by CCW | 21 January 2018 15:00
It complements Paul’s final words in today’s epistle. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” How? By letting the Word of God have its resonance and its presence in our lives. Letting God be God in us, if you will. Only so can good triumph over evil, even the evil of our own hearts. It complements, too, Paul’s first word here. “Be not wise in your own conceits,” the idea of trusting in our own wisdom rather than being open to the wisdom of God and letting that rule and move in our hearts and minds. Oftentimes it is our own cleverness that is the problem. We are too clever for our own good.
No Gospel story illustrates more profoundly the idea of God’s word resonating in our being and overcoming the evil of our own self-will. Here is Epiphany as Catechism. Catechism simply means instruction, an instruction about the fundamental teachings of the Christian faith. The word itself refers to an echo and, indeed, there was a time where even things like the Lord’s Prayer were prayed in the liturgy by being repeated phrase after phrase, first by priest and then by people.
Repeated. Saying the same things over and over again. However much that seems to go against the grain of more experiential forms of contemporary religion, it belongs to the deeper logic of the Christian faith and to the ways in which we participate in it. We could do a whole lot worse than catechism! It is really all about Christ in us; his word dwelling in us richly.
This year the Epiphany season ends with The Third Sunday after Epiphany and with a Gospel which presents us with an intriguing and important teaching. A double miracle, a healing within Israel – the healing of the Leper by word and touch – and the healing of the centurion’s servant, a healing outside of Israel, the healing not only of a non-Israelite but a healing, too, from afar, a healing by word only. Few stories concentrate for us more wonderfully the nature of the Epiphany, about the manifestation of Christ’s divinity, on the one hand, and about the making known of the divine will for the whole of our humanity, on the other hand. Such a Gospel story in the contrast between a healing within and without Israel sharpens the tension between the universal and the particular. Here is a healing outside of Israel which convicts and confirms an essential Jewish teaching. God is the God of all otherwise he is not God but merely some tribal deity.
And it is “at thy Word.” What is revealed here is the power and the truth of the divine word which by definition is not constrained to the limits of time and space. The healings are both near at hand and far away whether with or without the necessity of physical touch. At the risk of being a bit flippant, Jesus does not have to make house calls! Yet something about the power of the divine word is shown to us not only by the healing from afar of the centurion’s servant but perhaps even more by the centurion’s insight and comment.
He came to Jesus seeking the healing of his servant. That is itself noteworthy. Jesus himself said, “I will come and heal him.” The most amazing thing is the centurion’s response. “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only.” Therein lies the perfect openness to God that is the nature of faith, the very thing which Jesus highlights and celebrates.
He goes on to explain the idea of a word of command being passed on down through the ranks. A lovely image, to be sure. His words show a certain insight and confidence in Jesus. Somehow he has seen in Jesus the possibilities of the divine power to heal and restore. It is not necessary for Jesus to be physically present. Just speak the word! He has every confidence that Word will effect what it signifies. This excites Jesus’s wonder. “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel … Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the self-same hour.”
We live in dangerous times with respect to the use of words where there are the attempts to proscribe certain words altogether or to condemn their users. We know the power of words but in reducing words to matters of power we leave ourselves vulnerable to a kind of domineering attitude by those who presume to be the powerful and the elite, those who presume to tell you what to say and to think. There is always the necessity of speaking the truth in charity, it seems to me, and to avoid saying things that are intentionally hurtful. Yet there is the constant struggle to think and speak not only with charity but with clarity of meaning. For if words are little more than the indicators of ‘hegemonic narrative,’ to use a postmodern phrase, the narratives of those in power, in other words, words and phrases belong entirely not to truth but to power out of which they ‘create’ their own truth, then we have given up on truth altogether. The truth is just what I say it is, the bully bosses of our world and day are saying, channeling Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” without even knowing it.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.” Not a bad definition of our contemporary world. Who is the master of words?
It seems to me we can learn a lot from the divine master of words. The idea of God as Logos, WORD, at least among a number of its interrelated meanings, is particularly powerful and altogether critical for the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions as informed by the Greek philosophical traditions. Perhaps in our current confusions we just might discover – yet again – the dangers of being wise in our own conceits about language and allow ourselves to be opened to the divine word without which nothing is or is thinkable.
The centurion, an officer within the Roman legion, itself the epitome of power in the ancient world, the global force and dominating power, we might say, becomes for us the teacher, the catechist, about the greater power of the divine word of truth. It may be passed on down through the lines in a sequential and physical way, but the deeper insight and instinct is that the divine word is something far greater. It is the truth upon which all truths depend.
The words of the centurion shape the devotional piety of the Church. His words capture the nature of our approach to the sacrament of the altar. “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”
We learn to look to God and to his Word having its resonance in us.
Fr David Curry
Epiphany 3, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/01/21/sermon-for-the-third-sunday-after-the-epiphany-5/
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