Distance Does Not Matter
Luke 7:1-10
Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)
He was never there.
That realization struck me today. And, no, I'm not talking about finally figuring out what was going on in The Sixth Sense. I picked that one up the first time I saw it. I'm referring to the centurion in this week's gospel passage. It's a bit of poor reading on my part, but I had glossed over the fact that the man asking Jesus to heal his servant never actually spoke face-to-face with Jesus.
The first time he sent the Jewish elders who basically said, "We know he's a centurion, Jesus, but he's a solid dude. He built our synagogue!" Then when Jesus gets near to the house, the centurion sends his friends with a message for Jesus:
Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.
In my imagination that conversation always took place between Jesus and the centurion. There is a certain amount of drama to that image. This powerful commander over soldiers coming humbly before the Prince of Peace. But he wasn't there. He didn't consider himself worthy. Thus the faith that impressed Jesus so was not in the man's eyes or the way that he spoke. It was simply in this message relayed by the centurion's friends. There is an impressive amount of humility in that posture. And there is an incredible measure of faith. The centurion was trusting solely that Jesus had to power to do what he thought Jesus could.
It makes me think about the fact that God is not bound by time and space. When Paul writes in Romans 8 about how life, death, angels, demons, the present, the future, height, and depth can't stand in the way of God's love for us, he is conveying the reality of God's sheer transcendence. Distance does not matter to God, because there is no distance to God. God's love will obliterate every barrier that could possibly stand in the way.
God with us. God with us always. It makes the seeming distance between us and God collapse in on itself. Jesus was not technically there in the room with the servant who was healed, but he was there. What is cool about the centurion's faith is that it demonstrates how our cries to God can transcend the distance as well. The centurion was never there, but he was. Even though he wasn't standing next to Jesus, as I had long assumed, his faith was demonstrably vibrant and alive to the teacher. The distance between them shrank into nothingness and that household discovered that God was nearer than they imagined.