Matthew 8:5 - 11
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."
What do you think you deserve in the world?
What do you think you deserve from God?
The questions are not easy. Most of us would say one thing with our lives and something different with our lips. Our lives vacillate between the extremes of acting as if we were the center of the universe on one hand, to feeling that we are wretched sinners and completely unworthy of anything good and beautiful on the other. Most of us spend our lives swinging between these two poles.
Jesus offered to act on behalf of the Roman soldier, but the centurion's response betrayed where he was on the worthiness-spectrum at that particular moment. "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word and my servant will be healed."
I imagine that what we feel we are worthy of goes mostly unspoken, yet it seasons much of what we do, say, and believe in life.
These words have been with me for years, primarily because every time I stand behind a Communion Table I repeat a variation of them. I was drawn to the words long ago, having heard them in the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church and in the Eucharistic liturgies of the Anglican Church.
I was drawn to the line, though, because as I stand at the Table of Christ I need to be reminded of who I am. I am not worthy to stand behind that Table, nor to hold that Bread and Cup in my hands, nor to take them into my body. . . . But this meal is not about my worthiness. It is not about whether or not I deserve to be there, because I don't deserve to be there any more than the next person deserves to be there.
I say the words to remind myself that I come to Christ by the generous, gracious invitation of God and not on my own merits. I am both worthy of nothing God offers me, and at the same time worthy of everything God offers me.
So at the Communion Table I speak these words: "Lord, we are not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and we shall be healed."
Richard Rohr is fond of saying, "God doesn't love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good."
It's probably important to bring to consciousness what we feel we are worthy of in the world -- just so we can know our inner landscape and the interior pulls that jerk us around.
But at some point, it's totally a waste of time to try to figure out what we are worthy of. The question won't really get us anywhere.
In God, we are both worthy of nothing . . . and worthy of everything . . . and all at the same time. You might want to linger in that mystery for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment