“And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him”
It is a poignant and touching story that speaks to the fears and the experiences of countless parents down throughout the ages. It is a story about a father’s concern for his son who is said to be “at the point of death.” The father is described as “a certain nobleman.” Clearly status and wealth are of no use in the face of death. “What helpes honour or worlde’s bliss”, a fifteenth century English medieval lyric puts it about the fact of mortality. “Death is to man the final way.”
And yet, as a 14th century tutor at Oxford wonderfully tells his students,“live each day as if you are to die tomorrow; study as if you are to live forever.” To study is to pay attention to words and the power of words, and, most especially, here, to the word of Christ.
We forget that we can be profoundly touched by words. Words can make or break our day, raise us up or put us down. How and what we think and say to one another is important. It is important to our spiritual health especially we might say.
Today’s epistle reading from Ephesians abounds with military imagery but in an entirely spiritual context, the idea of a spiritual struggle, the cosmic struggle between good and evil which is not about “wrestling against flesh and blood” but something much more serious:“against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” This must not be misconstrued as gnostic dualism – dividing the world into them and us in which we demonize the other and pretend that we are the good. Such conflict narratives only contribute to the forms of spiritual wickedness that Paul is highlighting.
There is a struggle, to be sure, but the struggle is always first and foremost in us. It is the struggle to be defined by the good, by God’s Word and truth and not by “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” More than thirty years ago, the great English doyenne of mystery novels, Dame P.D. James, wrote a wonderful novel with the title “Devices and Desires.” Against the strong recommendation of her editors, she refused to provide an explanation of the title on the grounds that every educated person should know the reference. This was long before our current fascination and obsession with our digital devices which, paradoxically, reveal only too well “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” The phrase comes from the General Confession at Morning and Evening Prayer in the Prayer Book: “we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.”
The story of Cain and Abel is often read moralistically and in an after-the-fact manner. It is about fratricide, to be sure, and contributes to the long, sad and sorry tale of all the ‘cides’ of human history: patricide, matricide, homicide, genocide, suicide. Yet it belongs to the immediate fall-out from the Fall as a story which reveals the darkness at the heart of our humanity when there is no order, no law, no moral structure, no ethical principle. It is about what happens when we are quite literally left to “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” We are prey to those destructive emotions of anger, of fear, of revenge, of the will to hurt and destroy. The story is told precisely to awaken us to the need for the light of the law, the light of moral order that belongs to the history of our humanity. In Genesis, that is captured in the stupendous idea of covenant. A covenant is not the same thing as a contract; it is something stronger and expresses what is assumed in the idea of a contract where two parties agree about what each owes to the other. That presupposes a transcendent rational principle; the idea of being held to our words.
The idea of covenant is about what is established by God. It does not and cannot come from us. It reminds us that God is the principle of truth and order, the truth and order which we absolutely need and recognise that we need. In Genesis, the first covenant is the Noahic covenant, the covenant that God makes with Noah. That story belongs to the mythological chapters in Genesis. Through the symbolism of the rainbow, we are reminded of God’s commitment to his creation, a created world which we have messed up but which God has cleaned up and re-established through something more explicit and which requires our recognition; in this case, the sign of the rainbow. With the story of Abram, we then step into history, as it were, and learn about the Abrahamic covenant which is so important for Jews, Christians and Muslims. That covenant is about the promised land and the promised son through which “all the nations of the world shall be blessed.” And then post-Genesis, in Exodus, there is the fuller explication of the idea of covenant in the Mosaic Covenant, the ten commandments.
You can see in this brief overview a kind of progress in which the covenant is made more and more explicit rationally and by way of words. This is the background for our Gospel story which is about the power and truth of God’s Word. The nobleman initially thinks that Jesus needs to make a house-call, and “besought him that he would come down and heal his son.” Jesus observes, not just about the nobleman but about our humanity in general, that “except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.” We want visible, tangible, empirical proof; we want “signs and wonders.” The nobleman reiterates his request and reveals its deeper assumption. “Sir, come down ere my child die,” he says, as if the healing he seeks for his son requires the physical presence and the immediate touch of Jesus. But Jesus simply and beautifully says to him, “Go thy way, thy son liveth.”
John tells us, and this is the great insight of this Gospel story, that “the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him” and makes his way home only to be met by his servants who tell him that indeed, “thy son liveth.” The man asks his servants when did his son begin to amend and realizes that it was “at the same hour, in the which Jesus had said unto him, Thy Son liveth.” The further consequence of his being touched by the word, the word which conveys healing and mercy whether near or from afar, is that “his whole house” believed. All because of being touched by the Word of Christ.
We are to “put on the whole armour of God” for the struggles in our lives. Paul offers a summary of biblical image in terms of armour: “the breast-plate of righteousness”; our feet being “shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace”; “the shield of faith”; “the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit,” which, he explains, “is the word of God.” These things all inform our fervent “prayers and supplications in the Spirit.” It is all about our participation in the mystery of the Gospel wonderfully illustrated for us in the Gospel story of the healing of the nobleman’s son, both touched by the Word. And so may we.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXI, 2018