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.
Jesus’ response shows us the teaching of the Epiphany about the essential divinity of Christ and about the mechanisms or means of the operations of grace. It is, we might say, exactly what we participate in sacramentally through the Liturgy. It is Word and Sacrament. To the leper, “Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean.” To the Centurion, Jesus first,“I will come and heal him”, but after the exchange between them he then says, “Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” God’s power and goodness are not constrained to the limits of time and space.
This the Centurion somehow grasps. Somehow he knows that the healing power of God can reach out and touch and heal us from afar. He has a certain insight into the nature of God and even more into the power and operation of God’s Word. “Speak the word only”, he says, “and my servant shall be healed.” He also has a sense of his own unworthiness, a sense of the incommensurable gap between God and man. “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.” He is not wise in his own conceits as a Roman officer in charge of one hundred soldiers; he accepts that Christ’s word is sufficient.
This occasions Christ’s wonder at the Centurion. It is the wonder of faith, a true faith which does not limit God’s power and wisdom to the narrow confines of our human knowing thus making God subject to us. The wonder of faith is his trust in the goodness of God. He knows about God’s good will towards us as grounded in the absolute goodness of God himself. Such is the miracle and wonder of the Epiphany. It is at once about what is made known about God and about God in us making us a wonder too.
Today’s Epistle and Gospel awaken us to the radical nature of God’s engagement with our humanity and to the power of the Gospel to reach out and touch our souls with the healing grace of God’s mercy and goodness. When we forget that and fall prey to our own conceits, our anger and desire for revenge, we become trapped in the conflicts and enmities of our own souls. We are the enemies not only of one another but enemies unto ourselves. We need the food and drink of God’s goodness to purge our disordered souls with a cleansing and purifying fire. In truth, Paul’s image of “heap[ing] coals of fire on [the] head[s]” of our enemies sounds like revenge but I think it is really about the triumph of goodness which alone transcends the divisions of our hearts. It also seems to me that we are often our own worst enemies. The only cure is God’s goodness overcoming our evil and that means acting upon what we have been taught and learned; in short, living the Epiphany.
Such is the wonder if we like the Centurion are alive to the power and wisdom of God and his goodness for us. Then shall we be touched and healed by his Word proclaimed and his Word celebrated, his Word alive in us to the wonder of God himself.
When Jesus heard it, he marvelled
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany 3, 2019