The Faith of the Centurion: Humility and the Work of Repentance
Daniel McInnes reflects on the Gospel account of the Roman centurion who comes to Christ on behalf of his suffering servant. He draws out the centurion's remarkable humility, his compassion for one beneath his social standing, and his unwavering faith in Christ's authority to heal. Daniel challenges us to turn that same gaze back on ourselves and to take up the work of repentance and the life of virtue within the Church.
Transcript
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today's Gospel reading is about a centurion who comes to see Christ. It's an important reading because it indicates a turning point in what Christ's ministry is going to be. It's been a while since we actually heard it, so I'll just read it quickly again and then talk about the main points.
It begins: "At that time Jesus entered Capernaum, and a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, 'Lord, my servant is lying paralysed at home, in terrible distress.' And Jesus said to him, 'I will come and heal him.' But the centurion answered him, 'Lord, I am not worthy to have you under the roof of my house; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man 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 he does it.' When Jesus heard him, he marvelled, and said to those who were following him, 'Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, 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.' And to the centurion Jesus said, 'Go; be it done for you as you have believed.' And the servant was healed at that very moment."
It's a very interesting passage, because it's totally something we should not expect. We should not expect to see this, because a centurion is a Roman soldier. In Roman terms, the Jews were not even citizens — they were barely regarded as people. That's how it was in the ancient world: if you weren't a Roman, you were almost subhuman in the eyes of the Romans. So the fact that he comes to Jesus and immediately calls him Lord is a very, very odd, very strange thing to happen. We should not expect to see that.
But we do see it. We see this Roman who, in any other area of his life, would have had total power over any Jew — complete control, able to do whatever he liked — come to Jesus, a peasant who we are told has no comely shape or form, a peasant whom he knows can heal. He comes to him and calls him Lord. It's an amazing thing. When Jesus says how great his faith is, St. John Chrysostom says it's because the centurion sees in Jesus someone who can heal, who has power over creation. He acknowledges that. We know almost nothing about this centurion at all, except that he acknowledges Jesus Christ as having power over creation, the power to heal.
Another amazing thing we see is that he hasn't come for himself. He hasn't come for some nobleman or someone important. He's come for his servant — on behalf of a servant who is suffering, paralysed, and in great distress. Because of that, we see in him something we don't often see in the people around him. In many of the Gospel stories we see people turning away from lepers, turning away from all kinds of people they feel are not the right people. But we don't see that with this centurion. We see him going to Jesus publicly and saying, 'My servant is paralysed and in great distress.' He doesn't even explicitly ask for healing; he simply goes and tells him the situation.
His attention is not on his own reputation. Imagine it: you're a very important Roman official in Capernaum, and in public you go to a Jewish man who, from a worldly point of view, is not important to anybody, and you call him Lord, and you tell him about your suffering servant. What kind of reputational damage would that bring on him in the eyes of other Romans? He is putting himself right down low. That humility — that willingness to ask for help on behalf of another who is completely below him in social status — is something we should look at and wonder at. And Jesus does. He says, 'I haven't seen this faith even in Israel.' What he is saying to the Jews following him is: this should be you. Why aren't you like this? Why aren't you able to humble yourselves and see God in me — to see the power I have to bring healing to you? But they don't see it.
The next amazing thing is that when Jesus says, 'I'll come and heal him,' the centurion says, 'No, don't come. I'm a man under authority. I know what it means to have authority. I know what it means to say to one person, "Come," and to another, "Go," and to say, "Do this." You only need to say the word, and he'll be healed.' Do we have that kind of belief? If I'm being honest, I would say no — I don't have that kind of belief. Where did his come from? Someone like that, through years of military service under authority, gets used to the idea that when someone has authority, things simply happen. In our modern lives we are very averse to being under authority to just about anybody. We don't have that culture, and we don't really know what it means to be under authority. He had been inculturated into it, probably his whole life. So when he says it, he really believes that you just say the word and it will happen. There's no question in his mind, and Jesus sees that.
I think there's also a matter of his own concern for Jesus here. He lives in Capernaum; he knows what Jewish life is like. He knows that if Jesus comes into his house, he'll be ritually impure — Jews couldn't simply walk into a Roman's house and would have to go through purification. He didn't want to put Jesus to that trouble. So there's a concern for Jesus, but also the acknowledgement that Jesus has the power to simply do this. As a man under authority, he knows what that means.
For us, who probably don't have that kind of belief, we can look at him and say: that's a fantastic example. What can we do to cultivate that in ourselves? We too need to be under authority — and we are, in the Church. We're under the authority of our priests. We're given certain things to do, given a life to live, and we try to live it as best we possibly can. As we live that life, we become inculturated into this Orthodox life, and that inculturation brings with it a change, a transformation in us that allows us to have that kind of faith. But without the work, it doesn't come. So it's a challenge to us when we see these things.
I also thought, when reading this story, how often we see people outside the Church and say, 'Wow, that person is so charitable, showing such great love, or such forgiveness.' We see someone who is an amazing example of a virtue, even though they're outside the Church. We can say, 'Thank God for what they're doing, for that virtue they have.' But it's also a challenge for us, just as this centurion is. When we see that virtue in people who are outside, we should be saying, as Jesus said to the Jews, 'Why aren't you like that?' We should turn the view back on ourselves: Why am I not like that? Why is that person out there so charitable, while I struggle to give even a little? Why can that person forgive the most heinous thing, while I struggle to forgive even the tiniest wrong? I turn the view back on myself and say, 'That's a challenge for me. There's something I need to do here.' That's work. That's repentance. That's our life — the life in the Church.
St. Paul, in his epistle today, says essentially the same thing. He's speaking to the Romans, and he says: the life that you lived before — what was its fruit? The fruit of that life was death. Everything you loved, everything you tried to do, all the things you thought were great, they all just lead to death. Everything will pass away. But the life we've been asked to live in Christ leads to eternal life. The virtues we cultivate in the life we have in the Church don't pass away — we take them with us into eternal life. The love we have for one another, the care, the way we speak, the way we act in the world, the way we include people rather than exclude them — all of these things have eternal significance.
So let us be inspired by the centurion — by his example — to work repentance. This life is work, but it's not works that lead to salvation. It is because Christ is saving us, because of the faith that Christ has given us, that we are able to do these things and to work in that way. So, Lord, help us — not just this week, but throughout our entire lives — to cultivate the virtues, to cultivate the things that will pass with us into eternity. Amen.
