“THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH AND MERCY”
Saint Matthew 8: 1-13
The 3rd Sunday after The Epiphany: 23 January Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Your God is associated with mountains. Both the English poet John Milton and numerous Church Fathers propose that the Garden of Eden was itself on an elevated hilly or mountain like projection. Then there’s the singular Sinai where God gave Saint Moses The Torah. Ararat, Gilboa, Caesarea Philippi, Olivet, The Mount of Transfiguration (Olivet), numerous others, and, the “place of a skull”: Calvaria.
When The Lord was showing forth His Person, His Divinity for those blessed enough to receive that revelation, He was very popular: “great multitudes followed Him.” If someone gave you free food, or better yet, if you had been close enough to the “12” and the small baskets which the food just kept coming from, you would have followed that great Rabbi, maybe Magi. If you had had your limbs restored, your water pots made into wine, your brother exorcised by this strange Galilean…you would have followed Him too.
But when He’s arrested. When He’s slapped around and cuffed about like a common thief; when He’s bound up and drug off for some backroom torture, humiliation, and scourging; well then, maybe the crowds totally dwindle away. Maybe you shuffle off too hoping no one will notice.
Then there’s that leper. Why him and not my husband who died from cancer? Why a leper and not my young daughter who has Downs? These thoughts do come, I mean, if we even think about the events which occurred during Christ’s first “visible” ministry.
As last week when Saint John recounted Cana, so too this week by the pen of Saint Matthew—it’s not the cure of leprosy that is the focus, but HOW; and what does it say about the Who.
“Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be thou clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” The miracle is The Word—The Word of God. What are hearing right now? If you say only a sermon by a man, with some correct statements, some connecting statements, and maybe even a wrong statement every once in a while, then you are not hearing God’s shepherd the way He demands, and invites you to: “he that heareth you heareth Me” [Lk. 10.16a] says Jesus. Luther was convinced that in preaching, his preaching too, the hearers are hearing Christ Himself!
Capernaum was just like Shawnee—it was where Jesus was staying, His “home-base” of operations for Him and His Disciples.
Now we don’t have a military dictatorship and occupation, by law, in Shawnee…yet…but we too have governmental agents cloaked with the full force and might of a militarized county, city, state, and unitary “nation,” that we are forced to deal with. But oh, how wonderful it is when it occurs that one of these functionaries is both a believer in the One True God (One-in-Three and Three-in-One) Christ The God/Man; and even better, infinitely better, when that individual also understands the whole point: the miracle is The Word—The Word of God.
Who catechized that Centurion? Who shared with him, allowing The Holy Spirit to create saving faith in him—giving Him the saving history and present reality of God’s Word as found in the Hebrew Scriptures? We’ll know one day. So also, this is why you all joyously share the salvation story of God for all people with those you come into contact with.
This Roman did more than understand earthly authority. Yes, he knew well from personal experience and from years of service in a tough and disciplined military arm of empire, that: “I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.” He also understood that, as Saint Moses wrote, when God said “let there be light,” there was. He understood, as Saint John would later write, “in the beginning was - - not a miracle of healing - - The Word, and The Word was God; all things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made” [Jn. 1].
If truly this pagan raced, Gentile, who had been converted by The Holy Ghost—by way of The Word of God—believed that the Nazarene teacher could heal his dying servant with but a “WORD,” and did not even need to come in person…what does that say about what the Centurion believed about Jesus; about WHO he believed Jesus to be?
The Christ, The Messiah, The Son of The Living God, Emmanuel!
This is all so; all true, for does not The God/Man marvel at this gift of genuine faith: “verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not even in Israel. And I say unto you that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.”
This is the faith of a restored and converted Saint Peter, Elijah, Paul, and Blessed Virgin.
You dear Saints, are those that come from the east and west. You brothers and sisters will soon be feasting, even this morning, with Father Abraham, Isaac, Israel, faithful unnamed Centurion, and all the kingdom of heaven.
Your gift of faith by Jesus’ grace and merit has caused you to confess: “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof, [be placed on my tongue]; but speak the word only, and my servant (and I too) shall be healed.”
He has. “I baptize you in the The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost.” Do you see foul and brackish sins scrubbed off of you by a spectral and glowing hand? No. You know: the miracle is The Word—The Word of God.
“Take eat My Body, take drink My Blood; given and shed for you for the remission of sins.” Do you feel an electrical current; do you pass into a mystic trance of supernal bliss? No. You know: the miracle is The Word—The Word of God.
God, in Christ Jesus, gives everyone of you exactly what you need: forgiveness, life, salvation, and the FAITH to believe, receive, and hold on to it all in these dark, dangerous, and final days.
The Word Works. The Word is Jesus…for you.
Come this way servants of The Lord, you ARE healed in the selfsame hour!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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