The centurion said in reply,
“Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
only say the word and my servant will be healed.
The centurion was correct in knowing that he was not worthy to receive Jesus into his home. But he didn't allow that fact to limit his belief in what Jesus would do. For ourselves, a sense of unworthiness usually makes us want to flee from the presence of Jesus and not ask him for anything. The centurion realized what we often fail to realize, that what Jesus is willing to do, what he desires to do, is not related to what we believe about what we deserve.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (see Romans 3:23-24).
It was as if the centurion thought, 'If the Lord had to make what I have to offer him the basis on which he would heal my servant then the healing I seek would be impossible. If the Lord's healing was dependent on the state of my house, it would be dependent on my weakness, and my servant would be lost.' But he didn't stop there. He went on to consider how his own authority over his soldiers was powerful even at a distance. He could compel them to come and go and to do what he asked regardless of the condition of those soldiers or how they felt about it before hearing his word of command. Until they heard him they may have felt like sleeping in or tending to their coin collection. But the word of the centurion would, in a sense, empower them to do his will. Their house may have been unworthy, but the external word spoken put it back in order almost of itself. He knew, then, that Jesus too, far more than he, had a power that could not be confounded by his unworthiness, that was not dependent on finding a properly ordered house to function. He had found a power that surpassed even his own human weakness, weakness with which he was apparently very familiar. The authority of Jesus was such that it could not be confounded by the lack of worth on the part of the centurion, nor, for that matter, in ourselves.
And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (see Ephesians 2:8-9).
The faith of the centurion is what Jesus desires to find in our hearts as well. It is a faith that can handle a realistic self-knowledge of our own fallenness and sin but which at the same time reaches out in a sure hope that Jesus is greater than our weakness. Our faith lets us hold self-knowledge, but only in the light of the knowledge of the mercy and the love of God. Self-knowledge apart from the knowledge of God is a bitter, hopeless poison, and it is by such lies that the devil often succeeds in making us stay distant from God. Let us learn from the centurion, and from the words of the mass that he inspired, to trust that there is something that matters more than what we can bring to Jesus.
“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”
And at that very hour his servant was healed.
Jesus is not constrained by those things which are humanly possible or conceivable, nor by those things which we deserve, or for which we have sufficiently prepared. He does not need to merely cooperate with processes at work in nature, as, for instance would a merely human physician. He himself is the author of nature, the very word that holds nature itself in being. It is a simple matter for his power to heal us and make us whole.
He took away our infirmities
and bore our diseases.
We, like Sarah, are often so overwhelmed by apparently unalterable natural realities that we are tempted to laugh when God suggests some new and unguessed possibility. But even though she couldn't help but laugh God did not abandon Sarah, but rather turned her cynicism into joy. He can do so for us as well.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
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