Who is healed?

Inner Struggle by Armando Almedar Ara
found at www.gxgallery.com

     I love this time in the church year because we are now officially 'ordinary'.  The Sundays between Holy Trinity and Christ the King (with the exception of a few special festival days) are considered ordinary time, or Sundays after Pentecost, or for many Lutherans, the Sundays when it slows down.  Perhaps the slowness of summer is what makes the Sundays seem ordinary, perhaps it is because on any given Sunday many families are out of town on vacation or summer visiting somewhere, but whatever the reason the Sundays are aptly named.
     However ordinary the Sundays are, the texts each week are anything but.  We are in Luke for most of the summer, slowly and steadily making our way through the portions of the gospel that we have not yet heard.  We begin in chapter 7 with a story about healing.  At first glance any story about healing with Jesus involved does not seem too out of the ordinary.  He does, after all, heal most people with whom he comes in contact.   Stories of healing and miracles often fall upon our ears like the fat, splatty rain drops we've been seeing lately - they hit and trickle right off.  Yet in this story there are a few things that strike me as out of the ordinary:

• There is the healing itself.  Jesus heals a man who didn't ask for it (his owner asked for it on his behalf) and Jesus wasn't in the man's presence when he was healed.  
• The man who asked for the healing of his slave wasn't Jewish but when he 'heard about Jesus' he sent some Jewish elders to ask on his behalf.  Yet when the elders prevailed and Jesus was on his way the man changed his mind, sent more emissaries and told Jesus not to bother.
• Jesus was 'amazed at [the man]' and praised his faith as that which he hadn't even found in Israel.

     Any one of these turns in the plot make the story more than ordinary, and with all three the story is elevated (at least in my own mind) to that of the extraordinary.  The story which on its surface is about a sick slave who is healed turns out to be about much and more.  It is a story about faith of a Roman centurion, it is a story about worthiness and value and what it takes to be there, it is a story about Jesus' mission and ministry.
     To me the question of worth stands out the most.  It comes from the Jewish elders whom the centurion sent when they approach Jesus and say, "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."  In the eyes of the elders it is the centurion's love and work that make him worthy of Jesus' favor and healing.  Yet, in the second set of messengers the centurion sends he himself says, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof."
     It seems that there is a deep and tearing inner struggle with this centurion who values his slave so much he is willing to go to an outsider for help yet who simultaneously believes himself unworthy of such a miracle.  One of the aspects that makes this story so delicious is that we don't know what message the centurion gave to the Jewish elders to give to Jesus.  Did the elders voluntarily tell Jesus about the worth of the centurion because they respected him or was that something the centurion asked them to say?  My hunch is that the centurion simply figured Jesus would be more likely to listen to elders from his own religion and faith and didn't tell them anything except to ask Jesus to heal his slave.  But in the end it doesn't matter because in the end, unless you are a narcissist we are all the centurion.
     We all know our own faults, our vices, our bad habits, our sins, our shortcomings; every negative thing about us - we know.  And we know them well.  So when it comes to having Jesus' attention and favor, we all might get a little squeamish.  Not because we don't want it, but because we have a hard time believing Jesus wants to give it to us.  For free.  With nothing in return.  The inner struggle of knowing our faults yet wanting to be whole and healed is a cosmic battle of our saint/sinner baptized self.
     And it is because of this inner struggle the centurion has that I wonder what Jesus means when he says he has never seen such faith?  Is it faith that Jesus can heal his slave?  Is it faith that he believes the healing can happen by Jesus' words alone?  Or is it, rather, faith that acknowledges unworthiness and asks anyway?
     The writer of Hebrews tells us that we can 'approach the throne of grace with confidence' and that is exactly what this centurion does.  He knows what he wants, he knows he is not worthy of it, and he asks anyway.  And in the healing, I think, Jesus shows that man that he is indeed worthy.  It is, in essence, Jesus' way of saying that in order to be worthy you need not be Jewish, it matters not what you have done or not done, and your position of power or lack thereof has no impact.  You are worthy if you simply believe.  And since, in the man's floundering and wondering Jesus affirms him with a wholehearted 'yes', I am pondering the mystery of healing.  Who was healed in this story?  Obviously the slave was brought from his death bed back to health, which is an amazing tale of healing and miraculous even by today's standards of modern medicine.  However I wonder at how the heart of the centurion was changed by this encounter.
     What must it have been like to know that Jesus accepted you even without seeing you?  What must it have been like to receive a final and tangible 'yes' to the inner struggle of his sense of self-worth?  What must it have been like to receive healing when he didn't even know he needed it?