Luke 1.1–10
The fourth in a series of talks called The Man they Crucified, given at Kalbarri Anglican Church 29th October 2023
Jesus did miracles. It was the main thing he was known for even in his own day. No one who ever lived, before or after him, has ever done so many. But did he? That is the question that worries people. Are his miracles not just the legends that grew up around a famous man? I will tell you some of the reasons I believe they are real.
First, his story doesn’t make sense without them. Why was he famous? All the Gospels say that people went after him because of the miracles he did; it is hard to see why else they got so excited. Even a modern historian who is not a believer says he must have done miracles. He says he must have been a sorcerer or magician.
Second, people at the time compared him with John the Baptist. There were points of similarity. “But John did no miracle,” they said. If they remembered that John didn’t do miracles, Jesus must have.
Third, the king thought John the Baptist had come alive again. Jesus popped up just after John was executed, saying similar things, but this time doing miracles. The king was superstitious—or perhaps he said it as a joke—either way it was because of the miracles.
Fourth, Josephus, the Jewish historian says that he did surprising deeds.
Fifth, the anti-Christian Jews never denied Jesus did miracles; they said it was through the power of the Devil. The Jewish Talmud says he was put to death for practicing sorcery.
Sixth—but there are other reasons—he was seen alive by hundreds of people after his death. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus did miracles. What I want to do here is look at the remarkable story where Jesus heals of the servant of a Gentile centurion in Capernaum.
The story is full of surprises. The first is the presence of a Gentile in a Jewish town. This is unusual. The Roman army was not stationed in Galilee at that time. The ruler was a half-Jew, a son of Herod the Great, called Antipas after his grandfather. The Herods were friendly with Rome, so he may have recruited a Roman officer to train his own troops. The centurion is the leading authority in the district.
The second unusual thing is the good relationship that existed between the centurion and the Jews. Jews at that time mostly despised Gentiles, and Gentiles were contemptuous of Jews. But this man has a reputation for loving the people he worked amongst, and they respected him. Luke is interested in this sort of people. They were called God-fearers: Gentiles who had some sort of belief in Israel’s God. They were to be found worshipping in Jewish synagogues all around the Roman world. Theophilus, the man to whom Luke dedicated his Gospel, and addressed as “Your Excellency,” was probably one of them.
The centurion commands eighty to a hundred men, so in our system he would be a captain; he is the senior officer of the garrison at Capernaum, or was, if he is retired. Capernaum was near the border with his brother Philip’s territory, and the garrison’s main task was to keep watch on the tax point at the border and protect the various public offices and banks in Capernaum.
He is also wealthy. He financed the construction of the local synagogue, which was big enough to hold three hundred people. It is one of the oddities of archaeology that the best preserved ancient synagogue in the holy-land is in Capernaum; if you go there, you can’t miss it. It is the biggest building amongst the ruins. The one you see today was built a bit later than the time of Jesus, and for a while it was a puzzle where the original was—or was the story made up? Then it was located; its foundations are underneath the later synagogue.
This centurion had it all: power, authority, wealth, and a good reputation. He is used to having people run around to carry out his orders. He lacks for nothing—until his servant gets sick.
The servant was more of a son to the centurion—and he is getting sicker by the day. You can be sure he got the best medical attention available. But to no avail. One of the horrible things about the sickness of a loved one is the total helplessness you feel. The world is feeling it now with Gaza. This centurion, who was used to being in control, now finds that things are totally out of control, and he is helpless.
It was at that moment that he thought about Jesus. Like most people, I guess it wasn’t until everything else had been tried. But the boy was getting worse, and would soon die; the centurion was desperate. Then Jesus came into his mind, and in his distress he wondered whether he could help.
I wonder why? Capernaum was the town Jesus chose as his home base when he was moving around Galilee, and many of his miracles were done there. On his first Sabbath he created a stir by healing a possessed man in the synagogue. The centurion had a report of it on his desk the next day. It was his job to be informed about everything that happened in the district. There was the woman cured of malaria, the paraplegic whose sins Jesus declared forgiven, and who was now walking around; also the leper, and they said Jesus had brought to life the daughter of a synagogue ruler when she was dead. I’m not for a minute thinking the centurion believed everything he heard, but it must have made him think. And there was Levi. Levi worked in the local customs office. It was the job of the military to back him up. Jesus walked into his office one day and told him to follow. Levi quit his job there and then, and was still getting round with him. Maybe Jesus could help his servant.
Being the man he was, he sprang into action and ordered one of his men to go and ask the Jewish elders if they would get Jesus to come.
He had been gone for a while when the centurion realizes he has made a mistake. Jews did not like Gentiles in their homes. They believed it defiled them; that would be especially serious for a holy man. He has asked Jesus to do something that is going to cause trouble. He has to stop him.
I don’t know when it was that the centurion put two and two together and got the right answer about Jesus. Perhaps it was hovering at the back of his mind all the time. Maybe it was what he had heard about Jesus commanding a storm to stop blowing out on the lake. Somewhere along the line he realized that in every story he had heard, Jesus acted in a way that to him spelt authority, but authority in an area which was beyond the centurion’s reach. He commanded an evil spirit to leave, ordered the sickness to leave a woman, forgave a man’s sins and told him to get up and walk, commanded a storm to stop. It’s when we see the pattern that we stop thinking this may be a fairy tale, and realize we are dealing with reality. He saw it, because he was familiar with authority, because he was a man of the military; it was part of his everyday life.
He sent friends to intercept the party that was coming with Jesus, and stop them. “You don’t need to come to my home; I see that you have authority. I know how authority works. I give orders and they are carried out. You obviously have God’s authority. All you need to do is give the order and my servant will be healed.”
Jesus stopped in the middle of the road. He was amazed; there are not many places in the Gospels where it says Jesus was amazed. He never went to the centurion’s house. He didn’t need to. He turned around and went home. When the messenger returned the servant was well. The centurion had figured it right.
Most people in Jesus’ day misunderstood him. They saw him as a magic man, and thought he would have to touch, or say some words, or do some ritual. A lot of people today are the same. But the truth is, God made Jesus his king and gave him authority. He gave him the Holy Spirit to back up his authority with power. He had authority to heal, authority to speak in God’s name, authority to forgive, authority over nature, authority over the evil powers, and authority over death. If we want to understand Jesus, we will think about this and take it to heart. He has authority over our lives. He gave us our life, and he will say when we die.
The centurion knew what he had to do was trust. If you want to know how you should relate to Jesus, the answer is trust. It’s what you do with good authority.
When I was in South Africa I started having problems with a nerve in my face. It pulsed non-stop, day and night. I went to a doctor and he prescribed some medicine. I knew it was what was used for epilepsy, so I didn’t take it—I didn’t trust him. I went on for six months trying all sorts of home cures but nothing worked. Then I went to a neurologist. Within five minutes I knew I was with an authority. He changed the whole way I still think about mental health. When he prescribed the same medication as the other doctor, I believed him, and took it. Twenty minutes later the muscle stopped pulsing.
Jesus was amazed at the centurion: “I have not found such faith, even in Israel.” It took a man of the military to see what he was dealing with.
When you are dealing with authority, either you run away from it, or you trust it, and trusting is the only way to have a relationship with God. Either you face him and trust, or he can’t help you—no matter how religious you may be, or enthusiastic, or good. When the distraught jailer in Philippi asked, “What must I do to be saved?” The answer was simple: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your family.” If you have not already faced up to Jesus in this way, take the plunge: believe, trust, have faith in him, start talking to him. His mission was to save people, and it still is. He says he will save anyone who trusts him.
But does he heal? A man stood up once when I was preaching and asked, “Can Jesus cure my epilepsy?” The answer must be yes. Healing is easy for him. He doesn’t need to touch you, or go through a ritual, or say special words; he only has to give the command. There is nothing which is too difficult for him to do. He made the world, after all. But will he heal? You can only ask. He may, or he may not. He is the authority, you see. You cannot manipulate him. He has not promised that he will heal everyone—not now in this age, where we all must die at some point.
But why not? If he has the authority and power, why didn’t he heal that person’s cancer, or stop them getting it altogether? They prayed hard enough. Does he lack compassion? That is what we will explore next week. There must be something else we are not seeing.