'Worthiness' is irrelevant

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart. Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name - for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm - when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.”

Psalm 96:1-9
Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless the name of the LORD; proclaim God’s salvation from day to day. Declare God’s glory among the nations and God’s wonders among all peoples. For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised, more to be feared than all gods. As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but you, O LORD, have made the heavens. Majesty and magnificence are in your presence; power and splendor are in your sanctuary. Ascribe to the LORD, you families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD honor and power. Ascribe to the LORD the honor due the holy name; bring offerings and enter the courts of the LORD. Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; tremble before the LORD, all the earth.

Galatians 1:1-12
Paul an apostle - sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead - and all the members of God’s family who are with me, to the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Luke 7:1-10
After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he enters 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.

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There are a lot of different ways to read this Gospel story. Mostly, on account of the slave in it. We’re not clear if the slave of the centurion is so dear to the man because of his value as a piece of property, or if he is so dear because he might be a younger lover, or if he is so dear because they have simply been through a lot together. Slavery in Jesus’ day was in many ways different than when we decided to steal people from other parts of the world and force them into increasing our wealth, but the power dynamic of ownership was still there. Granted, slavery early on was more easily escaped, once debts were repaid through indentured servitude, but that’s comparing one terribly abusive situation with another terribly abusive situation, so I point it out mostly to say there was a bit of a cultural difference. We are still wrestling with our baggage around slavery here, with incarceration rates the highest in the world, and most of those bodies in prison for our profit are black and brown. We can’t forget that racially charged violence is still a big part of our current events, that white folks can open carry with a lot less risk to their own lives in this country than if minorities exercise that same right, and that it was good church-going people who would make a party out of lynching, recently enough in our history that there are smiling group photographs we took, as souvenirs of a good old American pastime.

But what was meant by this soldier, one with power over a hundred other soldiers, a Gentile outsider to the Jewish faith, who sent to Jesus to ask for the healing of his slave? Perhaps it wasn’t what we think of when we think of slavery. Perhaps it was more like an unpaid internship, or a mentorship of one younger man without any other family to care for him. Because of the centurion’s assumed character traits, we can soften the relationship a bit, though they might be simply making the best of a rotten system. In any case, when we read this story, it’s the story of an outsider who has gotten wind of Jesus’ reputation as a healer. When we read this story, Jesus has just finished the sermon on the plain, with those Beatitudes, the teaching about loving our enemies, teaching about knowing a tree by its fruits. This was a hard teaching for many who were in positions of religious power, because there were strict rules about who was in and who was out, rules about how to believe and how to behave, rules about even who to love and who to hate. We know what that’s like, all of those rules to follow in order to be accepted and acceptable. Loving our enemies in a world that makes headlines teaching us how to hate our differences is an uphill battle in many ways. We can’t even love our veterans properly, leaving too many of them homeless when they return from war, leaving too many untreated for PTSD, leaving too many first responders to die without treatment from the fumes and dust inhaled when they ran into the crumbling World Trade Center - so how are we to learn to love our enemies if we can’t even properly love those whom we publicly call our heroes?

It seems we have a worthiness problem. Who is worthy of care? Who is really worth fighting for? Whose lives matter? Slaves? Veterans? Strangers? Enemies? Trans kids in school trying to use a bathroom without getting beaten up? Refugees escaping situations of extreme violence? Men? Women? Children? And who says we get to decide?

When the centurion sends to Jesus to ask healing for his dear slave, whatever that relationship really is, those who come on his behalf to the Rabbi insist that he is worth the trouble, that he deserves Jesus’ time. Why? Well, he’s a good man, with money, who uses his money to support the Jewish worshiping community. He even made a major donation for the building fund! Of course he’s good enough, worthy enough, of course he should be rewarded for his gift! Come on, Jesus, there’s the soldier’s name on a bronzed plaque, right under the stained glass window, or on the pulpit, or on the front door! We’ve got to do well by him, because he certainly deserves it, because one hand washes the other, because he scratched our back it’s time for us to scratch his. We know this well, too. So many churches with their own cemeteries have the argument time and again over who deserves to be buried in their sacred ground, as though a final resting place can be earned or deserved based on perfect attendance or major donations made or years served on council.

There’s a great film my mother showed many times for our Christian Education when I was growing up, called “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” with too many good quotes and powerful scenes to go through them all in a single sermon. But let me set up the plot for you before I tell you of the one which fits best here:

The movie was released in 1947, and Gregory Peck plays a journalist who moves to New York City and writes a six month piece about anti-semitism. He gets his material by pretending to be Jewish and watching what happens to the way people treat him, how suddenly housing becomes scarce, parties get awkward, his kid gets bullied at school. All he has to do to make his own life easier is to stop telling people he’s Jewish, but he continues for half a year to live under an assumed name so that he can have a small window into the experience of anti-Jewish prejudice. A childhood friend of his who has served in the military tries to move into the neighborhood but can’t find housing because nobody wants to rent to a Jew, and his fiancé has a cottage she could rent, except she doesn’t want to offend her Christian neighbors. So one day his kid comes home from school having had names and rocks thrown at him, and his fiancé tries to make it better for the kid by telling him ‘but you’re not a Jew,’ as though to be Jewish is more of a sin than to be the kid throwing rocks.  Who deserves what kind of treatment and why?

So this centurion hears that Jesus is coming to his house, a Gentile house, which will technically make Jesus unclean if he enters that space, not that he has ever seemed to care about being deemed unclean. But the soldier sends another group of friends to Jesus to tell him not to go out of his way, please don’t come by the house, he’s not as worthy as the first delegation said he was. He only wanted a word, just the barest of bare bones, simply the command for healing, not a big deal. You know, we’ve gotten too busy to clean the house and it’s too much a mess for company, please, we’re not ready for other people to visit just yet. While the first group of folks who came to Jesus tell him all about how much the centurion deserves what he asks for, the centurion himself denies he deserves anything. He only wants his slave whole and healthy again. He tells Jesus he isn’t worthy to have him under his roof. And that’s huge. Because legally he’s in a position of some power here, this soldier. Rome is the occupying power, Rome says jump and we ask only ‘how high’? Rome decides whose life is worth what, decided who gets nailed up to a cross as a piece of public shame and political bullying. This centurion, though, swimming in the system of oppression as they all are, understands authority and recognizes that power in Jesus to ‘say the word and my servant will be healed.’

Who else around him at the time even has the slightest idea about Jesus having that kind of position of authority? He’s just a carpenter’s kid, just a small town wandering teacher, just a regular guy, isn’t he? But he’s also the God by whose word the world first came into being, he’s also the one casting out demons and feeding the multitudes and crossing the borders between insider and outsider.

See, it isn’t about who deserves what kind of treatment. It isn’t about who is deemed worthy, or who has earned a place at the table. It never has been and it never will be. Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, black or white, veteran or civilian, slave or free, all belong to the kingdom of God simply by virtue of who God is. That’s what Paul is yelling at the Galatians about, because they’ve lost track of the good news of Jesus Christ and started preaching that Gentiles need to be circumcised before they’re welcome, just as the law holds for Jews. The Galatians have been trying to make everyone live by the same law before welcoming them into the fold, and that’s missing the point of Jesus! The point is that we don’t earn the welcome, we don’t keep score about who deserves to be loved, the point is that Jesus has leveled the playing field and replaced the game entirely by the power of his love, which cost him his life.

We know we have a lot of work to do to realize this reality in our here and now. We have a lot of reconciling, a lot of research and learning, a lot of stories to listen to and stories to share, to see one another as the Sacred sees us. But that does not change the fact that we, each and all, bear the divine image; that we, each and all, belong to a God of love and new life; that we, each and all, are welcome at God’s table of mercies. Always.