ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Bishop Basil of Amphipolis
Parish of St John the Theologian, Norwich, 9 July 2006

The Gospel today is about healing, the healing of the centurion's servant. But it is also about faith, and about the relationship between faith and obedience. And to understand how these three hold together, we need to know something at least about what it meant to be a centurion at the time of Christ.

In those days the Roman army was not only the most powerful in the world, it was also the most disciplined in the world. The centurion had the power of life and death over the hundred men below him in the chain of command.

But the centurion himself, as we learn in the Gospel, is under authority. If the soldiers who are under him have to do at once what he says ("I say to this man, Go, and he goeth") he is himself in the same position. The officer above him tells him do something, and he does it.

We too are under authority. As Christians we have all been given commandments and told to do them. We have not been told put them off and do them some other time. We have simply been told to do them. And thus there is a strong similarity between our lives and the life of a Roman solider or centurion.

But look at the relationship between Christ and his Father. He does what he sees his Father do: "For what things soever [the Father] doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (Jn 5:19). Even the words Christ speaks he receives and passes on from the Father. As he says in the great highpriestly prayer: "For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me" (Jn 17:8). Christ himself is under obedience. He does and says what his Father tells him to do and say.

From this we can conclude that Christ understands very well the situation in which the centurion finds himself. And this gives him immediate entry into the situation. He recognises at once that the centurion is a man much like himself. They are both under obedience. Christ too gives commandments to his soldiers — his disciples - and expects them to be fulfilled.

Now, what was it like to be a soldier in the Roman army?

The Roman army was there to keep an empire under control. Basically it was a peace time army. But nevertheless you do, from time to time, have to go to war. You do, from time to time, have to advance on the enemy in battle because you are told to do so. And when you advance on the enemy you do not know whether you will survive or not. There is no way in which you can predict this. In other words, combined with the obedience of the soldier and his immediate fulfilment of the command that he receives, there is a lack of knowledge of how this particular instance of obedience is going to end.

Anyone who has tried to fulfil the commandments of Christ knows we — his soldiers — are in the same position. We are sent into battle, but we do not know what the result of our obedience will be. And we are not asked to think about this. We are simply asked to fulfil the commandments, and to let God decide the outcome. We are asked to trust in God, to have faith.

So in this parable — for it is a potential parable as well as a story of healing and a demonstration of the relationship between obedience and faith — obedience is implicitly linked to not knowing. Our relationship with God, which is a relationship of faith, does not involve our knowing what the outcome of obedience to his commandments will be. We simply believe in the power of God, we act on the basis of the commandments of God, and we let God decide how it all will end.

The true miracle of Christianity is that if we enter into that process, the result is healing. This is because the result of our obedience in faith is a drawing near to God, an opening up of ourselves to entry of his Spirit into our lives, a mysterious appropriation of his life of grace.

So let us enter into the spirit of this story of healing, seeing it in terms of our own lives, understanding it in relation to the way that we are called to be obedient to Christ — without knowing how our own story will end. Amen