THE VALUES OF POWER

Presenting Engagement: the wheel o’ wisdom.
In a variety store, on a shelf stockpiled with eye catching nic-nacs, somewhere between the rubber chickens and the spring loaded packs of gum that snap your finger when you try to extract a juicy stick, somewhere in there I happened upon a rather unusual spiritual resource one day.

In this age of sophisticated electronic gizmos, its low tech simplicity caught my eye. It’s just a wheel centered on top of another wheel and as you rotate the top wheel an arrow points to labels along the perimeter of the bottom wheel. Windows display various attributes of the subject that you have selected by the positioning of the arrow. The title of this nifty cardboard object is: “Wheel O’ Wisdom” and it describes itself as a tool for choosing one’s religion, a guide for the savvy convert.

Say you want to find out if a particular sect is for you. Don’t get crow’s feet wrinkling your brow pondering deep thoughts about what all it would mean for your life. Just point the arrow and read the description, the drawbacks and the perks. Read about the accessories you’ll need. In one particular window labelled “potential new friends” you can find out how many card carrying members there are.

Take the Protestant religion for instance. Actually, I didn’t know before that Protestantism is a distinct religion rather than a branch of the Christian religion. The wheel describes Catholicism as the original Christianity.

But Protestantism is described with a two sentence summary of the Reformation. You learn that faith and grace are enough for salvation plus you can commune with God without an intermediary. For accessories, you’ll need a Bible on your night stand and a pro-Jesus bumper sticker. The drawbacks are that Protestantism is easily confused with de-spiritualized Christmas consumerism. The perks are that this is a mainstream religion that is part of the social power structure with flexible worship practices. If you join this group you can take the moral high road and will gain 465 million new friends.

Of all the thirty religions listed on the Wheel O’ Wisdom, the other one that grabbed my attention most was Consumerism. It’s described as a belief that one can be fulfilled by consuming and that self-worth is defined by economic value. Drawbacks include the fact that overused credit leads to spiritual bankruptcy. The perks are that there are few rules and plenty of toys for folks with ample disposable income. This is the religion that Protestantism can lapse into when it becomes de-spiritualized.

But that de-spiritualized religion sounds an awful lot like the social philosophy of many people- even Christians, whether they are Protestants or followers of that original Christianity.

Well, that’s very interesting but you’re wondering what all that has to do with a first century centurion and Jesus’ healing of a slave. Aren’t you?

Biblical Context: what is going on in the text?
We’ve read today how Jesus healed a Roman centurion’s slave because of the centurion’s faith. But what is this story is really all about? Let’s look deeper into the details.

In the Greco-Roman society of the first century, patronage was the order of the day. Clients supported the power of their patrons and patrons rewarded the loyalty of clients with material benefits. Our centurion occupied a particular rung in a very precise social order. He was a client of elite Romans farther up the ladder and below him were clients of his own.

Centurion was the rank of an officer who comanded one hundred soldiers so he was a middle level patron in the big picture but in his small, garrison town of Capernaum he probably wielded significant power. The Jewish elders who formed the delegation were his clients and in return for their loyalty this patron built them a synagogue.

The remarkable thing about this centurion is that without ever having met Jesus, without even being a Jew himself, he understood that Jesus was a powerful figure. And having recognized him as a figure of power, the centurion placed Jesus within the patron/client social order well ahead of himself.

In the first century this would have been scandalous.

So why does Luke give us this narrative with all the details? Why does Luke tell of the centurion’s remarkable act through the social setting of patronage?

Matthew relates a shorter version of the same tale but without all the social details.

He speaks of the centurion’s unquestioned military power and how when he orders something it happens. Matthew’s centurion seems to have faith that Jesus has the same power to produce an immediate, obedient affect in healing the slave.

Matthew’s account sets this absolute faith of a Roman over against the lack of faith Jesus has found in Israel among people of his own faith tradition. Matthew concludes with strong conviction that the gentiles are the ones who have faith and will inherit the kingdom of God. Matthew emphasizes that the Hebrews will never believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

But I think Luke is emphasizing something different, something less obvious, something more subtle, something a lot more significant. Luke is telling us something about faith and the value and values of power.

Explication of Text: What’s it all mean?
One of the more intriguing aspects of scripture is that God’s truth is often presented as a reversal of what the reader expects or perhaps considers normal.
What makes the Bible so enduring is that these reversals still work thousands of years after oral accounts of divine witness were first handed down. That means that human nature has remained consistent for thousands of years because what readers expect and what readers consider socially normal has remained consistent over all that time.

Truth can still be recognized just as it was in the first century.

And the truth-revealing reversal in this gospel reading is the scandal of the centurion giving up power to someone who should be considered a client according to the social order of the day.

Jesus might be a powerful Jewish healer but he is still a Jew. He is still a subject of the Roman military occupation of the Eastern Mediterranean. He might be more powerful than the Jewish elders of Capernaum but not more powerful than the least Roman soldier.

But the centurion seems to realize that Jesus is not just another local Israelite who wields some kind of local political or social power. Jesus’ power is other worldly. Jesus commands supernatural events. Jesus has the ability to heal. Jesus commands unclean spirits to depart from people and they depart. Jesus commands the cleansing of lepers and they become clean. Jesus forgives the sins of a paralytic and the man gets up and walks.

In the face of this other worldly power, the centurion understands a truth about the value of his own power. His own power in the chain of patron/client has strict limits and cannot heal anyone. It can’t do anything supernatural. It can’t do anything miraculous. It can build a synagogue or a church or a civic center but it can’t get you into heaven.

When it comes to saving the life of his servant the centurion’s power has absolutely no value at all.

The centurion recognizes the truth that Jesus’ power is the only power that has value and so the centurion lowers himself in esteem before the Hebrew prophet. “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof… only speak the word and my servant will be healed.”

Listener Context: How does this relate to my life?
The limits of power are a hard truth to comprehend and maybe harder to accept.

Remember the meeting between Jesus and the wealthy young man who wanted to know how to inherit eternal life? The young man had kept all the commandments since childhood and yet he went away sadly because he realized he could not do the one thing that was required. He could not give up his wealth.[i]

He could not give up the very thing that gave his life value and meaning. The very thing that gave him high standing in the patron/client social order. Yet the thing this young man cherished most had nothing to do with faith in God and his personal righteousness in terms of obeying the ten commandments was not enough to gain him eternal life.

The societies that the Roman centurion and the wealthy young Jew lived in were separated by ethnicity and religion but they had great similarity. Both societies placed power and status as the center of value.

The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr talked about centers of value in religious societies and church congregations. He said that the center of value is the thing that is worshipped above all other things. He showed how religious people can claim to worship God and yet actually emphasize other elements of their culture more.

It’s important to identify what thing occupies the center of value in our own lives.

It’s an important question because it’s so very easy to live our lives according to centers of value that have only limited power. The power to command people. The power to accumulate material possessions. The power to build things or tear things down.

Sometimes we even label these centers of value with the title of “God.”

That’s what I like about the simple little cardboard wheel. By offering descriptions, perks, and drawbacks of various religious philosophies, the wheel identifies the value of each one as it is defined by our society. It defines religions based on relative centers of value.

If you value self-fulfillment through material consumption then consumerism is for you. If you value rational pragmatism and self-determined moral rules then atheism could be your thing. If you choose your religion because you value friendships above all else then without a doubt Islam offers the most value for you. It has over a billion and one quarter members.

It’s a big, wide world out there and there are lots of social and religious choices.

Conclusion: What’s the Point?
But before you spin the wheel and make your choice, consider one thing. Consider the truth that the centurion realized.

Human power is severely limited.

It cannot change your life. All the technology and science in the world cannot heal your spirit. Human power cannot forgive your sins or bring you peace. No power from this world can do any of those things.

Only the power of God in Christ can do that.

And what must we give up in order to feel the affect of this power in our lives?

Well, Jesus does not ask us to give up everything of this world. He is not asking us to live impoverished lives or become a hermit. He is not asking us to abandon joy or put aside human relationships or beauty crafted by a human hand.

He only asks us to put the things of this world second.

And that is exactly where things of this world belong because the power of God does something unique. It imparts to us certain divine values by empowering the human spirit.

It empowers spiritual health and spiritual prosperity.

It empowers goodness, kindness, and mercy.

It empowers joy and human fulfillment.

It empowers the love that binds wounds and quells human divisiveness. It spans the divide of hatred.

The power of the love of God through Jesus is the one thing we human beings cannot manufacture or engineer and yet it’s the one thing we cannot live without.

So today, right now, let us resolve to value the power of God’s love over all other things in our lives. And let us resolve to live with joy as disciples of Christ Jesus.

AMEN.

[i] Luke 18:18-30; Matthew 19:16-30