190127 Sermon on Matthew 8:1-13 (Epiphany 3) January 27, 2019

190127 Sermon on Matthew 8:1-13 (Epiphany 3) January 27, 2019

I’d like to focus on the second part of our Gospel reading today that has to do with the Roman centurion.  It is worth our time and consideration when we hear Jesus say that he has not found faith in all of Israel like he sees in the centurion.  There is nothing so important as to have faith, and so it makes sense that we should learn what we can from this person whom Jesus holds out as an example. 

There are two outstanding qualities to this man’s faith that we can see in our text.  First, this man is humble.  Second, he trusts that Jesus is able to do anything and will help him.

We can see that this man is humble by the way that he responds to Jesus’s willingness to come to his house to heal the man’s servant.  The centurion says, “I’m not worthy that you should come into my house.”  Why isn’t the man worthy for Jesus to come and help him?  The short answer is that he is a sinner.  But we are kind of used to that answer since we have received the training that we have in God’s Word.  We know that we are poor miserable sinners.  This can become kind of like a textbook answer where we know what we are supposed to say.  It is something different when we speak by knowledge of our own experience and say, “I am a sinner.  I am not worthy that Jesus should come under my roof.”

Luther liked to talk about painted sins and real sins.  Having painted sins is the way of talking about sin where we say, “Oops, I messed up, but nobody’s perfect.”  This is when we excuse away our sinfulness, while acknowledging that we are still technically sinners.  Having real sins is when we realize that we have offended God by what we have done and that he has every right to be angry with us and punish us.  Real sins are stinky and revolting.  They are the kind of things that you don’t want anybody else to know about because you would be so embarrassed if they knew.  But God knows all that we have done.  Again, here we can have this as a textbook answer: “We know that God knows everything, ergo, he must also know all the sins that I’ve committed.”  Or we can know this by experience: “I know that I have offended God and his angels by my actions.  How can I possibly not be punished in this life by all kinds of tragedy and misery and go to hell in the next?”

When the centurion says that he is not worthy for Jesus to come under his roof he is not rattling off some textbook answer to Jesus.  He certainly isn’t saying this as though these were “some magic words” whereby he can manipulate Jesus into doing nice things for him.  The sin is heavy and hot and stinky.  He says that he isn’t worthy of Jesus coming under his roof because he knows it to be the truth.  He knows that that roof just might come down upon his own head as punishment for the sins that he has committed.  This man’s humility is the first element of the greatness of his faith.

The second element to the greatness of his faith is his boundless trust that Jesus can do whatever he wants to do, and he dares to believe that Jesus will do good to him.  “Just say the word,” he says, “and I know that you can heal my servant.”  He even preaches a little to Jesus.  He tells Jesus that he knows what it’s like.  As a commander in the army he can tell one soldier to go here or there and he goes, or he tells someone to do this or that and he does it.  The word and the command are enough.  And he is a man who is under authority, and yet he can do that kind of thing.  And so of course it is possible that the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given—namely, Jesus; of course it is possible that Jesus can just say the word and it will come to pass by his almighty divine power.

In this second part of the centurion’s great faith we can also hear these words in kind of a wooden, textbook sort of way.  Jesus is God.  God is omnipotent.  Ergo, Jesus can do whatever he wants, even healing by just speaking a word.  Or his grace and his kindness might be turned into theological principle that has to take place, because that’s just the way it is.  The textbook says so.

But this centurion believes in a real Savior, not a painted Savior.  He is not engaging in ideas.  He is speaking, praying, to a person.  And the remarkable thing about it is that he is so sure that Jesus will help him.  He is not praying with a double mind, saying to himself: “Who knows whether Jesus will do what I ask him to do or not.”  No, he says (as you heard him): “Speak the word Jesus and it will be done!”  He is full of joy and confidence.  The sun is brightly shining.  There is not a doubt in his mind.  This is the second part of the greatness of this man’s faith.  He believes that Jesus can do anything, and that he will be kind and merciful to him.

When you put these two parts of the man’s faith together you are left with a picture of his soul that necessarily must remain mysterious.  On the one hand his sins press hard upon him and he knows of God’s hatred for all his iniquities.  On the other hand he has joy and confidence in the mercy of his Savior Jesus.  Those are two very different frames of mind that exist together in one soul.  Here we are treading on holy ground and we dare not try to make it acceptable to our reason, to know exactly what is going on.  Faith is a miracle worked by the Holy Spirit in those who hear of God’s judgement and his mercy.  That’s why it is holy ground, and we dare not make it common, or explainable using psychology or whatever other means.  The Christian at the same time fears, loves, and trusts in God.

Something that we can say about these two parts of faith, though—because the Scriptures teach us about it—is that the two parts are not equal.  They are far from being equal, in fact.  Terror because of our sins is not a permanent fixture in the Christian’s life.  It necessarily remains so long as we live this earthly life because we will not be rid of our sinful flesh until it dies at the end and awaits its purified raising at the end.

Of the two parts of faith that we’ve looked at, the confidence and joy we are to have in Christ being kind to us and loading us up with one good thing after another, is the greater part.  It is eternal, first of all.  Our fear shall cease when we die.  The confidence and joy will grow eternally.  But also in this earthly life, it is better the part, the more important part, the more effective part, the part that is more difficult to receive and keep.  The strength of the Christian life does not consist in moping around feeling like garbage.  Your moping and sulking might seem as though it will earn you some credit with God, but that is a terrible and wicked lie mainly because it seems so plausible.  Your sorrow over your sin cannot make up for what you have done.  The only thing that can make up for what you have done is the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, in spite of and regardless of our sins, we must love and trust in him and boldly make our requests to him like this wonderful centurion: “Just say the word, Jesus, and I shall be healed.”

And this is how we must take the word of Jesus as it is spoken to us today.  When you are forgiven by the pastor or by another Christian, you must not understand that word to be empty or without power.  Jesus says, “Whoever hears you, hears me.”  And in another place he says, “Whosoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven them, whosoever’s sins you retain, they are retained.”  And so when our fellow Christian announces the truth to us we must be certain of it and rejoice in it as if Christ our dear Lord spoke to us himself and said, “I forgive you all your sins.”  Wouldn’t it be amazing to see Jesus in front of us and to hear those words: “I forgive you all your sins?”  He instructs us, by his own word, to regard these words of fellow Christians as being his own.

Or another word that Jesus has left us by which he promises every grace and blessing is baptism.  One of our hymns says over and over again: “God’s own child, I gladly say it: ‘I am baptized into Christ.’”  That’s right!  You are baptized.  You are God’s own child.  Therein lies your status and your strength and your Christianity. 

It might seem as though you will become a better person if you torture yourself or feel really, really bad about yourself and go moping around in sadness.  You show me in the Scriptures where it says that you can save yourself by feeling bad about what you have done.  There aren’t any such passages.  But I can show you passages that say baptism saves, that Christ’s body and blood forgives sin.

In our Old Testament reading Naaman is brought to his senses by his wonderful servants who direct him back to the word that the prophet Elisha spoke to him about with the washing in the Jordan.  They say, “The prophet has spoken a great word to you, will you not do it?”  I can say to you, likewise, “God has spoken great words to you.  Will you not believe them?  Will you still be filled with uncertainty and doubt about whether Jesus forgives you, loves you, and will bring to fulfillment the fullness of your salvation?  Be like this centurion who says, ‘Just say the word, Jesus, and it will be done.’  Jesus wants you to have joy and confidence in him.  Why would you not embrace it, remaining in the cold?”

Since joy and confidence on the one hand, and sorrow and terror on the other, are so different from one another, there has always been a tendency among Christians to want to choose one and neglect the other.  At some points in the history of the Christian Church the people were taught that they should never be joyful and confident.  The seriousness of sin was stressed at these times.  At other times—and I think this is true of the period of history that we have just come out of—joy and confidence have been emphasized but the notion that Christians should ever feel sorrow or terror has been fought against as being unChristian.

The truth, though, is that we need both, but the two things are not equal.  We need sorrow and terror for sin because we still have our Old Adam and we still sin.  God’s Law must still be preached that shows us how impossible it is for us to be blessed because we are so unworthy.  But this is lesser and is passing away and will no longer be necessary once our sinful flesh has died.  The more important, the more powerful, and the more difficult thing to believe and hold to is that God can do more than we can even ask or think, and he is well pleased with us and desires to help us.  Jesus’s atoning sacrifice has brought about God’s goodwill towards us.  Therefore we must be joyful and confident that we are indeed children of God and that a rich inheritance awaits us in the life of the world to come.

Our Gospel reading this morning has given us an opportunity to learn.  In the Roman centurion we see someone who has no confidence whatsoever in himself.  He hates himself, in fact.  But his heart is bounding and joyous in Christ and he has no doubt about him and his mercy.  May it be so also for each one of us.