Sermon for July 24,2005

I'm late posting this because of all our traveling. This is the second sermon of four on prayer.

Prayer and Faith
Luke 7:1-10

Introduction: When Diane, Matt and I went to Japan a few years ago one of the things that impressed me was all the vending machines. You could buy almost anything from a vending machine including beer. There were vending machines everywhere. The thing about vending machines is, you put money in and you get out something you want. If what we want doesn’t come out then we get angry. That results in several deaths a year in this country when people rock the vending machine to get something out. But what if vending machines were more like slot machines, you put money in and you may get something back once in a while. Would you use the machine?
I. The Problem of Faith and Prayer
In a crude way this is the problem many people see with prayer. You can’t rely on consistent results. Of course this attitude comes out of our western pragmatic view of how things “should” work. Or people may see prayer as a lottery game, if you play often enough you will win sometime. Is faith the golden coin of prayer, the thing that makes it work?
It is not hard to find people who think this way. There are all kinds of people who tell you a miracle is possible if you just have enough, or the right kind of faith. And if you don’t get the miracle then something is defective in your faith. People sometimes even use this miracle story to support such views. I think we will learn something different.
I will not be answering all the questions about faith and prayer in this lesson but I hope that what we read here can tell us something about prayer and about faith.
Today’s story is amazing in several ways. First, the healing takes place at a distance without Jesus ever seeing the sick person. This was unusual in Jesus’ day as it is in our day. Jesus hadn’t seen the person, evidently didn’t know the servant’s name but those things are not limits on God’s power.
But even more remarkable is the fact that the person petitioning Jesus is a Roman soldier, a Gentile. Luke’s gospel is constantly finding faith in unusual places with unusual people. I think Luke, being a Gentile himself, was attracted to those kinds of stories. It was, however, shocking to many Jewish people who thought they had a corner on faith and on God’s power.
II. The Faith of a Soldier
What is the faith of this soldier that Jesus thinks is ‘great’? One thing we learn is that the centurion had heard about Jesus. Every indication is that this man may have been a “God fearer”, a non-Jew who was coming to believe in the Israelite God. Where did he hear about Jesus? Since he had helped build the synagogue he may have gone there to pray and to hear scripture read. People were talking about this unusual rabbi and his amazing power and teaching. The centurion also asked others to intervene, to petition Jesus on his behalf. He felt unworthy to approach Jesus directly but his need was great.
But I believe his faith is seen best in his understanding of Jesus and his power and authority. He saw a parallel between his position and authority and that of Jesus. Jesus had already done many miracles in Capernaum. At Jesus’ word demons had been cast out of people, sicknesses had been healed, and paralyzed people had been made whole. The authority to command is what the centurion saw in Jesus. He has no doubt about Jesus’ ability to do what he asks. But he wasn’t certain what Jesus would do. Once Jesus agreed to help he knew there was no reason for Jesus to come physically, that Jesus’ word, his command, would be sufficient.
The centurion was a man under authority. What does that mean? He was used to giving commands and being obeyed. He was also used to receiving commands and obeying them. I imagine he understood what it was like to obey orders that he could not see a reason for. He knew what it was like to be petitioned by people around him. He had probably see it all: favors asked by friends and strangers, bribes offered, promises made, and on and on. The centurion seems like a good person, not corrupt or arrogant but he knew sometimes he could grant people’s requests and other times he couldn’t, because he was a person under authority. Now it was his turn to ask, to petition, and to see if his request would be granted.
Jesus was amazed. He was amazed at his understanding of the workings of a spiritual realm that his fellow Jews had difficulty grasping. He was amazed at his humility. He was amazed at his faith. He had not found this kind of faith in Israel, and remember his disciples were standing there also when he said this.
III. Prayer and Faith
We can observe several things about this story of prayer and faith. The centurion approached Jesus in an attitude of humility. As one of the most powerful men in that area we might almost expect an approach that was full of demands, pride and flaunting of position but we don’t see that. Such approaches and attitudes have little influence on those with true power.
The faith of the centurion was also one recognizing the conditional nature of prayer. He had no doubt that Jesus could heal his servant but the question was: would Jesus do so? He understood the possibility of a “no” to his request. This is hard for us to understand from where we stand. Why does God answer some requests and not others? Is there something wrong with me, with my faith? These are the wrong questions. The real question is, “Can I trust God even when the answer is not what I want?” Or an even a better question is, “Will I obey God no matter what happens in my life?” That takes a mature understanding of God and prayer, something the Centurion had, but most in Israel did not.
I wish I had an answer to prayer but maybe the answer is to see God as more than a heavenly vending machine. God, the creator of heaven and earth, is merciful and generous but we can’t manipulate him, we can’t control him, we can only trust him and obey him, Isa. 50:10.