“Go thy way, thy Son liveth”
The demand in the Gospel, it seems, is that Jesus should be physically present for an act of healing to be effective. “Come down ere my child die”, the nobleman asks Jesus, having already “besought him that we would come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death”. Something divine is at once recognised and denied in the request. For where the Word is made captive to our desires and demands, then the sovereign freedom of the Word can have no play upon our understanding. To acknowledge the sovereign freedom of the Word, on the other hand, means that our understanding is made captive to the Word of God, not the Word to the immediacy of our desires. Such is faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” It has its play primarily upon our understanding and not upon our senses.
The captivity of our understanding to the Word gives meaning and purpose to our desires without which they are essentially nothing. For where our understanding is captive to the Word, there the Word is allowed to shape our desires. In contrast to the all-absorbing tyranny of the self, they are shaped “according to thy word”. It is “thy will be done” and my will only as it is found in God’s will. Our wills find their place in God’s will through the resonance of that Word in us, that Word taking shape in us according to its sovereign freedom. That means more than “signs and wonders”, namely, what they properly signify: the very nature and wisdom of God himself. “Go thy way, thy son liveth”, Jesus tells him in response to his request. What then? Here is the express interest of John’s Gospel: “The man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.” What is that except his acting upon what he has heard? He gives his understanding over to the Word and places his desire under its power and truth.
“Thy son liveth” stands upon the condition of God having his way with us and not the other way around. The phrase is repeated in the Gospel when the nobleman learns that his son was alive and “began to amend” exactly “at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth”. God has his way with us through our wills finding their place in God’s will. It happens through the play of his Word upon our understanding. The desire for his son’s healing is simply placed with God.
Faith, as Paul teaches, “cometh by hearing” which is what we see in this story. Hearing is one of the most intellectual or spiritual of the senses. We often use it to mean our understanding or assent to an idea. We hear but do we understand what we hear? Isn’t that the constant problem? What is needed is the resonance of that Word in us, its echoing effect on our thinking. Not just in one ear and out the other but our attention to what we see and hear spiritually.
The resonance of that Word in us means a boldness of faith and a quiet confidence of faith in the face of a world which incessantly demands signs and wonders, on the one hand, and completely despairs of God, on the other hand. It means really a deepening of the understanding of the Word which is itself an increase of faith in us. This is part and parcel of the purpose of the Trinity Season in and through the patterns of teaching that it presents. The nobleman came to Jesus with a kind of faith but now that faith is deepened, even deepened into understanding. He heard what Jesus said and went his way with that Word alive in him. He learns on the way that his son lives and asks about “when his son began to amend.” Is this a testing of God’s Word? Or is it not rather the resonance of that Word in him as he went his way? That and that alone allows what is heard by faith to deepen into understanding and to a greater and more complete faith. For as John puts it, the man “himself believed, and his whole house.” Something has been grasped by faith and deepened into understanding.
The Gospel illustrates what Paul is telling us in the Epistle about “putting on the whole armour of God”, but “above all”, he says, “taking the shield of faith”. The Epistle abounds with military images that convey the idea of spiritual struggle and conflict. But above all, it focuses on what helps us to face the dark things of our world and day and to overcome them because they are things with which we wrestle in our own hearts and souls. “Spiritual wickedness in high places” is not simply about the powers of the world outside and distant from us. It is equally about where we are and thus teaches us what is needed on our part. What is that except about “putting on the whole armour of God” precisely that we “may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand”. It can only happen by letting the Word of God have its resonance in us. That is what the Gospel shows us about the meaning of “taking the shield of faith”. Above all else, it is about hearing and letting what we hear live in us.
“Go thy way, thy Son liveth”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 21, Oct. 20th, 2024
8am service of Holy Communion