Centurion, slave, elders and Jesus – 31 May 2013

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.  A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death.  When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.  When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”  And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “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.  For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me;  and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.”  When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health. [Luke 7: 1-10]

Why did the church remember this story?  It’s not a specially dramatic healing story.  The slave hadn’t died.  It may have been a female slave – Luke doesn’t tell us.  This slave is described as valuable property.  The Greek doesn’t say the centurion loved his slave, but rather that he valued the slave highly – the Greek is really the word for something expensive.  Some commentators think it is a code for a gay relationship between the centurion and the slave.  We tend to see that everywhere these days, I think.  But we can say that if it was such a bond, it would have been unexceptional in Roman society, but forbidden in Jewish culture.  So it would be remarkable that the Jewish elders sent to get help.  Incidentally, the narrative does not say that Jesus healed the slave, only that the slave got better quickly. 

I think the church preserved and told this story because it is about normal, familiar social barriers coming down.  The centurion, the local military commander, had made friends with the Jewish community and had actually built them a synagogue.  That was not regular Roman policy.  So the Jewish elders thought something could be done for the centurion, since his slave was ill, if this wandering healer would co-operate.   This is the magic in the story.  He loves our people, said the Jewish elders to Jesus – not a bad message in our age and culture of all levels of anti-semitism and other forms of ignorant prejudice. 

Then we have the lovely account of tangled humility.  The centurion thinks he is unworthy to have Jesus come into his house – yet he seems to think Jesus has the same lofty authority he himself has:  I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.”  But Jesus sees it all as faith.  Never mind the centurion’s hopelessly mixed motives.  For Jesus, faith and human neediness are very closely related.  The pagan Roman soldier needed his valuable servant to be healed.  The servant certainly needed to get better – a little point that doesn’t get mentioned in the narrative.  There is always need and neediness, no matter what power or authority we may possess.  The story tells us that God hears our neediness as faith, rather than our true-blue religious adherence.    Contemplative people are learning not to be afraid of our neediness any more.  The silence and stillness teach us the poverty of parading of any kind.  The centurion would learn that too, if he became a follower. 

Bearing witness – 24 May 2013

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.  You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.  [John 15: 26-27]

So in one sense it is a simple process.  Jesus “sends” the Spirit of Truth, who “testifies” to us, says Jesus.  The Spirit’s testimony is about God.  We then “testify” to the world, which means to our culture and environment, where we are, in our lives as we live them.  As people like to say so misleadingly these days, it’s as simple as that.

Testify is to bear witness.  Jewish survivors of the Holocaust believed they were under an obligation to bear witness.  Bearing witness is a fundamental human activity in any decent community.  The Mosaic Code itself, the Ten Commandments, actually devotes one commandment to prohibiting the bearing of false witness.  And indeed, in what Jesus is talking about, the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, not falsity.  If it is of God it is true, and we are to receive that truth and to bear witness to that truth.  It may not be so much by anything we say, teach, preach, write – it is much more likely to be in the ways we are able to relate to others, the ways we react to adversity, the ways we pursue mercy and understanding.  It may well sometimes be more in the things we avoid saying than in anything we do say – in our silences as much as our noise. 

It all begins however in our deep awareness of the Spirit of Truth – God, in Christ, deeply and lovingly inspiring those of us able to be still, receptive, paying attention.   The Spirit of Truth assumes occupation of our lives.  It displaces self, more and more, as the days and years go by.  The Greek word used here meaning “testify”, “bear witness”, is martyreo  (μαρτυρεω) from which comes directly the English word martyr.  You bear witness only with your life – dead or alive, as we say, hopefully alive -- a life that is being indwelt and changed and unified by God. 

I hasten to add that, if this seems far too heavenly and impossible for us, we have only to think of people we have met along the way whose lives bear witness from their inner commitment.  It is not out of this world or in any way unreal.  The Spirit exists to do just this work.  Christian Meditation is a process of seeing the barriers and impediments brought down, the blockages cleared – in a discipline of stillness, silence, trust, consent to God. 

The Spirit of Truth – 17 May 2013

... the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. [John 14: 17]

It is important to understand that contemplative life and prayer is not some cosy escape route from difficult truth and the often harsh realities of life.  Just the opposite.  These days, when I don’t inhabit a pulpit any more, there is sometimes a distant urge to get back up there and say some of the things I might have said more clearly long ago.  For instance, that there is only one truth in the universe.  There is not one truth of mathematics and another truth of God.  There is not the truth of science and the truth of religion.  There is not one truth of nuclear physics and another truth of the Bible.  It is not a question of what you or I believe, or what we call our faith, but of what is, whether we believe it or not.  But, as St Paul said, we see what is, dimly – darkly, says the KJV – the Greek word is actually enigma.  The contemplative person, through prayer, silence, stillness, is learning to live with this inescapable mystery – and it actually comes to many as a very great freedom. 

Jesus, according to John’s Gospel, said that his followers would come to know the Spirit of Truth.  Well, I think we do, once we discover how to hold our tongues, be still and listen to God’s silence.  One of our important contemplative writers, Kathleen Norris, went to a church in Chicago where the minister was actually a highly qualified scientist.  He told her of what he called a wonderful irony – he said the science that many Christians had felt over the centuries to be our greatest threat... is now teaching us the ancient truth about mystery, a truth that once long ago was ours – that when it comes to ultimate truth, the most appropriate posture is modesty, silence, reverence, not propounding, shouting, condemning, excommunicating.

... the Spirit of truth, says Jesus, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  There is that word abide again.  To the writer of John’s Gospel this is a very special word.  Jesus speaks to his disciples of a mutual abiding, he in them and they in him.  It is more and deeper than simply belonging or believing, or doing lots of good works.  It is a relationship not negotiable, and it certainly has nothing to do with the contemporary wisdom of keeping your options open, never burning your bridges.  This abiding embraces doubt and mystery.   Jesus’s disciples do not understand everything.  Typically, we understand very little.  But we are learning to set ego to one side – and it is that which admits the Spirit of Truth, the humility and attention to see and understand, and to embrace the mystery.  We find we are no longer afraid of truth – if it is true, then it is of God. 

Completely one – 10 May 2013

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. [John 17: 20-21]

But the world looks at us and sees hopeless disunity.  Historians can see that back in the days when the church was more or less one, that unity was enforced, often brutally, by both church and state.  You can have the appearance of unity if you are powerful enough to enforce it.  I am always amused to see parishes and schools named after St Thomas More, Henry’s pious Lord Chancellor.  But Thomas More unblinkingly executed numerous protestants who would not return to Rome – and he himself got executed by Henry, as we know, because Henry required unity around Henry’s agenda.  However Jesus expected his disciples to behave, I feel it was not like that. 

But if I may speak as a survivor of the now almost forgotten Church Union negotiations in this country back in the 1960s and 1970s...  What we mainly discovered was what we should have known, that unity does not come by negotiation, by conference.  There was much good will around at that time, but in the end nothing much changed. 

Jesus points to something much more basic.  Jesus’s disciple shares in the unity Jesus knows with his Father – May they be in us, Jesus says.  The disciple enters into another way of living.  It is not possible that Jesus’s disciple now has enemies, or hierarchies exercising control.  When Jesus touches on matters of power and precedence, in the Sermon on the Mount, he states categorically, It will not be so among you. 

Unity begins not by treaty or agreement, but in a changed heart.  Our prayer constantly invites us to live deeper and better than our inner dividedness, our fears, our memories.  In silence and stillness, God’s Spirit is able to begin and continue a work of re-creation in us, helping us to set aside what we are afraid of, and all that poisons life and hinders our inner unity and our relationship with God’s world.   I suppose we are always tempted to assume we would be naked and vulnerable without our inner demons and accumulated memories, handicaps, whatever they are.   But in the silence we are able to get past the fear of letting go these things.  Unity within very soon leads us to become agents of unity around us, where we are and live. 

Peace I leave with you – 3 May 2013

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  [John 14: 27]

Last week we touched on how, in Jesus’s teachings, the opposite of love seems to be not hate, but fear.  Why are you afraid, Jesus frequently asked people.  Last week the gospel lesson included Jesus’s new commandment, that you love one another – and we could see that a major barrier to love is fear of all sorts of things.  In the gospel this week Jesus says he leaves them peace, and he adds, Do not let your hearts be troubled... do not let them be afraid.  In the First Letter of John we learn, There is no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear [I John 4: 18].

Peace, in the language Jesus knew, is the Hebrew shalom.  There is no one English  word for this.  Health, wellness, justice, inner joy, absence of hostilities, belonging within one’s community – all these come into it.  But perhaps the thing to note in this statement from Jesus is that peace is a gift.  We receive it, rather than generate it around a conference table.  Peace is what God gives and we receive.  And then peace may start to happen around men and women of peace.

Christian Meditation is very much a matter of confronting our fears.  The invitation to love often seems impossible, or far too remote for us, because we know our fears.  Much of the time we are preceded in life by our defences, in case we get hurt.  With some it is defence against difference – people feel safe with familiarity... “the tried, trusted and true”, my Scottish grandmother would say.   Racism is a direct product of fear, for many.  Fear of change is manifestly a problem for many.  And these days, the fear of ageing, the loss of youth and strength, the onset of wrinkles, the loss of control, fear of becoming dependent, fear of dementia – and fear of death.   

The silence and stillness of our prayer is the context in which love can overcome, steadily, as time goes by, our deepest fears.  A work goes on which we would be powerless to do ourselves.  Our stillness is our consent to God doing this work in us, enabling us to let go of even the fear of mortality. 

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  

This is how Lady Julian of Norwich was able to say that all would be well.  It was never, as it is often quoted today, some pious defiance hurled against reality.  It is simply that Lady Julian is at peace within herself.  She is not afraid, and she has become a teacher of peace.