Luke 7:1-10

Just a few initial comments on our text for today. There is a parallel version of the text in Matthew’s Gospel that has a few notable differences from the Luke version of the story. The most significant differences are the following:

In Luke’s version of the story a Centurion sends a delegation to Jesus asking Jesus to heal his servant. According to Luke, at no point does the Centurion actually meet Jesus. But in the Matthew version of story, the Roman centurion comes to Jesus in person to ask Jesus to heal his servant.

In addition, in Matthew’s version we read that the servant was paralyzed and suffering greatly. But in the Luke version of the story, the servant is not just paralyzed and suffering greatly, but described as sick and about to die.

And so while the substance of the story remains very much the same in these two versions of the one story, there are some significant differences, discrepancies or inconsistencies in the factual details of the story.

It is just another reminder that claims for Biblical innerancy are misplaced. The Bible, although our central text as Christians, is not a text that was written and emailed directly from heaven. It is a very human text with human errors and human inconsistencies, and yet, for those who take the time to read, and digest it, to think deeply on its themes and it’s portrayal of Jesus, I believe that it has the ability to open our hearts to the Spirit of God.

And I hope that in some way our reflection on this text today will do just that.

The second thing that I would like to comment on is the miracle that happens in this story, where Jesus heals the Centurion’s servant at a distance.

Over the past 20 months in my preaching here in Dromore, often I have read scripture and some of the miracle stories as having symbolic meaning. It is an approach to Scripture that is not new. It goes back to the earliest centuries of Christianity.

It is also an acknowledgement that when one speaks of God, the Infinite One, the Eternal One, words begin to fail. Theologians for centuries have asserted that when one speaks of the One who is beyond words, one has to resort to using symbol, metaphor and poetry.

Visiting Rev. Mac about a year ago, I asked him about Rev. Peaston and his theological outlook. One thing that he said really struck me. According to Mac, Rev Peaston used to say that to be religious, or a person of faith, it was necessary to have a poetic imagination. That would really resonate with me. I believe that reading scripture is best done not with a scientific mindset, but with a poetic imagination that is able to touch and inspire the heart and put us in touch with the One who is beyond words.

But having said that, I wouldn't catagorize all the miracle stories as being only symbolic. I would agree with the Biblical Scholar Marcus Borg who suggests that the Gospel writers often deliberately use miracle stories symbolically to convey a sense of a spiritual or inner meaning. Some of these stories might indeed be purely symbolic. But, like Borg, if I were a betting man, I would put my money on the belief that Jesus did indeed have what we would call ‘super-natural’ abilities... abilities that went beyond what we would ordinarily describe as natural.

I have a friend in South Africa who was experiencing excruciating back pain. She was due to fly to the UK to do fundraising for a charity that she was involved in. A doctor didn't think it would be good for her to take a flight of 10 – 12 hours.

Seeing her desperation, someone gave her the number of a healer who could possibly help her. The healer only needed her name. She would do the healing at a distance. She preferred to keep her identity anonymous. It in fact turned out that she was the organist at a local Methodist church and chose to be anonymous because she was not sure if her fellow members who necessarily understand this gift that she had even thought she believed the gift was from God.

Within a very short space of time, a few hours, or maybe a day, my friends back was doing much better, and she was able to make the flight with very little discomfort or pain.

Recently, I had a conversation with someone who spoke about a healer who lives near Derry/Londonderry who in about 1980 discovered by accident that he had healing abilities when he responded to victims of a bombing. Paramedics on the scene began to observe that bleeding that they couldn’t stop themselves, seemed to miraculously stop when they were touched by this man.

I don’t know for sure if Jesus literally raised people from the dead, or literally turned water into wine (but I could be wrong). I would tend to read such stories as having rich symbolic value. In Jesus presence, people who felt spiritually dead certainly came to new life and where people's lives had come to feel like a burden, in Jesus presence, they felt like they were tasting of the wine of new joy.  But I do believe that it is quite possible that a healing power from God flowed through him and that he could indeed have healed this centurion’s servant at a distance. There are too many stories of people experiencing what we would call miraculous healing to doubt that such an event could have happened.

But interestingly, for Jesus – as you read the gospels – while he may indeed have had an ability to heal people physically, that was not in fact the focus or the point of his ministry. If anything, Jesus tried unsuccessfully to remain anonymous when it came to healing people. Jesus ultimately seemed to be far more concerned with the healing of the human heart.

And so, in this story, when Jesus commends the centurion for his faith, I don't believe that Jesus was just referring to the Centurion’s belief that Jesus had the ability to heal his servant from a distance.

There are many Christians who believe that healing will only happen if a person has faith. And sometimes, when a person does not get healed, they will blame the person suffering for not having had enough faith. Wendy and I know someone in South Africa who said to someone else: “I have prayed for you. If you don't heal, then it is your fault for not having had enough faith.”

I don't always know why healing sometimes happens and sometimes does not. If one is honest, often healing does not happen. But I think it is also very unfair to blame the person for a lack of faith, because often there is a lot of faith, and yet healing does not happen.

And so when Jesus commends the centurion for his faith, I believe that he is referring to something deeper than simply his faith that Jesus can perform a miracle. I believe Jesus is also commenting on the state of the centurion’s heart.

There was clearly something quite remarkable about the centurion. We read that Jesus is actually astonished by the man. The Greek word suggests that Jesus held him with wonder, marvel and admiration. Even Jesus was taken aback because there was something remarkable about him.

What were the qualities in this centurion that caused Jesus to wonder, marvel and admire him?

1. Firstly, he is a person of integrity. The centurion was part of the Roman Empire. In the eyes of the Jews he was part of the oppressive ruling establishment, part of the military machinery of a foreign invading power. And the Romans who conquered the Jews looked down on the Jews as they would have looked down on all those they had conquered. Romans regarded Jews as a backward and filthy race. Judaism as a religion was regarded as a barbarous superstition. And yet here is a Roman centurion who has moved beyond the prejudices of his own people. Here is a man who has managed to win over his so-called enemy. A man who has crossed over boundaries of nationality and has built positive relationships with a people that others would have regarded as inferior. He is a person of integrity who treats people with equal dignity whether they are part of his group or not. It takes someone quite remarkable to be able to do such things.
   
   
2. Secondly, the centurion being a military man is part of an extremely hierarchical social structure. He is in charge of 100 Roman Soldiers and thus a respected member of the Roman Heirarchy. And yet his care and compassion for his servant transcends his own social class and status. William Barclay writes that in Roman law, a slave was defined as a living tool. He had no rights. A master could ill-treat him and even kill him if he chose. When a slave was past his ability to be productive and to work, he could simply be discarded, thrown out to die.
   

The Roman writer, Varro, believed that the only difference between a slave, a beast, and a cart was that the slave talked. It was quite unheard of for a slave owner to have any real feelings of care and concern for a slave.

And yet we read that this centurion transcends the social hierarchy and social norms of his day and expresses, great care, great concern and even love for this slave. There is something quite remarkable about this man. He is a person of compassion and love who expresses that compassion and love to someone who ordinarily should have been outside or below his circle of love and concern.

3. Thirdly, he is a person of deep humility, despite the position of importance that he occupied as a Roman centurion. Centurions were people of power and status. It was in his job description to give orders to people and to boss them around. But here the centurion submits himself with great humility to Jesus, an itinerant Jewish Rabbi. According to Luke, he sends a message back to Jesus as Jesus was nearing his home: “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; nor do I count myself fit to come to you; but just say the word and my servant will be healed.” It is a statement from person of deep, deep humility.

And so we read that Jesus is astonished by this Roman Centurion. An unlikely candidate and yet there is something quite remarkable at work in his heart:

• He is a person of integrity who has built positive relationships with Jews who were beyond the boundaries of his own people.
• As a soldier, a military man, he has a soft heart. He is a person of care and compassion even for someone who was socially beneath him, who ordinarily would simply have been discarded.
  
• And lastly, he is a person of great humility. Deeply aware of his own unworthiness to even be in the presence of Jesus let alone have Jesus come into his home.

Astonished, with wonder and admiration Jesus said: "I have not found such great faith, even in Israel".

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21
All ancient cultures have myths and legends that came about to explain certain things about the world.

You can see it at the Giants Causeway. When my brother and sister-in-law came to visit last October we went with them to see the Giants Causeway and learnt 2 explanations about the origin of the Giants Causeway.

The scientific version: Around 50 to 60 million years ago, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity. During that time highly fluid molten basalt came up through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled, if left pillar-like structures.

Then there is the mythic or folk explanation: in which the causeway is said to be the remains of a great bridge created by a giant Finn Mcool that stretched from Ireland to Scotland when he was challenged to a fight by the Scottish Giant Bennadonner. As with many ancient myths and legends, there is embedded within it a deeper reflection and commentary on life: a reflection on both the ancient connection between Scotland and Ireland, but also something of the ancient rivalry that has existed as well.

In the Bible, you see a parallel phenomenon, especially in some of the old Testament stories. For example in the story of the Tower of Babel, you can almost hear the voice of a child asking a grandparent: “Why do different people speak different languages?”

And in response we hear the grand-parent begin to tell the story of the tower of Babel. The story itself is what we would call a myth or a legend. On the surface of the story, it is not historically true, but when you begin to explore something of the inner meaning of the story, one discovers that there is a hidden wisdom in the story... a little bit like the parables of Jesus.

The parables of Jesus are fictional stories. None of them are historically true, but as parables they contain a wisdom that invites the listener to think more deeply about the nature of the Kingdom of God, which is the theme of most of Jesus parables.

Marcus Borg, a contemporary Biblical scholar who died about a year or two ago tells the story of a Native American Indian story-teller. Whenever he would tell his tribes creation story or creation myth, he would begin with the words: “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”.

When one comes to the story of the Tower of Babel, I believe that it would be appropriate to preface it with the same words: “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”. In other words, I don’t believe that this story is historically true, but if we have ears to hear, we will hear a wisdom and a spiritual truth embedded within it. Rob Bell puts it another way. A story like this is true not because it happened but because it happens. It is reflective of our human experience.

In the story itself, we read that the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. The plain of Shinar is in fact a reference to Babylonia, and thus the origin of this story is probably again the time of the Jewish exile in Babylonia. Having settled in Shinar or Babylonia, we read that the people learnt how to make bricks and began to build themselves a city. Next they desired to build a tower that would reach towards the heavens, because we read they wanted to make a name for themselves.

The story continues however that the Lord caught wind of their plans and so came down to see what they were up to and was clearly rather disturbed by it. Maybe if the people built a tower to the heavens, they might try and take heaven by force and usurp the power of God himself. This is implied in verse 6 where the God voice suggests that nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. And so God decides to intervene before it is too late and confuses their language and scatters them all over the earth.

The tower of Babel in the story is probably a reference to the ziggurats or pyramids of the Babylonian empire. The word Babel is therefore a play on words. On the one hand it carry’s overtones of the word Babylon but also carry’s overtones of the Hebrew word Balel which means “to be confused”. For the Hebrews, listening to the Babylonian language it would have been a little bit like saying “It’s all Greek to me”, its all Babel or Balel to me.

At one level, the story of the Tower of Babel reveals something of the Jewish prejudice against the Babylonians, and perhaps that is understandable when it was the Babylonians who had invaded Jerusalem and then taken them off into exile. Underlying this story is the accusation that the Babylonians with their impressive Ziggaurats are in fact a people in rebellion towards God.

But if one reads beneath the prejudice, there is a commentary on human beings as a whole. We all in our own way want to make a name for ourselves. Sometimes that is not a bad thing, but often the rush of pride goes to our heads, we begin to think we are God, in the sense of being all-powerful and in the process our pride brings division. The message of Jesus is in fact that we can become like God, we can share in God’s nature as we grow in love, humility, service. But many human beings are not interested in becoming like God in that way. For many human beings they want to become God by seizing power, through dominance and control and not through humble love and service. The moral of the story is that humanity’s pride and tendency towards domination and control leads to a division between people, a fragmentation between communities. Communities and peoples are no longer able to live in harmony with one-another.

And perhaps that is where we switch over and begin to reflect on our other passage today, the passage from Acts where we read of the Pentecost Story. Did the Pentecost story happen exactly like that “tongues of fire”, a violent wind, people speaking in different languages and tongues? I cant be sure? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t.

But at the very least I would repeat the words of the Native American Story teller. I don’t know if the story happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true. In other words there are a spiritual truth's in the story for us if we are open to hearing them.

And so what, we might ask, is the truth that the Pentecost story seeking to communicate?

For a long time, theologians have suggested that in the Pentecost story what we see happening is a reversal of the Tower of Babel story.

In the Tower of Babel story, the arrogance and the pride of humanity has brought to division to the world and division between people. People are unable to communicate with one-another and are scattered over the earth. But in the Pentecost Story you have a movement in the opposite direction. People from all over the known world have come together in Jerusalem, and through the gift of the Spirit the former divisions caused by language are overcome. The apostles, those who have been anointed with the gift of the Spirit of God, are able to communicate across the language barrier or divide as they begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to do.

Human Sin, pride, arrogance, unbridled ambition brings division, but the Spirit of God which is also described in other passages in the book of Acts as the Spirit of Jesus, heals divisions and brings people together. Sin divides, but love unites.

The message of the story I believe is this: When people truly begin to be moved by the Spirit of Jesus, when people begin to speak the language of Christ’s self-emptying love, the divisions of this world begin to heal. But the more we act out of distorted, unbalanced self-interest, the world begins to fragment and become divided.

But when people begin to be moved by the spirit of Christ’s self-emptying love, putting others needs on a par with our own, then an undoing of the tower of babel story begins to happen all over again.

In Ephesians Paul speaks of the division between Jews and Gentiles – one of those ancient rivalries. In chapter 2 Paul says that Christ himself has now become our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility. His purpose was to make a new humanity out of the two thus making peace and to reconcile them through the cross by which he put to death their hostility.

I have always wondered how the cross of Jesus can heal our divisions, the more I have reflected on it, the more I have come to believe that the cross heals our divisions by teaching us the way of self-emptying love.

On Penetcost Sunday, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit of God. It is none other than the Spirit of the crucified Christ, that teaches us to speak the language of Christ-like love. The Pentecost story inspires us to believe that the healing of this world is possible. The story of the Tower of Babel can be reversed when people’s lives are touched and moved by the same spirit that was at work in Jesus.

1 Cor 12:12-26 and 2 Samuel 24:1-17 (1 Chronicles 21:1-17)

Today I would like to reflect on what I think can only be described as a strange story from the Old Testament, that hopefully might help us to reflect more deeply on the nature of the Bible.

The passage is from 2 Samuel 24:1-7.

The first interesting thing to note is that God plants the idea within David to take a census.

When David actually begins to take the census, God tells him that he has sinned by taking a census and then proceeds to give David a few potential punishments. David chooses the third option of a plague, in which 70 000 people in Israel die.

It is a strange story. Why, we might ask ourselves would God prompt David to do something and then turn around and punish him for it?

Maybe another question we might ask ourselves is how might a story like this have come about in the first place?

If I had to speculate, I imagine that the following kind of scenario might have taken place.

David decided to take a census. Somehow at the same time or just following the census, a plague broke out within Israel. When something bad happens the natural tendency is for human beings to ask the question: How did this disaster come about? Who is to blame? Why has this happened?

The answer which is given: the only thing that has been different in recent times is that King David has taken a census. We are not sure why? But God must be punishing David and the people of Israel for taking the census.

But in the ancient Hebrew world-view, the dominant belief was that God was all-powerful and therefore God is ultimately responsible for everything that happened. And therefore, while the teller of the story had come to the conclusion that it was David who had sinned by calling a census and thus bringing a plague upon the people of Israel, because God is the ultimate power in the universe and ultimately God is in control of everything, God must have caused David to take the census in the first place.

What makes this whole story in 2 Sam 24 even more interesting is when you compare it to the retelling of the same story in 1 Chronicles 21. The 1 Chronicles is a much later re-telling of the story – possibly even by a hundred or more years. What is most significant is that 1 Chronicles 21 was written/edited after the exile of the Jews in Babylon.

During the exile, Jewish people were exposed to a new culture and different religious ideas. In Babylon, they were exposed most especially to the religion of Zoroastrianism in which the spiritual world was seen to be dominated by two opposing spiritual beings: Azhura Mazda, the Supreme Being who was all wise and all good, and his counterpart Angra Mainyu, who was responsible for evil, chaos and destruction in the world.

And thus in exile, the idea of a second spiritual reality comes into the Jewish understanding of the world. The idea of Satan, as a spiritual being opposed to God first begins to take hold in the mind of Jewish religious thinkers.

And so when we begin to compare the stories between 2 Sam 24 and 1 Chron 21, we see this interesting change. In verse 1 of the Chronicles story, instead of God being the cause of David taking a census, there is a new, explanation that helps to resolve the underlying injustice of the 1 Sam 24 rendition of the story. Instead of God planting the idea in David’s mind, the writer of Chronicles suggests that it was in fact Satan, the enemy of God who made David take a census.

And thus the strange anomaly of the previous telling of the story is now resolved. If God prompted David to take the census in the first place, is it really fair that God should punish David and the people of Israel?

But if the story is retold and Satan, the arch enemy of God is now the instigator, then it makes more sense that God should have been able to punish David.

What this story does is that it helps us to see that the Bible is a more complex book than Biblical literalism would suggest. Biblical literalism asserts that every verse in the Bible is God inspired and without error or contradiction. But here we have two renditions of the same story, one that says Satan made David do it, and the other that says that it was God who made David do it. A second significant change in the story is the numbers in the census are also different. 1 Sam 24 gives one set of figures, but 1 Chronicles 21 gives a very different account of the number of able-bodied men in Israel and Judah. In 2 Samuel 24 it is 800 thousand able bodied man in Israel and 500 thousand in Judah. But in 1 Chronicles 21 there were 1 million one hundred thousand in Israel while only 470 thousand in Judah.

When you actually begin to look at the details of some of the Biblical stories, you begin to see that arguments for Biblical literalism begin to break-down. The Bible is in fact not that kind of book.

It also shows that in the Bible, there is a theological development. Between these two stories, there has been a development in thinking. The first story teller has no strong idea of Satan as the enemy of God who is causing all this trouble. But in the second story, the character of Satan emerges as a new way of trying to explain the evil in the world.

The story also reflects another aspect of the Israelite culture of the day: The culture was one dominated by a group ideology. If one member of the group sinned, the whole group was punished. David’s sin leads to the punishment of the whole of Israel. You see this in other places.

Later in the development of other Biblical writers, you can see a shift towards individual responsibility. In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet sees a great injustice in people being punished for the sins of others, especially children being punished for the sins of their parents. He writes that if a father sins, the father will be punished. If the son sins, the son should be punished. But for most of the early Hebrew writing group ideology dominated their thinking. One persons sin (in this case David), could lead to the punishment of the whole nation of Israel. In our passage, even David sees an injustice happening that the people of Israel should be punished for his sin.

But western culture as a whole has generally moved in a completely opposite extreme to a radical individualism. On the surface it might seem that it is progress. But in actual fact, it is just another extreme. What Western culture is beginning to realise is that the truth lies somewhere in between. We’re beginning to realise that there is in fact no-self-made man. All of us are inter-connected. Its an insight that some Westerners are learning from quantum physics. Somehow inexplicably it was discovered that when twin photons are separated geographically, when scientists caused one two spin in one direction, the other automatically began to spin in the same way. At a sub-atomic level, the world is deeply interconnected. Another source for learning of our interconnectedness has been Buddhism. It was one of the insights of the Buddha that life is interconnected. The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of inter-being. We live interdependent lives.
Another source for our learning this principle of interconnectedness is in fact ecology and the ecological crisis. The more we become aware that a damaged ecology will affect human beings, the more we come to see that extreme individualism is a delusion. None of us can actually live without everyone else.
In African culture in South Africa there is still a strong sense of group culture. Which has it’s downsides as in the story of David. But there is a phrase that is used in African culture than can help us Westerners find a better balance between the collective and the individual. In a concept called Ubuntu they have a saying that goes - “I am because we are”. No-one is an island. Even if we seclude ourselves and live in our home as a hermit, only coming out to buy food from the shops, we would still be reliant on a whole network of other people for our food, our electricity, our water, government service. I am because we are. No-one is an island.
Although I would struggle with the Biblical writers interpretation of this story of David’s sin bringing punishment on the whole of Israel, it does convey the idea that one persons sin can and does affect other people. Very few people would take seriously the notion that God punishes a group for an individuals sin. But it is possible to see that one persons sin, or one persons negative or destructive behaviour can often have consequences on a whole community.
In the New Testament, Jesus teaching on the Greatest Commandment is in its own way an expression of our interconnectedness. If I am because we are, then it begins to make sense that loving my neighbour is another way of loving myself.

Paul’s use of the image of the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 is another Biblical image that emphasizes the interconnectedness of life. He uses it specifically as an image for the church community. But the image has wider application and could very easily be used as an image to describe society as a whole. The more globalised the world becomes, the more we realise how interconnected we are. The world is like a body of interconnected parts. When one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.

And so, as we reflect on these passages today in this way, it perhaps comes as an invitation for us to ask ourselves: How does my behaviour and maybe even my private life impact on others, in my family, in my community, in this country and even in the world? Is the impact of my life on the world ultimately a positive one or is it perhaps a negative one? When one thinks for example how the life of Jesus has reverberated across the world for over 2000 years, what is the impact that your life and my life is having on others and the world. Amen.