Wappingers Falls, New York
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today the Lord exclaims, in response to a centurion’s message, “I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!”
What exactly did the centurion say to elicit such high praise from the Lord? When the people of Capernaum entreat Christ to visit this Roman officer’s house and heal his sick servant, the centurion sends a messenger while the Lord and the crowd are on the way.
In his message, the centurion declares his unworthiness, and affirms his understanding of hierarchy and authority: “I am a man placed under authority, having in turn soldiers under me. I say to one, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
Here, we perceive something more than a simple belief in Christ’s healing power. Rather, the centurion acknowledges the Lord’s authority, an authority over things far and things near. In the same way that the centurion commands his soldiers, so, he confesses to believe, Christ can command diseases and exercise authority over the health of the centurion’s sick servant.
This is tantamount to a confession of Christ’s dominion over the natural world, and hence of his divinity. At other times, when the Lord walked on water and commanded the winds, he was not just working miracles for the sake of amazement—he was showing us by these signs that he is the Master of nature, the Lord of all creation, the Almighty. And this is precisely what the centurion realizes: Christ is not just a healer. He is the one with authority, the one whom all creation obeys.
In a word, he is God.
For us, this is, of course, a familiar confession. As we sing at liturgy—and as we should say daily in our rule of prayer at home—Christ is, according to the Creed, “Light of Light, true God of God.” We are accustomed to referring to “Christ our true God.” “Glory to thee, O Christ, our God and our hope, glory to thee,” we exclaim at the conclusion of many divine services.
Despite this familiar confession, however, the truth is that we rarely live as men under authority, as true believers and obedient servants of our Lord and our God. Indeed, the raging seas and wild winds, the irrational beasts and the inanimate stones—all these obey Christ. But so often, we do not.
The mountains and hills, the seas and the deeps, the creeping things and winged birds, all of them in all their majesty, these do not possess the great and unequivocal gift of free will. Man alone, made in the image of God, is given this gift. Because of our freedom of will, we can choose, unlike the natural world around us, to disobey God’s authority. We can choose to defy Christ.
God’s love for us is so great that he has given us the ability to reject that love. Love, as St. Paul says, “does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Love bears all things, endures all things.”
This love is revealed first and foremost on the Cross, where Christ bore and endured all things, where he let wayward humanity have its own way to the point that we, quite literally, put God to death. And yet it was precisely at that point, hanging on the Cross, that the Lord was revealed as the King of Glory. “The Lord has reigned from the tree,” as one ancient version of the Psalter declares.
In other words, the authority that Christ wishes to exercise is not the arbitrary rule of a tyrant, but the authority that comes from mutual love, the authority that comes from service to others. As he reminded his disciples before his Passion:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Obedience to God, therefore, is not obedience to some cold and demanding authority. Rather, to obey God is to open oneself to the action of his love. To obey God means to accept his gift—the gift, first and foremost, of God the Father’s Only-begotten Son himself.
We recall St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and his instruction: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” He then goes on to discuss marriage, and how love and obedience should go hand in hand. This marital relationship of mutual obedience and mutual love is always grounded, however, in that greater mystery, the cosmic marriage of the Lamb and his Bride: “This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”
Now we understand that disobedience to God is not the rejection of arbitrary rules, but a rejection of the one who loves even unto death, who loves us more than we could ever love, who desires our good in a way that surpasses description.
Therefore, we are invited, like the centurion, not merely to confess his authority with our words, but to submit to his humble and loving authority in our lives. And when we do so, we come to realize that the reign and rule and kingdom of Christ are not so much over us, as in us: when we choose his will, we choose true freedom, true mastery over ourselves. We experience the liberation from the tyranny of sin that Christ won for us on the Cross. That slavedriver known as sin, the terrible compulsion of the passions—Christ’s love will drive all of this away, if we but say the word. Then, he will be enthroned in us, and we will be enthroned with him, even at the Father’s right hand.
To Christ our true God, who rules forever in love and self-offering, who reigned from the tree so that we might share his everlasting throne: to him be all glory, honor, and worship, together with his Father and his Most Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.