Wayne’s World.”
St. Hippolytus was Bishop of Rome in the early third century. Around the year 215 C.E., he wrote a description of the “Apostolic Tradition” of his age, one of the earliest records we have of Christian Church rules and Eucharistic celebrations.
Hippolytus lists who is worthy to become a catechumen, that is, join what was at the time a three-year class to prepare for baptism. More importantly, he lists who is not worthy. Slaves had not only to receive the permission of their masters, but their recommendation as well. Married people needed to be faithful to their spouses; unmarried people, abstain from fornication. In addition, professions of dubious moral character made you unworthy. You had to give these jobs up if you wanted to be baptized: pimps and those patronizing prostitutes; anyone involved in the violent games of the Roman arena (including promoters, gladiators, wild animal handlers, and audience members); soldiers, lawyers and magistrates (because they gave or followed orders taking peoples’ lives in executions or war and took pagan oaths of obedience and loyalty); teachers in pagan schools (though if you had no other work and said you were sorry, you could keep your job and still be baptized); sculptors or painters of idols; and even actors (presumably because this was seen as one step away from prostitution).
Some jobs or conditions of life simply were beyond the pale: if you were one of these, you could never prepare for baptism. If you were a “Magus” or practitioner of esoteric lore, you could never be baptized, though petty psychic readers, astrologers, amulet-makers, and enchanters, if they weren’t full-bore Magi, would have to quit their day jobs like anyone else to become Christians.
Hippolytus adds other classes of the permanently disqualified: prostitutes, and what he calls “wanton men and those who do unspeakable things to each other,” and men who had emasculated themselves to become eunuch priests of the Magna Mater cult that was the Roman Empire’s functional equivalent of modern popular “New Age” Asian religions of the month.
Such great sinners as these could never be allowed to be baptized, for “they are impure.” “Not Worthy! Not Worthy!” (Apostolic Tradition, 16:1-16).
Note the logic of patriarchy here—a man could leave his job as a pimp and be baptized, but a woman who had ever stooped to prostitution, never! Similarly, a man could repent and leave off his fornicating and join a Catechumen class, but one whose mode of life or identity raised questions about what it was to be a man in a world run by men, never!
Worthiness or lack thereof is a subtext
in today’s Gospel reading, Luke’s story of Jesus’ healing of the Centurion’s
servant or slave (Luke 7:1-10). The story is also told in Matthew (Matthew
8:5-13), where the one healed is simply called the Centurion’s “boy-servant.” A much later form of the story seems also to
show up in John (John 4:46b-54), where it is about a “Royal Official’s son.”
All three versions of the story take
place in Capernaum, near Jesus’ hometown in Gentile-rich Galilee. Luke says a Roman Centurion has a slave “who
was dear to him, and who was ill and close to death.”
Now a “Roman Centurion” is almost a
cartoon-character flat image in the writing of the period. It is almost as if we said, “A Marine Corps
Gunnery Sergeant.” Centurions led cohorts with a full complement of 100, and
they were responsible for ensuring that they were the fiercest and most
effective warriors of the age.
Centurions bore the burden of making the Roman Army work: training,
discipline, loyalty and submission to orders, logistics and equipment, fighting
skills. They were terse, powerful men of
action. Order and discipline ruled their
lives. They, together with their
soldiers, were forbidden by law to marry while in active service. As a result, brothels were common near their
encampments, as was the practice of turning to other men. The Romans had at first resisted what they
called “Greek love” as effeminate and undermining of old Republican virtues,
but by the time of the Empire, it was common enough to be the subject of banter
and jokes.
So when we hear that a Roman Centurion
is sending Jewish intermediaries to Jesus, the image is striking indeed. This is a man who normally would just take
whatever the situation demanded. But
here he becomes a supplicant, asking Jesus for the favor of healing his
servant.
This Centurion has been doing a good
job of fostering local goodwill toward the Empire, part of an effective rural
pacification strategy. Though a Gentile,
he has built the local Synagogue. Part
of maintaining good order in the Roman ranks was a decent practice of Imperial
religion—oaths to the Emperor and Jupiter, occasional sacrifices or votive
offerings expressing gratitude to the Imperial deities or any local deities
that may have contributed having one’s prayers being heard. All over Europe there are Roman ruins strewn
with sponsored building projects by similar Centurions marked by the initials VSLM—votum solvit libens merito—that is, “they freely and
willingly fulfilled their vow.”
So the Centurion sends elders from the
Synagogue to help convince Jesus to heal the servant: they say what a great guy
he is, and how much he has helped the local Jewish community. They will say that he is “worthy.”
So Jesus goes with them, but before he
gets to the house, the Centurion sends the message: “Sir, do not trouble
yourself, for I am not worthy to have
you come under my roof.” A centurion
indeed: “sir” and a short, terse message
from a man of action and not of words.
“I’m not worthy.” What is it that the he has in mind? He is a gentile, and a military man. That means he makes pagan oaths, kills
people, has blood on his hands.
In the original form of the story in
the Sayings Source shared by Luke and Matthew, there may be another hint: there, the initial message to Jesus is
this: “Sir, my boy is lying paralyzed at
home, in distress.” The Greek word for
boy, pais, can mean a younger house
servant or slave, and even a son as the story appears in John. But in pagan Greek and Roman literature, it
often describes a younger male pair-bonded with an older man. The erastes-pais
relationship often seen in Greek and later Roman culture, often in military
settings, is not a relationship of equals, and should not be called a “same sex
marriage.” It is not anything that
modern GLBT activists endorse or approve of. But just as chattel patriarchal marriage could
on occasion produce intimacy and love, this flawed erastes-pais institution could have on occasion seen true
tenderness and intimacy. It is possible
that this Roman Centurion knows how profoundly troubling such a living
arrangement would be to devout Jews, and this is one of the sources of his
sense of unworthiness.
We must not make too much of this—Luke
understands the Sayings Source phrase clearly as “household slave” without any
explicit sexual connotation. But Luke does note that the Centurion and servant
are intimate at least on some level: the
slave is dear or highly valued to the Centurion; this is why he approaches Jesus.
“I’m not worthy.” Then the Centurion adds, “You mustn’t come
under my roof. But only speak the word,
and he will be healed.”
These words are a profound expression
of humility and submission. They have
been taken up in the post-Vatican II Roman tradition as a kind of Prayer of
Humble Access for the people before taking Holy Communion: “Lord I am not worthy for you to come under
my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”
The Centurion then explains, appealing
to his Gunnery-Sergeant view of the world:
“For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I
say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my
slave, ‘Do this, and the slave does it.”
When Jesus hears this he is amazed. He turns to the crowd and says, “I tell you,
not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
Jesus is not following the rulebook that says, “You’re not worthy,
you’re not worthy.” His playbook is one
of amazement and trust.
The Centurion by no standard lives up
to Hippolytus’ “worthy to prepare for baptism” standard. But his is a simple faith. “I may be unworthy, but you, Jesus can help
me. God working grace in this world has
to be at least as efficient as the
Empire working its control.”
So Jesus healed the Centurion’s
servant, just as elsewhere he welcomed drunks and whores, casting their demons out. And so he heals us, regardless of the reasons we think we are unworthy. We only need to turn to him, trust in his ability to fix things
regardless, and let Jesus do what Jesus does.
“I am not worthy to have you come under
my roof. But speak the word only, and my
soul shall be healed.”
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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