Word of Salvation – Vol. 32 No. 03 – Jan 1987
A Deserving Case
Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Luke 7:1-10
Reading: Philippians 3:1-11
Singing: PsH. 116, 287, 385, 469.
We have once again had the shower of “new year’s honours”. All kinds of citizens – high and low, have been surprised with decorations from the commonwealth and state government. Some got a medal for saving lives, others got medals for getting good at destroying lives, men and women did a lot for their nation, their culture, the arts, the sciences, or were maybe simply nice on their job for 40 years, and look, there comes a reward! Someone wrote to someone else in high places: “He is worthy, he is a deserving case…!”
But when you and I read the paper, we may have misgivings here and there: “a knighthood for a cricketer? Or an Order for a cabaret singer? Can’t they find MORE DESERVING cases?” And maybe some of the men and women receiving these honours might have thought: “I am not worthy… while perhaps others among them thought: “About time somebody notices me… what a nice person I am…” Is he… or is he not… a deserving case?
A few years ago this whole business came into even sharper focus with the debate on Heart Transplants. Do you still remember? Very expensive things, heart transplants. Not everyone could get one. Only deserving cases. But what made a deserving case? Money…? Or brains?
What? A white man a deserving case for getting a new heart, but, of course, not a black man? Or are we now going to get it the other way around so that you must be black and surely not white?
Yes, we’re all playing that ‘deserving-cases’ game at times. Whenever we send invitations for a wedding, or look around the circle of our friends, aren’t we already, in a way, doing this?
Mind you, not that we are always negative about it, either… we aren’t always knocking people down! These Jews there in Capernaum, now: they were mighty positive about this centurion. Amazingly positive, because it was not in their nature to be so nice about Romans. After all they weren’t only pagans, (outside of their Nation, the only Nation of God,) but also members of the hated occupying force: oppressors and invaders! But look, they come to Jesus and say, Lord, if you want to heal someone, if you want to do a nice service to someone, now here is a deserving case.
I think that there are many reasons why you and I would join these Jews and say: Yes Lord, he sure is a deserving case: he is worth it that you do something for him. Not only does he have regard for Jews, he even has regard for the GOD of the Jews. Look what He did for Israel’s God: HE BUILT A SYNAGOGUE FOR THE GOD OF ISRAEL. He is a religious man, and that in the service of the RIGHT religion, too…!
Some of us might come with another reason, since being religious doesn’t throw such high dice in our day and age. But still: “Look, Lord, we would say, Look how nice he is for people… this slave of his for instance…! And that as a member of a nation, a culture, that regarded a slave as a dead thing, a machine, not worth worrying about”. Roman masters could do with their slaves as they liked, nobody would frown on it if a master killed a slave, or sold him off, or threw him into a pond full of man-eating fish (which is what some masters were known for doing). Slaves had no status. And now look at this astonishing Centurion: he is worried about a slave’s illness and seeks a favour from Jesus, from God, not for himself, but for a slave. Tremendously humanitarian in an inhuman age. Now isn’t that worthy of consideration even if nothing else is? That one has such regard for one’s fellow man? Yes we would feel like joining these Jews and say: He is worthy. As we say it about each other, at funerals, at anniversaries, yes even at weddings when we must still begin: “He was… He is, a jolly good fellow and so say all of us…!” A jolly good fellow… born so beautiful…! And it looks as if Jesus agrees. Amazing! But then he also loved that rich young ruler who was so sincere, who meant it so sincerely when he said: “All these commandments I have kept from my youth up… Lord look how hard I have worked…” As Jesus looked at him – it says – He loved him. Here, too. No argument. No ifs and buts. Sure says Jesus, I will go and heal this man’s servant. And so the procession goes on the way to the centurion’s home.
But then there comes the surprising part of our text. Because the centurion when he hears of it, gets in a panic…! Jesus, the great Jesus, the holy Jesus in my house? And he sends the message: Lord, please, do not come under my roof, for I DO NOT DESERVE THAT… I AM NOT WORTHY…! He had built the Jews a synagogue. He loved and respected and feared Israel’s God. He was just and fair and loving to his fellow man. Yes, and yet he says, ‘Lord I am not worthy that You should even come under my roof.’ The Jews saw in Jesus the rewarder of human goodness. This Gentile saw in Jesus the Holy One of God. He makes that very clear in what he says: “Just as my soldiers must obey my commands and I have no choice but to obey my own superiors, so you only have to say the word and no matter where you are and where I am, your will be done. Power, all power surely is thine…! And then, shall you enter My house? Lord I am not worthy.”
I know how great You are, I know Who you are, the Son of God, the Power that shaped all the universe, and I know who I am, never mind what people say about me and how they look up at me… I know… I am not worthy.
And the tremendous – and also frightening – thing about this is Jesus – even amazed about it as the text says – that Jesus calls this faith.
When we see how holy God is, and how unworthy we are… how unworthy I am. That is faith! So faith has much to do with… repentance. With seeing myself as I am, undeserving. As well as seeing the Lord as He is: holy, all powerful, and absolutely sovereign. Who can say, ‘Go!’ – and then any sickness goes. Who can say: ‘Be healed!’ – and then the worst case gets better. You know, Jesus said, ‘I haven’t even found such a great faith in Israel…!’
Jesus may well say: Rarely do I find such a great faith… in the Christian Church. The reason why Arminianism rears its head time and again in the church, and the reason why today there is such a move to make love for the neighbour the thing which the church really runs on, is, that we have deep heart-felt trouble, you and I and all of us, with this “I am not worthy” – thing. We say it about others but we also feel it about ourselves, that there is some merit, some reason why God should do something for me… or for him…! But Jesus does the healing for the man who has come to see it: “Lord I am not worthy..!”
The Lord’s heaven has nothing to do with New Year’s Honours, and when God comes to do a heart transplant it is to the least deserving cases. That is what the Bible wants to tell us in the doctrine of predestination: God loved while we hated. Jesus died while we were yet sinners… while we were yet enemies, even. And our Lord’s amazement was that this Roman saw that. He calls that: faith. He even calls it GREAT faith. The smaller the sinner reckons himself to be, the greater his faith.
That’s the Lord’s way of putting things upside down, and in our sin-choked world He calls that upside-Up. Whether the centurion ever saw Jesus we don’t even know. Again Jesus agreed: O.K., I will NOT come under your roof. Ah, but then He did, because from that moment on the thing the centurion asked for, was done. The servant was healed. Whatever he had even if it would have been cancer – would have disappeared just at the command of the Lord of all. It happened even though the Lord was looking so humble and on the way to a cross. The Centurion believed that too! And sometimes I wonder whether we begin to believe more in the greatness of the Lord and what He can do, as we begin to believe more in our own smallness and unworthiness. Yes, these two are in direct relation to each other. The less I think of my goodness and my smartness and my freedom, the greater I think of the power and the holiness, and the unlimited love of my Lord who came to see me, unworthy, in my misery and set me free from everlasting death.
And the wonder of it is, that JESUS says: He is worthy. JESUS says, because he believed, he is a deserving case. What must I do with such a decoration? What must I do with such a crown? What… but throw it at His feet?
AMEN.