Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany
When Jesus heard it, he marvelled
Epiphany is the season of marvells, of wonders, the season of signs which teach us something about God and about what God seeks for our humanity. “Be not wise in your own conceits,” Paul advises us because what is wanted is to be wise about God and about the will of God for our humanity. That is always a check on human presumption, being wise in our own conceits, and a check on that equally dangerous and destructive aspect of our fallen humanity, our anger and our desire for revenge. All such things arise from our pride and conceit which deny the wisdom of God wherein alone we find grace and healing and peace. We are to act out of what we learn about divine wisdom and divine power.
This challenges human wisdom and human arrogance and conceit. The lessons of the Epiphany show us what God seeks for our humanity. Not just the healing of our bodily infirmities but the healing of our souls, not rendering “evil for evil” but “overcom[ing] evil with good”. That means acting out of the grace of God’s goodness made manifest in Christ Jesus. In that way there is even the possibility of our becoming a wonder and a marvel not to ourselves but to God.
Today’s Gospel reading presents us with two healings: the healing of the leper from within Israel and the healing of the Centurion’s servant, a healing of someone from outside Israel. Such healings show us the universal aspects of the Epiphany. The things of God are made known for all. God cannot be the possession of simply a few; God is God and so for all. And so he must be made known to all. Such is the necessary missionary impulse of the Christian Faith. We cannot keep God to ourselves and our relationship with God shapes the quality of our relationships with one another. The word gets out as the second miracle clearly shows.
The Epiphany Gospels teach us something about the nature of God through the humanity of Jesus. The healing miracles are just that, things which have to do with divine wisdom and divine power made manifest in Jesus. God who is the author of all life is the God of the healing of all life, sometimes indirectly through human arts and skills, and sometimes directly as in the Gospel miracles. These miracles show us that God seeks our good as found in him. Both the Jewish leper and the Roman Centurion understand that power and goodness in Christ. They both come to him with a desire, the one for himself, the other for his servant.
