Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, February 5, 2020
by Daniel D. Maurer, Clergy Stuff
Following from yesterday’s daily reading for the Narrative Lectionary, today’s reading is similar. Once again, I do not believe that Jesus was somehow “testing” the centurion is his dialogue with him. Instead, I believe it shows the genius (and truly radical nature) of Jesus’ teachings.
The centurion knew the “order of things” and he knew that Jesus was powerful. The centurion was most definitely NOT Jewish; he probably was a worshipper of Mithras, a secretive Roman warrior cult.
Does Jesus ever tell him to drop his evil ways and follow him? No. Instead Jesus allows the centurion to “one-up” him and correct him, knowing that if God had willed all the power of the Almighty into God’s son, that Jesus could heal the slave from afar.
And the man was healed. The centurion? He was acknowledged as one with “great faith.”
Boy do we sometimes not realize how radical the Bible is.
How can faith not be a test, but an experience meant to allow us to grow, just as Jesus himself grew?
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