Systemic Evil
Luke 7:1-10
February 4, 2007
Isn’t this a beautiful story? Isn’t Jesus just the best? Here’s a fantastic story about a Roman officer and how Jesus reached out to him. How Jesus reached out beyond his religious and cultural roots and made nice with a roman. He helped out someone that embodied the roman empire
Isn’t Jesus great? Isn’t this a great story? Here we have Jesus firmly planted within his religious community. He’s pushing, challenging, questioning all in the name of trying to strengthen, deepen, widen the experience of the Holy. Unlike last week, this is the kind of Jesus we like to hear about. And this magnanimous Jesus, he responds outside the bounds and is open to even hearing the voices from within the Roman Empire.
A centurion is a Roman soldier. He is in charge of a hundred men. Get it, century, centurion? He’s comparable to the modern day Company Commander. There were 60 Company Commanders or Centurians and each one had a status. The highest ranked of the 60 went through a ceremony that was sort of like getting knighted. These Company Commanders were a small group that governed the military. This alone made them notables within a town and ruling class. They had power.
This powerful man, who knew other powerful people had a group go on his behalf to Jesus out of his care for his slave. He wanted his slave healed. And the people got Jesus attention and he was coming to heal the slave. He didn’t even get to the house, when the powerful man said, hey, you don’t need to waste your time coming. If you give the order I know it will be so. Just give the order from where you are and I know it will be so. Jesus is impressed by this man’s blind faith and grants this miracle healing the slave.
Beautiful story, right? Do you see any flaws in the tale?
This story is about healing a slave. This story is about healing a slave. Not freeing a slave. Not eradicating the stuff that made the guy a slave. Jesus healed a slave. Jesus healed a slave who was supporting the empire. He didn’t heal the slave to support a wider love of neighbor and belief in God’s unconditional and equal love. He healed a slave to continue serving the empire, it’s belief system and power plays. He says nothing about the slavery. If the slaved could be healed why can he not be freed?
In Rome 35% of the population was made up of slaves. This was due to enslaving large numbers of people instead of mass killings during wars. Prisoners of war were made into slaves that served the crown and the temple. As if being ripped out of your homeland, separated from your family, and only God knows what other atrocities of war have been physically done to you, you then are enslaved to serve those who commanded that it happen and those who carried it out. But, you could also become enslaved by being born to a slave woman, by being an abandoned infant, by being purchased by a wealthy person because your family needed the money, by selling yourself because you needed money, you needed out of poverty or being kidnapped. All right and equal ways into slavery. And, once you were enslaved, you achieved a social death a total invisibility. You were cut off from family, your former home any property you owned. Your whole identity depended entirely upon the owner.
So we have the Centurion’s Slave. Why does the Centurion want the slave healed? It now seems dubious doesn’t it. Sometimes the slaves had a better education than that of the owner. Perhaps the Centurion couldn’t afford to lose this slave. It would cost him too much. Perhaps the Centurion created the near death state for this slave. He was allowed by law to be as harsh as he deemed fit as the owner of the slave. Perhaps he realized he went a bit to far so he called for the magic man before he lost his investment and was paid back.
Systemic Evil is so seductive. It’s so seductive because we can’t see it, hear it, feel it without a new orientation. It’s so common to our understanding of how things are that we choose to not see it, challenge it, face it. Slavery was such an accepted part of the social fabric no teachers of morality thought to question its practice and that included Jesus. He could heal someone who was sick, but he could not free a slave. He could meet the friends and advocates of the Centurion but he could not meet the slave. He could compliment the slave owners faith but could not look into the eyes of the slave and say you are made free through the love of God. If we can have miracles of healing why can’t we have a miracle of freedom?
We can’t have a miracle of freedom because this Jesus that we love. He was human. He was just a guy trying to live out his call from God. He was not more knowing, he didn’t know how things would turn out, and he couldn’t even see the slave getting set free as the ultimate healing needed. The Jesus movement after the death of Jesus did offer new social orders for slaves. They were welcomed into communities and called brothers and sisters. Any of us that have lost our families know how healing it is to hear the words brother and sister ringing in our ears. This refreshing acceptance and love brought all together in those early house churches whether jew or Greek, slave or free.
And, maybe that could all come about because of Jesus own realization of how he had contributed to the empire in not freeing the Centrion’s slave. Maybe it all came about because of the conversation he missed by not pushing the Centurion? The point is that it did evolve. And, maybe that’s the hope for us today. We may not get it all right the first time. We bring cans of food instead of eradicating the things that cause hunger. We battle with insurance companies instead of solving why some have insurance companies to battle and other don’t.
This is the time of year when we need to take off our rose colored glasses about this guy named Jesus and see his humanity. We need to celebrate that we see ourselves in him. We need to celebrate that he wasn’t magic and everything fell into line. But instead, when faced with the really big stuff, oftentimes, even Jesus had difficulty knowing how to heal it all. Let’s be patient with one another this week and begin to find ways to begin the healing. To name systemic evil. To wonder about how we could eradicate some of the systemic evil we’re contributing to in the world today, Let us pray.