Sermon 02.09.2025: Who is Worthy of Healing?

In today's story, Jesus interacts with people outside of his own community, and offers healing to people some would say were unworthy. How do we build community and healing across the lines that divide us?



Scripture

Luke 7:1-17

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, ‘He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.’ And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Sermon

I confess this text makes me twitchy and I don't like it. Luckily, we aren’t here to worship me this morning. But this wasn’t an easy passage for me to work with this week. 

Let’s start with the slave-owning centurion. We can understand, all day long, that slavery in first century world was categorically different than the way we perpetuated it here for 400 years. Biblical slavery is still terrible and I’m not going to admire it, or anyone who benefitted from it, but I can try to remember that Luke was speaking to a different cultural context than we are in. 

And yes, it is good that the centurion “valued highly” his slave, but this was likely because when you buy a human to do your work, you want them to be healthy enough to continue to work for you. 

And then you have the religious leaders. 

‘He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us. 

Let’s break that down. 

He is worthy…for religious leaders in Jesus’ day, what would make someone worthy is their adherence to the statutes and traditions of the faith, not because they paid for the sanctuary renovation in the capital campaign. Yes, in the next few years, we’ll be undertaking a capital campaign here, most likely. And while I pray it will be a successful campaign, the amount of money contributed will not be what makes you worthy of receiving God’s healing. 

Were the religious leaders afraid the centurion would stop pledging to First Capernaum if they didn’t get him special access to Jesus? 

I am all fired up about this passage. Partly because I’m sick and tired of seeing religious leaders in this country try to curry favor with people in power and people with money. 

And partly because I worry I’m guilty of the same. 

As the religious leaders point out how worthy the centurion is of healing, they say: 

He loves our people. 

What does that love look like? 

What are the limits of how you love people when you:

—will snitch on those same people to an anonymous tip line,

—when you will deport those same people,

—when you will deny healthcare to them because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, or economic status,

—when you will withhold food, medicine, and aid to global partners,

—when you will use the government to sue private companies who value and hire for the diversity reflected in our country,

—when you will kill those same people you claim to love when the government tells you to because you’re a centurion? 

What are the limits of our love? 

I suspect I am not giving the centurion a fair reading in my heart right now because of what’s happening in the news. 

Who knows. Maybe this centurion was leading the resistance. Maybe he had converted to Judaism, and was subverting the unconstitutional commands Caesar and his henchmen were sending his way so they could gain access to the treasury records. 

But Luke doesn’t tell us that. If he’s a centurion, it’s because he’s good at obeying the rules of Caesar. 

Luke tells us that the centurion agreed with me that he wasn’t worthy of having Jesus visit his home. “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.” 

We’re told Jesus was amazed. Another translation is he admired him. ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ 

I don’t want Jesus to admire centurions. They were leaders of the Roman occupation, the people who carried out Rome’s unjust and often cruel orders, the ones who subjugated people across the empire. 

Remember also that Jesus dies because religious leaders align with Rome. They hand Jesus over on charges of sedition—which is conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state— they hand Jesus over to protect their own privilege and power, using the tools of politics. 

I noticed the religious leaders said that the centurion loves “our people”, which suggests that they may not be as focused on how he loves other people. 

That language is worth noting when we hear it today. We hear politicians and Christian leaders say that if we love our family and the people like us first, then we can maybe then also love people further away, if there’s enough love or money to go around. 

When we hear that, we should be skeptical. And maybe angry. We should note who they try to include and exclude. 

Elsewhere in this gospel, and we’ll hear it in a few weeks, a man comes to Jesus, asking just who, exactly, counts as a neighbor we are supposed to love. And Jesus tells the story of someone outside of the Jewish faith—a Samaritan—who saves a stranger on the side of a wilderness road, after religious leaders had passed him by. 

The religious leaders in Luke’s story illustrate a thread that goes through this gospel and the Book of Acts, also written by Luke. There is a constant tension over who is our neighbor, who is to be included, who is worthy of healing. And every single time we draw a line deciding someone is on the other side of it, Jesus tells a story to erase that line. 

What makes a person worthy of healing? Are the people oppressed by the centurion and his troops worthy of healing? Are the people who can’t afford to build a synagogue worthy of healing? Are people who don’t know who to ask for healing worthy of healing? People who can’t even ask for healing, maybe because they are dead? 

That’s where the story continues. 

Jesus hears us asking “who is worthy of healing?” as he walks through the countryside and stumbles upon a funeral procession. He sees a grieving mother, leaning on her friends, no husband or other children in sight, and realizes this woman is a widow, someone who’s only retirement plan, social security and medicare system was her son, now being carried to the cemetery. Her son and her chance at a future are dead. 

And Jesus answers our question about who is worthy of healing by telling the grieving mother not to cry, and then bringing her dead son back to life. 

For Jesus, there is no category of person—not even a dead one—who is not worthy of healing. 

I want to shout this out loud to every single person out there right now who is in the process of dismantling structures of safety, feeding, health care, and the rule of law, especially the ones of them who claim to be doing it because they are Christian. 

But the truth is, it has to start in here, with us. As a community, we have to continue to commit to seeing each person as our neighbor, deserving of God’s love and care. 

And it has to start even closer in than just this congregation. It has to start in my heart. 

Because, as you heard earlier, I would have been a very unhappy disciple if I’d been with Jesus when he turned toward the centurion’s home to offer healing because he built a synagogue. 

Who would the centurion be today in your life, the one you could justify all day long that they were not worthy of healing? 

Elon Musk’s college aged, proudly racist intern who was breaking into our Social Security records? Would I want Jesus to go heal him? 

Perhaps you need to change that illustration for a different political agenda in your heart than the one that is in mine. And I wondered if it was an extreme illustration. But I don’t think it is. 

By healing the slave of the centurion, Jesus shows us God’s love is not ours to withhold. God will love and heal who God will love and heal. 

By healing the widow’s son, someone who was already dead, Jesus shows us God’s love is stronger even than death. 

And that gives us hope when we see the death all around us. 

Preacher William Sloan Coffin once said, “Hope resists. Hopelessness adapts.” 

Jesus calls us to be in the hope business, resisting our own tendencies to declare people unworthy of God’s concern as surely as we resist those actions from others. 

So we continue caring for our neighbors. We continue celebrating the differences between us that make us unique. We continue resisting ideologies that deny the humanity of anyone, because everyone is made in the image of God. 

As we continue, hear a portion of this poem by Maya Angelou. 

Continue, by Maya Angelou 

My wish for you

Is that you continue 

Continue 

To be who and how you are

To astonish a mean world

With your acts of kindness 

Continue 

To allow humor to lighten the burden

Of your tender heart 

Continue 

In a society dark with cruelty

To let the people hear the grandeur

Of God in the peals of your laughter 

Continue 

To let your eloquence

Elevate the people to heights

They had only imagined 

Continue 

To remind the people that

Each is as good as the other

And that no one is beneath

Nor above you 

Continue 

To remember your own young years

And look with favor upon the lost

And the least and the lonely 

Continue 

To put the mantel of your protection

Around the bodies of

The young and defenseless 

Continue 

To take the hand of the despised

And diseased and walk proudly with them In the high street

 Some might see you and

 Be encouraged to do likewise 

Continue 

To plant a public kiss of concern

On the cheek of the sick

And the aged and infirm

And count that as a Natural action to be expected 

Continue 

To let gratitude be the pillow

Upon which you kneel to

Say your nightly prayer

And let faith be the bridge

You build to overcome evil

And welcome good…

Amen 

Benediction 

Angelou’s poem ends like this: 



Continue 

To ignore no vision

Which comes to enlarge your range

And increase your spirit 

Continue 

To dare to love deeply

And risk everything

For the good thing 

Continue 

To float

Happily in the sea of infinite substance

Which set aside riches for you

Before you had a name 

Continue 

And by doing so

You and your work

Will be able to continue

Eternally