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Whe Is Worthy? John M. Buchanan
Luke 7: 1-10 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
June 26, 1977 Columbus, Ghio

in a biography of Pope John XXIII there is a poignant paragraph which describes
his first public appearance after his election as the head of the Roman Catholic
Church, Thousands of people had crowded into the great piazza of St. Peter's to see
the new Pope. ‘They watched as a buge tapestry was unfurled over the edge of the
balcony, It was the coat of arms of Pius XII. They saw windows thrown open on
either side of the balcony and groups of Cardinals, having just come from the Sistine
Chapel, standing and watching, too. Wow bugles...cut through the murmuring night...
almost unexpectedly he was there, a solid, thickset figure in white. Other Popes
had been borne to the balcony in portable thrones amid the full splendor of the
Vatican Court. John XXIII came alone and on foot and he stood there so still and
unassuming that seconds passed before most of those below were aware of what had
happened," (I Will Be Called John, Lawrence Biliot, p, 8-9).

It was a humble gesture: so refreshingly different from what the world associ-
ated with the Papacy, And it was followed by many others, the cumulative effect of
which was to make John XXIII one of the most disarmingly winsome personalities in
the modern era, The Roman Catholic Church is a different institution because of him
and so, in many ways, is the Protestant establishment, His special gift was a sense
of perspective, He was neither overwhelmed nor overly enamoured with the trappings
of his office, With some regularity he expressed a feeling of unworthiness. Over
the years the custom of genuflecting three times in the presence of the Pope had
evolved. When one of his aides and close friends did it, Pope John asked him not to,
His friend protested that the gesture was deeply a part of him and the Pope said,
"Very well, but once is enough. Don't you think I believe you the first time?"

(Ibid, p.251). Norman Cousins recorded the Pope's opening statement when they were
alone for an interview: "Just remember, I'm an ordinary man: I have two eyes, a
nose - a very large nose,,,You must fecl completely relaxed.” (Ibid, p.297). 27?
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A sense of unworthiness graced the Papacy of John XXIII and the amazing thing
is that this very unworthiness made him seem worthy of his office and the esteem and
reverence which accompanies it, even in the hearts of millions of non-Roman Catho-
lics, Unworthiness making a person worthy - that is a principle very close to the
heart of the author of the Third Gospel, St. Luke,

Consider our text this morning - the story of a remarkabic soldier, He was a
Centurion, a Roman soldier actually, assigned to the puppet King, Herod Antipas, A
Centurion was a non-commissioned officer with one hundred men in his command, His
job would have been one of keeping the peace and maintaining public order, a none
too romantic assignment in Capernaum, There was no love Lost between the Jews and
the occupying Roman forces, The Jews, for their part, were curious people, fanati-
cally nationalistic, always resentful of foreign presence on what they regarded as
God-given land, Revolts and minor uprisings happened regularly and made the Life of
a Centurion dancerous, Their religious customs were odd and celebrated fanatically
by the pious, And, on top of it all, it was a remote cutpost of the Empire, very
far from home,

It is not surprising that many Roman soldiers detested the Jews. Some in-
tentionally violated religious customs such as the time the Roman Eagle was carried
into the Temple courtyard in defiance of Judaism's fundamental rule regarding
graven images. It was not unusual, also, for Roman officers to be bigoted and cruel
and brutal, particularly with their servants and slaves,

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This Centurion, however, did not fit the stereotype. Apparently he had grown
to appreciate the Jewish people and their strange religion. When Capernaum needed
a Synagogue he raised the money: if he was not an appreciator of Judaism he certainly
understood the art of public relations, In addition, he had a servant who was very
dear to him, a servant who, at the time of this incident, was critically ill, Already
we know quite a bit about the man.

There lived another man in Capernaum, Jesus of Nazareth, whose reputation as a
teacher and healer was spreading throughout Galilee. When He returned to Capernaum
one time He was met by a delegation of Jews who had come on behalf of the Roman
Centurion, asking if Jesus would heal his servant, "The man is worthy," they said.
He went immediately but before He arrived at the Centurion's house He was intercepted
by another delegation, this one sent by the Centurion himself, this one with a
different message: "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you
under my roof," Perhaps he had second thoughts. More than likely he remembered that
it would have been illegal for Jesus, a Jew, to enter a Gentile home, and so he re-
quested that Jesus not come, but simply to say the word so the servant might be
healed,

Now that impressed Jesus very much, At first reading, we assume that Jesus was
impressed with the Centurion's confidence that the healing could be effected from a
distance, I'm not sure about that, I think it may be that Jesus was astounded by
this statement, "I am not worthy to have you under my roof,"' That was an unusual
attitude, The Pharisees were very careful about the type of people they entertained,
Worthiness was a criterion for guest, not host, ordinarily. It was the Centurion's
humility I think Jesus meant when He said, "Not even in Israel have I found such
faith," i ; =

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Religion is very interested in the idea of worthiness it scems, and not always
in a healthy way. Classically, religion has presented itself as the vehicle through
which the individual may receive special consideration from God. The assumption is
that God operates on the basis of human cconomics: so much blessing is given fcr so
much worth demonstrated. Religion emerges as the way one accumulates worth. The Jews
of the first century were guilty of that, but no more than religious people in every
age. We simply assume that being faithful and pious will stand us in good stead
with the Almighty. And having made that assumption it is impossible not to conclude
that our standing with God is better than our neighbor's who is not pious and
religious,

At the other extreme, religion has occasionally focused on unworthiness;
hammering away at human sin and iniquity so eloquently that guilt seemed to be the
only appropriate emotion to feel,

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The peculiarity of the Gospel in Luke's presentation is precisely at this
point, The Jewish friends of the Centurion were wrong when they claimed that he
was worthy of Jcesus' attention because he had built a synagogue. The Centurion,
for his part, was equally wrong for claiming unworthiness on the basis of race or
nationality or religion, The word here is that no one is worthy of the grace of
Jesus Christ and,;everyone is worthy. The key is the message of srace. God's good
will toward people is not based on something in them - their merit or generosity or
piety or whatevér, but on something in him - his love.

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It is no coincidence that Luke's Gospel portrays a compassionate and caring
Christ, and that of the four his is the most humanistic, In Luke's account Jesus
responds to human suffering, not on the basis of the caliber of people who are
doing the suffering, but simply because someone is hurt, In the text this morning
His concern for the servant of a man - a foreigner - He didn't even know, punctu-
ates the point. Christians likewise, if they heed the Gospel according to Luke,
care for needy people, not on the basis of merit, but simply out of their own
love and compassion,

That's still strange talk, isn't it? Vulnerable talk - naive talk, Everyone
knows, after all that you have to be careful. There are people out there who are
dishonest, People who don't even try to work, people who have made an art-form
out of bilking the social welfare agencies and County Welfare Department. But the
simple message of Christianity is just this: when you help people, you help them
not on the basis of their worth or merit, but because you love them, And if you
can't bring yourself to love them you try to open your life so that the love of God
for them can get through, because ultimately that's all in the world you have to
offer them,

I read a delightful review recently of a new book about the late Dick Sheppard,
Vicar of St, Martin's in the Fields of London. He began his ministry in the slums
and he scandalized very proper Anglicans by saying bluntly, over and over agéin,
"You can't preach Christ to empty bellies...Sympathy doesn't prevent children from
getting rickets." When he was called to St. Martin's the church was dying. But if
you've been to Trafalgar Square recently you know that St, Martin's is remarkably
alive. Sheppard saw a vision of a parish church open day and night, a center for
concerts and poetry and a haven for anyone who needed a haven. One hundred thousand
people came to pay tribute when he died. A little boy was told to remove his cap
because he was entering a church, He replied in astonishment: "This ain't a church,
This is St, Martin's." How sad that church means you have to be someone to go
inside, How sad that we want our charity - our love - to go only to those we judge
to be worthy: as if love ever had anything to do with worth,

If you've ever been in love you know what I mean, You know that to be loved
by someone else is to wonder how the other can love you so, It is to know the
definition of srace - a love that, thank God, doesn't depend on my lovability, but
on the other person, I'm not sure you can love until you've felt that,

The problem is pride, We'd like to be worth everything we get in life. We'd
like to pay our own way, and keep our loved ones in debt, We'd like to look in
the mirror and say, "You deserve everything you have, You are worth it," And we
are quite capable of convincing ourselves that it is true, "Every man would like to
be God if it were possible," Bertrand Russell said; "some few find it difficult to
admit the impossibility,"

Reinhold Niebuhr, in his definitive work, The Nature and Destiny of Man,
discussed the problem of human pride at length. He cited the various forms human
egotism takes - intellectual pride, for instance, "Each great thinker," he wrote,
"makes the same mistake, in turn, of imagining himself the final thinker." (p.195).
Hegel not only proclaimed the finality of his own thought but regarded his con-
temporary Prussian military state as the culmination of human history. Comte
believed his philosophy to be final not only as philosophy but as a religion: and
with pathetic national pride predicted that Paris would be the center of the new
universal culture which he would found." (p.196).

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Ultimately, the theologians have maintained, our intense need to regard our-
selves as worthy gets between God and ourselves. For in the final analysis it be-
comes spiritual pride, Niebuhr wrote very perceptively: "Even the recognition in
the sight of God that he is a sinner can be used as a vehicle of that very sin, If
that final mystery of the sin of pride is not recognized the meaning of the
Christian Gospel cannot be understood, ( p. 202).

God, apparently prefers humble people. From one end to the other the Bible is
full of people who knew their limitations, could confess their needs, and who did
not feel worthy of the tasks to which God was calling them, Moses was not much of
a speaker, Gideon was a very humble man: David was a mere shepherd boy,,.and Jesus
of Nazareth,..The most incredible claim of Christian Faith is that God's own son
was born of a carpenter and his betrothed, y,
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There is a common grace inherent in honest humility, Honest humility is a very
winsome thing, The book of the year for those whé read theology is On Being a
Christian, by Hans Kung, Kung is a renegade Roman priest, Professor of Theology
at Tubingen University, Germany, and rather covisistently in trouble with the Vatican,
He is recognized, however, as one of the most/ brilliantly articulate spokesmen for
the faith today. I was very taken by a sentence out of the introduction to the book
as the author is explaining why he undertogk so ambitious a project: "This book was
written, not because the author thinks he/is a good Christian but because he thinks
that being a Christian is a particularly/ good thing," (p, 20-21).

I find that refreshingly persuasive, compared to the blatant arrogance that
characterizes so much religious litevature. A sense of unworthiness is what often
makes a person truly worthy of his 4r her task position, status or rank, And that,
I would suggest, is what our text this morning teaches,

Humility is the channel through which God's grace can go to work, We know, I
think, the practical truth of that dictum, We know, for instance, that the best love
we have for our children is that love which does not depend on their performance,
but the love which comes wellins up out of our own hearts, regardless of how they
happen to be behaving. We know that it is not unusual or particularly noble to love
a child who is lovable. And we know, the reverse, that real healing love is called
out of us when a child is being obnoxious, We know, or at least we ought to know,
the devastating meaning behind the statement, "Mommy won't love you if you act like
that," We know, in lateral social relationships, how difficult it is to maintain
true friendship with the person who needs nothing from us, who knows all the
answers, and the resolution to whatever problem we may be discussing. We have all,

I would guess, been guilty of it on occasion. And in marriage - how deadly it can
be when love is the price we negotiate for services rendered: when we feel that

the other is obligated to love us - that we deserve it: when husbands and wives

are no longer able to wonder at the fact that someone else can love them so, It is
difficult to penetrate the veneer of the self-satisfied, And the saddist thing of
all is that the self-satisfied will never know the richness and joy of real human By ke

encounter, Ne
The miracle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the radical imperative of the Yo-\

Christian life is this: none of us is worthy of what has been given to us in Christ ~,,, \
and that realization makes us worthy of it: worthy and able to enjoy and celebrate
and live the love our Father God has for us, Amen,

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Almighty God, our Father, we are grateful for Your love, Give us the courage ~~. op
to acknowledge our needs. Keep us from arrogance and help us, always, to be honest \po’’
with You and with ourselves: through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen, yw

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