I want to tell you three stories about three men who wrestled with the authority of Jesus. And none of them met Jesus until they had first achieved phenomenal success in the secular world.
Story One
Sam showed up in worship after he married Cheryl, a lifelong member of the congregation. He had been raised as a secular Jew, and when I met him he was a curious agnostic — eager to argue and debate the fine points of theology. The congregation I was serving has shared space with a Jewish synagogue for over fifty years. Sam joined the Bethesda Jewish Congregation while he continued to worship with us every Sunday morning. When Lucy was born, Cheryl and Sam were faced with the decision every interfaith couple has to make — which community of faith would become their daughter’s spiritual home? Meanwhile, Sam started attending all our adult education seminars and Bible studies, chewing on the faith with great appetite and relish. One day, he called me — wanting to come in and talk with me.
I think I knew what was coming, and I dreaded it. The last thing I wanted to communicate to our trusted Jewish friends down the hall was that we were eager to convert their flock. But when Sam sat down and told me he was ready to be baptized, the tears in his eyes and the passion in his heart could not be denied. He still did not “understand’’ the gospel teachings. He still did not “believe” all the tenets of Christian doctrine. All he knew was that he loved and trusted Jesus and the spiritual authority of this radical, first-century rabbi had become the center of his life.
A month later, Sam knelt in front of 300 people and received the lavish blessing of baptism, one year after Lucy had been baptized on the same spot. All of us present that day had a sense that Sam had come home, and he had something to teach the rest of us about submitting to the authority, the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Jewish rabbi from our sister congregation sent me a letter asking that I read it during the baptismal service. He congratulated Sam on his spiritual courage. He invited him to continue his friendship with the Jewish congregation, and he offered him rich blessings as his spiritual journey continued to unfold.
Story Two
The centurion we meet this morning in Luke’s gospel is a man who well understands the power and the responsibility of authority. He is a commander in the Roman army and he expects and receives the allegiance and obedience of the soldiers under his command. It also appears that although he is a Gentile, he is a friend of the Jews, enjoying their worship, respecting their ethical teachings, and supporting the local community by financing their synagogue. Like Sam, he is a seeker, but not quite yet a believer.
At first glance we may consider this particular gospel account to be a healing story. But the healing is secondary to the trust that this centurion has for a rabbi he has never met. According to the cultural norms of that day, the centurion has more professional authority than this wandering rabbi. But from all that the centurion has heard, from the stories of all the people who have been healed and transformed by Jesus, this Roman soldier trusts the authority of Jesus more than his own. He sends Jesus a message, begging him to come and heal a much loved servant. Impressed by such blind trust, Jesus sets off for the centurion’s house only to be stopped by another messenger. The centurion is so confident in Jesus’ power to heal that he says: “You do not need to come to my house. Just speak the word and I know that my servant will be healed.” My friends, the faith which Jesus instills in this stranger is nothing more and nothing less than the confidence and trust that the centurion has in the authority of Jesus.
Story Three
Matsui was a brilliant physicist doing esoteric research down the street at the National Institutes of Health. He also worshiped in our pews every Sunday with his wife, Suzuki, and their son, Matsui Jr. Both husband and wife were scientists and immigrants-turned-citizens from Japan. Suzuki was a baptized Christian — one of the 2% of Japanese nationals who choose to be Christian in a country dominated by atheists, Buddhists, and followers of Shinto. Matsui was raised in a home with a Shinto shrine but it was more about ritual and appeasing the gods than providing a deep sense of connection and purpose in life. Yet despite this background, there Matsui sat every week being a good father to his son. He would lean forward and listen more intently to the scripture and the sermon than anyone else in the congregation.
Finally one day, I found the courage to stop Matsui at the door and I asked if he would like to sit down and talk about his faith and about the church. He was somewhat startled, but agreed. A week later we met in my study. He told me his story. In just the past few months he had started having vivid dreams and they were all about Jesus. As a child in Japan, he went to a school run by Catholic nuns, and he had learned about the crucifixion and about how Jesus had to suffer and die for human sin. The nuns had instilled in Matsui a deep sense of unworthiness — that nothing could atone for his imperfections except the bloody sacrifice of the cross. As an adult, Matsui kept having dreams about the crucifixion — dark, scary, violent dreams about sin and death and his own unworthiness. But one night, the dream changed and Matsui saw a kind and gentle Jesus hanging on the cross, but bathed in golden light. This luminous Jesus was looking straight at Matsui with love, and in the dream, Jesus reached out to him and embraced him.
As Matsui told me this story, we both cried. His finely honed scientific mind still resisted much of Christian doctrine, but his heart told him that Jesus lives. More specifically he knew that Jesus lives in Matsui. For the first time in his life he felt accepted and loved unconditionally. Matsui was baptized with his son a few weeks later and in that moment, the life of the congregation changed.
When the congregation decided to have a showing of art created by church members, Matsui brought in two huge oil canvases — one of a dark, bleeding Jesus, and one of a bright, loving Jesus. Matsui, like Sam, like the centurion, and like some of us, encountered a living Christ, and he willingly and joyfully submitted to the lordship of Jesus in his life.
My call to ministry emerged in the midst of the second wave of feminism, and I, like many young women in my generation, was eager to confront sexism and gain credibility and authority in my chosen profession. But there was — and is — a problem with all of this. Ministry is all about servanthood. Ministry is all about serving the needs of others. Ministry is all about submitting to the power and authority of God as well as submitting to the power and authority of the church. Needless to say, I have had struggles with this dichotomy between servanthood and authority for all of my forty years as a pastor.
I remember going to a retreat for clergywomen when I was in my early thirties. A feminist biblical scholar was the retreat leader, and she led us through a journey of re-interpreting some of the pivotal stories of scripture. Miriam is as important to the liberation of the Israelites as is her brother Moses. Deborah is an army general on the front lines of the Hebrew people, and her brother Barak is afraid to go into battle without her. Mary is the first disciple, and far from being a shrinking virgin, she is in the upper room when the resurrected Christ appears. She becomes one of the earliest apostles of scripture. How refreshing it is to see the Bible through the eyes of strong women!
The retreat leader said something which unsettled me. She suggested that as strong women leaders in the church, we had to stop calling Jesus “Lord.” A lord means that there has to be a servant and we, as women in the church, had borne the brunt of servanthood far too long. Jesus could be our friend and our teacher, but he could not be our Lord or our Savior. According to this feminist scholar, submitting to any male could no longer be the call for women created in the image of a non-gendered God.
I immediately began to argue with this leader — separating myself from the other women on the retreat. I am not a submissive person by nature and my marriage is as egalitarian as we can possibly make it. But Jesus is different. I implicitly trust Jesus to love me unconditionally and empower me whole-heartedly. His authority of truth, grace, and love is utterly dependable. It is the only dependable authority for living that I know. In company with the millions of Christians who have honored the lordship of Christ during the past 2,000 years, I willingly and lovingly submit my life and my heart to Jesus. Why? Because I trust his love. I trust his wisdom. I trust his authority. I trust that as Lord of my life, he will never lord it over me but instead, empower me to be a free and joyful servant in his name.
Friends, who are the strangers, the foreigners, the seekers in your life that can teach you something about faith? Who can teach you something about trust in the authority of Jesus? Who can lead you to a fresh love for Jesus as Lord? What needs to change so that you can take a leap of faith — trusting that which you don’t understand, listening to the “yes” of your heart instead of the “maybe” of your mind? And what will it take for you to submit yourself joyfully and completely to the authority of Jesus in your life?
The centurion teaches us the first step. Keeping our eyes on Jesus, let us offer these words: “Only speak the word, Lord, and your servant will be healed.”
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.