I wonder how you feel about authority.  It could depend on our cultural background.  It could depend on our Generation.  From Generation X’s time on, there has been a growing mistrust in institutional authority, which is hardly abating.  This is not without reason.  All the Gates.  We grew up with Watergate.  Iran-Contra.  Tunagate is closer to home.  There is a lot of mistrust in authority figures.  Leaders may use authority for their own personal gain; for the exercise of self-serving power; for violence; for oppression; for the imposition of the will of one group of people onto another group of people; to divide; to subjugate; to exploit.  In the past few years, expertise itself has come under suspicion.  Why should we trust experts?  I can do my own research etc., etc.  I remember as a child the radio being on in our kitchen.  “CFRB 1010 – Ontario’s Authoritative News Voice,” the announcer would claim.  Who would say such a thing?   

So what are we supposed to do with this?  We seem to be referring to the end of Matthew’s Gospel each week, so here we go again.  “All authority has been given to me,” says Jesus, who’s once again on a mountain in Matthew 28.  Authority is a recurring theme when it comes to Jesus.  He taught as one having authority, we read at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  Later on, the question will be asked, “By what authority are you doing these things?”  To count yourself among Jesus’ followers is to count yourself as one who has taken up Jesus’ call to follow him.  To follow Jesus is to count yourself as one who has submitted to or lives under the authority of Jesus.  The question I want us to consider today, as we consider Matthew 8, is, “Why do you follow Jesus?”  Or to put it another way – “By what authority does Jesus have any kind of claim on your life?”  If you do not count yourself a follower of Jesus as you watch this, the question might be, “By what authority does Jesus deserve or merit any claim on my life?”

How would we answer such questions?  What might these stories from Matthew 8 have to say to us today as Jesus comes down from the mountain?  Let’s ask God for help as we look at God’s word.

“What Sort of Man Is This?” is the question that we are looking through these weeks of Lent as we travel with Jesus to the cross.  The question is put another way by some people to Jesus in chapter 21:23 – “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”  Hang on to that question and the whole matter of authority as we go here. As Jesus comes down from the mountain, his words are about to become actions.

Matthew describes in 4:23 the miracles that Jesus was doing.  “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing, every disease and sickness among the people.”  Here in chapters 8 and 9, we get into the actual story of some of these miracles.  Ten miracles in all, in groups of 3, 3, and 4.  Nine of them healing or restoring life.  I encourage you to read through both chapters in one go.  We’ve said Matthew likes to put things in groups, and this is what we see here.

Jesus has talked about the importance of hearing his words, and not only hearing his words but doing them.  Jesus is walking his own talk.  Jesus is healing.   Jesus is making whole.  I’m going to put the answer to the question I asked about Jesus’ authority right out here before we get any deeper into this.  Someone has put it like this – “Jesus’ authority is seen in his healing power, his healing power is connected to his serving and suffering.”  So, there’s the beginning of my own answer to the question I posed to us all earlier about what sort of authority Jesus has on my life.  What kind of claim does Jesus have on my life that I want to listen to him and do what he says?  How can the command of a man who lived over 2,000 years ago have such a claim on what I do?

Because Jesus is the one who makes people whole.  Jesus is the one who is making me whole. Jesus is the one who makes people whole in the midst of brokenness.  Jesus is the one who does something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.  Sometimes, our brokenness is quite obvious.  This was very much the case here in the first episode, although all three healings here involve people who are outsiders, religiously or socially marginalized.   The first case is a leper.  Could have been leprosy (Hansen’s disease).  Could have been something like psoriasis.   Someone with a skin condition that meant they had to exist outside of society (literally).  Couldn’t live in a town.  Someone required to go around in ragged clothing.  Someone who was required to go around shouting “Unclean” as they went through the streets lest people got too close.  Someone who was looked on as having contributed in some way to their condition by some wrong they had done. 

This outcast looks to Jesus for wholeness.  “When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him: and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him…”   This man comes to Jesus boldly.  He didn’t have to make sure he had things in order to approach Jesus.  He knew the place from where his help would come.  We don’t approach Jesus only after we’ve made ourselves right.  I’ve said it before: the only claim we need to make of ourselves to follow Jesus is a recognition of our need for him. 

This man desired mercy and help and he had faith that Jesus was the one to give it.  “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  “Lord if you will,” as another translation puts it.  Not “If you can” but “If you choose…”

“He stretched out his hand, and touched him.”  Remember the language of the OT?  When God stretches out a hand, deliverance is at hand.  With a mighty hand and outstretched arm…  There was no worry that what was wrong with this man would somehow contaminate Jesus, conventional wisdom notwithstanding.  When it comes to Jesus, the clean flows our way.  The clean flows this leper’s way.  Jesus stretches out his hand and touches the man, then we hear these wonderful words of Jesus – “I do choose.  Be made clean!” Someone has said this is the entire gospel message in six words!  This is what God does, after all.  God heals.  God makes whole.  Healing is my business, says God, and business is good!

“I am the Lord who heals you.” Jesus comes to Capernaum.  Home base. A centre of commerce on the north side of the lake.  You can visit it today and see a 1st-century synagogue that’s been excavated.  Jesus strolls into Capernau,m and “When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying ‘ Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress…’”

Another outsider.  The enemy.  A member of the occupying forces.  Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army.  Lifers.  Like modern-day sergeant-majors.  Representatives of the power of an empire.  If the leper knew he was beyond his own ability to help himself, it might have been quite different for the centurion.  The power of Rome behind him.  His own competency, ability, strength, authority to rely on.  Oftentimes for us, it’s our tendency to look to our own authority, our tendency to rely on our own competencies, that gets between us and Jesus.

Whatever the case for this centurion, he’s at a point where those things can’t help.  His servant is at home paralyzed.  Maybe he’s had an accident.  Centurions didn’t have families in terms of wives and children.  This servant may have been like family to him.  He doesn’t even ask Jesus to cure her, just tells Jesus what’s happening.  This is a lesson perhaps in how we should pray.  We often want to specify the outcome we want when we pray.  We want to tell God how to handle a situation.  Perhaps it’s best simply to name the situation.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon, “ cries a woman in Matthew 15.  “Lord, help me,” she says from her knees.  We get this if you or someone you love has ever been in the grip of something beyond anyone’s control.  “Lord, help me.”  “Lord, help my brother.”  “Lord, help my child.”  “Lord, help my wife/my husband.”

“I will come and cure him,” says Jesus.  It’s likely these words are actually a question.  You’re asking a Jewish rabbi to come and cure your servant?  There are barriers.  Of course, there are barriers.  “I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof,” replies the centurion, because a Jewish rabbi going into the house of a Gentile was not kosher.  “I also am a man under authority,” says the centurion.  He’s recognising the authority that Jesus is under, the authority of his loving Father.  His response is one of faith.  “But only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”

Jesus is amazed.

I often pray that God would be amazed by our faith.  Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing?  To amaze God?  Jesus is amazed.

What do we mean by faith here?  Someone has described it like this, and I can’t put it in any plainer language – “The faith that Jesus praises, exemplified by the centurion, is that which trusts that Jesus is who he says he is and that he can do what he says he can do.”  This is the response of repentance and faith that Matthew is urging his readers to, and by extension, us and anyone who hears the invitation.

It’s a choice that’s laid before us all.  You’re not born into it.  There’s no inheriting the kingdom.  It’s not based on what group you belong to, what country you’re from, what language you speak, your socio-economic status, you so-called insider or outsider status.  When it comes time for that banquet table toward which the communion table points, when the promise of many coming from east and west and north and south is finally fulfilled, there will be surprises.  Even people who said “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” are going to be surprised, which suggests as we said last week. That there is much at stake in how we respond to Jesus.

“Only speak the word,” says the soldier.  Just say the word.  Certain words have been said.  We’re moving with Jesus all these weeks toward the cross.  Words were said there.  The last ones were, “It is finished.”  Making whole is what God does, and it is what God has done in Chris,t and it is what God is doing in the power of God’s Spirit in lives, including this one.

That’s the authority to which I bow.  I’m a mistrustful Gen X’er too.  I don’t mistrust God’s working to make me whole – to make me new - while we look forward to God making all things new.

Being made whole starts at home.  We’re introduced to Peter’s mother-in-law!  I find this particularly touching, maybe because my mother-in-law lives in my house too.  She was lying in bed with a fever, which in those days could be deadly.  He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to serve him.

She was healed to serve.  We are made whole to serve.  Remember how the angels suddenly came to Jesus after his testing and waited on him? Same word here.  Peter’s mother-in-law is raised up.  She provides something to eat.  Something to drink. This is what the word connotes.    Same as the angels did in the wilderness. Isn’t Matthew wonderful?  She waited on him, she served him.  Being made whole is being made more like Jesus.  Every time we gather at the communion table, we are reminded that Jesus provides us food and drink (Himself!) to heal us.  We go from the table at which we give thanks for this, and we go in order to serve.

We apply our lives to these healing stories from the other side of the cross.  Jesus spoke as one having authority.  Jesus acted as one having authority to make us whole in him; to renew us.  That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons, and he cast out spirits with a word and cured all who were sick.  This doesn’t mean that every time we pray to be cured, we are cured.  It doesn’t mean that every time we pray for another to be cured, they are cured.  It doesn’t mean that when a physical cure doesn’t come, we lacked faith.  There is recognition in medicine today of the difference between curing – eradicating a disease or correcting a problem – and healing as a process leading to wholeness.

In Jesus we may be made whole, given life, no matter our physical condition.  Jesus’ healing/wholemaking power is connected to his serving and his suffering even unto death.  Death itself, the one great incurable problem, is given a new outcome in Jesus. In Christ, we look forward to the day when all things are made new, including us, and we will sit around a banquet table.  In Christ, we can say by the same faith of the leper, the centurion, and Peter’s dear mother-in-law and those in Peter’s household – “God has me and nothing can separate me from God’s love.”

May we be able to say the same thing.  May those in our households be able to say the same thing.  May we be bold to accept the invitation to come to Jesus and say “Make me whole, Lord.”  May we make the same invitation to all with ears to hear it.  May these things be true for us all. Amen