Interaction at a Distance

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 7:1-10. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

Our Gospel reading this morning tells the story of a healing miracle of Jesus. And while the Gospel tells of many healings by Jesus, this one is a little unusual. 

In most of the healing stories of Jesus, the moment of healing takes place in some kind of close, personal interaction between Jesus and the person being healed. Jesus lays his hands on someone, or he looks intently at someone, or he makes clay and puts it on their eyes, or he tells them to pick up their mat and walk, or he says to them "Your faith has made you well." Usually, in the healing stories about Jesus, there is a moment of direct contact between Jesus and the person being healed, and it is in that moment that the healing takes place. 

But not in this story. In this story, what is remarkable is the lack of any direct contact between Jesus and the recipient of his healing grace. What makes this story remarkable is that it is one of the very few healing stories in the Gospels that show Jesus acting at a distance. 

In fact, the person who needs to be healed, the slave of the centurion, never even appears onstage in this story. He never has a speaking role. Jesus doesn't see him, Jesus doesn't touch him, Jesus doesn't speak a healing word to him – Jesus simply sends forth healing power, and the slave is found to be in good health. This story is remarkable for the seeming disconnect between Jesus and the one who is being healed, the way Jesus reaches across a physical distance to make the healing happen. 

But that's not the only physical distance in the story. The slave never appears onstage – but the centurion doesn't appear onstage, either. The centurion is active in the story, of course – he's the one who reaches out to Jesus, he's the one who asks for the healing, he's the one who tells Jesus he is not worthy to have Jesus come under his roof – but the centurion does all these things at a distance. He never sees Jesus himself. He sends Jewish elders to Jesus to ask for the healing, and he sends friends to explain that it will be enough if Jesus simply speaks the word. But he himself never encounters Jesus eye-to-eye, he himself never has a direct contact with Jesus' healing grace. Part of what makes this story remarkable is the seeming disconnect between the centurion and Jesus, the way the centurion reaches across physical distance to ask that healing happen. 

And it's not just physical distance that's being crossed. The man asking for healing is, after all, a centurion: he is a Roman soldier, a commander of Roman soldiers; he is part of the occupying army that is making Jewish life very difficult. He himself may have come to love the Jewish people; but he has no reason to expect they will have anything but fear and mistrust for him. He has no reason to expect that Jesus will have anything but fear and mistrust for him. So reaching out to Jesus to ask for healing means crossing a distance of suspicion and hatred that, as far as the centurion knows, could be a huge separation between them.

And of course that distance of fear and mistrust works the other way, too: as a Roman commander, the centurion would have known all about Zealots, Jewish patriots who called for armed uprisings against the Roman occupiers. To a lot of Romans, Jesus looked just like that kind of Zealot. After all, he preached about a kingdom that was not the kingdom of Caesar – and to Roman military ears that could sound like insurrection. The formal charge against Jesus at his trial for Crucifixion was precisely that he claimed to be a king in place of Caesar. To the centurion, Jesus could have looked like a shady, dangerous character indeed. So reaching out to Jesus to ask for healing means crossing a distance of fear and mistrust on his own part, as well. 

And yet all of these distances – distance in space, distance in social standing, distance in military might, distance in fear, distance in politics – all of these distances are crossed in the act of reaching out in grace. Even though Jesus and the centurion and the slave never come into direct contact with each other, they are still connected, they still interact at a distance, because of the love of God that surrounds them and upholds them and brings them together, even though to all external appearances they seem to be apart. 

In fact, I think that is the good news of this story – even more than the good news of healing, the good news of this story is that the love of God revealed to us in Jesus surrounds us and upholds us and brings us together in all kinds of ways that cross the distances that to all external appearances keep us apart. Like Jesus and the centurion and the slave in the story, we are all connected – and connected even with people with whom we have no direct contact – because it is the love of God that connects us. 

In a few days a group of youth and adults will leave Trinity for a mission trip to Honduras, where they will work at a school in the community of San Rafael. Now, most of us in the parish will never go to San Rafael, most of us will never see that school, most of us will never have a sense of direct contact with the important work of teaching and life-building that goes on there. But even though we are not in direct contact, we are still connected, because we as a parish support the youth in their mission – we support them by coming to the spaghetti suppers, we support them with our dollars, we support them in our prayers – and the youth carry our support with them when they go to San Rafael. They will literally carry with them cutout footsteps on which are written many of our names, representing many of our gifts. And through the work of those missioners, we as a whole parish will reach out to cross distances of space, and nationality, and poverty, and we will be connected by reaching out in grace in Christ. 

Today we are having a Baptism here at Trinity, as we welcome Lucy Wood Stisser into the household of God and help her begin her pilgrimage of life in Christ. None of us have any idea where Lucy's pilgrimage might take her, what kind of challenges and joys and experiences she might have as she grows up. Chances are that many of us won't have all that much direct contact with Lucy in childhood and youth and adulthood. But we are still all connected with Lucy, because Baptism makes us all one Body in Christ, and every member of the Body is an important influence on the whole Body. We are all connected, because in Baptism Christ reaches out to us in grace and empowers us to reach out in grace to each other, and all kinds of distances are crossed in that baptismal reaching-out. 

And I think we at Trinity have a mission to keep on reaching out in grace, to reach across distances of space and class and race and wealth and fear and mistrust and difference throughout our community, and our region, and our world. The mission of Christ in which we share is not simply to sit here in our church and wait for people to come in, but to go out, to go into the neighborhood, go into the city, go into the county, go where people need us -- just like Jesus was going to the house of the centurion -- and even if we never come into direct contact, our mission is to make connections that can bring healing and reconciliation and faith and love wherever we see that it is needed. The good news of the Gospel for us today is that we can cross all manner of distance to reveal together the grace of Christ. 

May God grant us the courage and the grace to reach across the distances that seem to hold us apart, and to build up our faithful connections in Christ. Amen.