“Many Will Come from East and West”
4th Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 6:18-23; Matthew 8:5-13
The amazing thing about today's Gospel story is that Jesus Christ sets an unusual person as an example for the confessors of the one God - a soldier, a centurion in the army of the Roman Empire. This centurion demonstrated the true virtues of piety: mercy, love for one's neighbours, a firm belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and obedience to God. Most likely, we would not look for these virtues among professional soldiers.
But, to tell the truth, we probably would not look for candidates for evangelizers of the Gospel, preachers of the Word of God, among illiterate fishermen in some remote province. Christ did not look for disciples, candidates for apostles, among educated and comprehensively trained people — Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, lawyers who knew the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, because for them their knowledge of the Law, their bookishness, replaced the main idea of God's care for the salvation of people, the love of God and love for their neighbours.
Christ called to Himself, as a disciple, Levi, a tax collector, who became the well-known evangelist Matthew (he was added, elected to the number of 12 instead of the traitor Judas Iscariot). Thus, the Lord Jesus Christ did not make a choice for ordinary human reasons.
He came into the world to change it radically, to give people one truth, one faith of salvation instead of paganism and Judaism, and to unite everyone with one Creator God. And so, the Lord found both the choice of disciples and the pattern of righteousness wherever people usually looked. After all, the grace of God works from Christ and is capable of transforming a person, radically changing his spiritual being.
This is clearly evident from the example of Saul-Paul: in the first days of the preaching of the apostles, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, Saul—“breathing with slaughter and murder against the disciples of the Lord, having come to the chief priests”—was commissioned to arrest and persecute the first Christians, “men or women” (Acts 9:2), but Christ called him to follow a different road— to the Truth—and he became, as the Apostle Paul, the greatest preacher of the faith of Christ, the greatest missionary of the Church of Christ. Apostle Paul founded the greatest number of Christ's Communities-Churches; his Epistles are the ones most read in churches around the world; they have become part of the Bible.
The works and teachings of Jesus Christ, the miracles performed by God, also made great transformations in the soul of the soldier, the centurion of the Roman army. Although he, as a government official of the Roman administration, probably could not personally listen to the sermons of Christ, yet that centurion gained such virtues, such a manifestation of faith, that the Lord set him as an example for all his followers. Let us note that the centurion of the Roman army, a rather significant government figure in that region, humbles himself and begs for mercy, the grace of God, for the return to health not for members of his personal family, but for his servant.
“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.” (Matthew 8:6)
When Christ promised to come to his house and heal him, the centurion, confessing his sinfulness, said:
“Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof...”
The centurion held a certain governmental position in the administration of the Roman Empire, he had a certain power, not only the soldiers, but also the civil authorities in the territory entrusted to him for supervision, and Christ did not have any official position, did not have any property, no one was obliged to obey Him, but the centurion called Him Lord, and himself “unworthy”. And he (the centurion) has such faith, such a firm conviction in the grace of God Jesus Christ, that he says:
“But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed”. (Matt. 8:8)
This is the kind of faith Jesus expected from His followers, in all those who asked for some mercy of God, some kind of healing (whether it was a bleeding woman, or a paralyzed one, or when Sister Mary asked for help for her brother Lazarus) – that they have a great firm faith that the Lord would be able to heal them, and, moreover, to raise Lazarus from the dead.
That is why Jesus set this centurion as a model:
“Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” (Matt. 8:10)
And therefore, prophetically, He testified:
“And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down … in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 8:11)
This was a rebuke and a warning to the Israelites, who considered themselves to be the chosen people and dismissed the other nations as unbelievers, as false confessors of God. The Lord set as a model the confession of faith in God, the centurion of the Roman army, and indeed he was.
Jesus Christ forewarned, as already mentioned, about the coming of people from the east and the west to the faithful confessors of God, and so it came to pass. The Church of Christ attracted people from different nations; they became true confessors of the one true God and Lord Jesus Christ, and the “sons of the kingdom” truly were, in the words of the Lord, “cast out into outer darkness”. (Matt. 8:12)
Nothing comes about automatically, but a firm faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God must be made manifest, and those of different nations who do thus are worthy to be in the Kingdom of Heaven. Followers of Christ should have this centurion as an example of a proper profession of faith in Jesus Christ, as the Lord set him as an example for his disciples and all Israelites. He testified that
“Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” (Matt. 8:10)
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
