Sermons Author: The Rt. Rev. James "Jay" Magness

Radical Sacrifice

May 29, 2016

The Second Sunday After Pentecost

 

What did Jesus think he was doing? Openly, he was trying to help a Roman soldier: to many the worst symbol of the oppression of the Roman emperor who'd caused much of the horror and suffering being experienced by the Jewish people. Your perspective of the story of Jesus and the Centurion, depends upon where you stand. It could be about the alleged Jewish messiah and a hated representative of the occupation army. Or, it could be about the Roman military officer and the dreaded religious insurrectionist.

OR, there may be a third perspective: a story about two people who know something about personal sacrifice. Both knew of the inevitable possibilities of the sacrifice of their lives.

A little over a decade ago, Mitch Albom wrote a book-length parable about forgiveness, reconciliation and, above all else, sacrifice. Albom's parable was The Five People You Meet in Heaven . The story emerges through a late-in-life experience had by a man named Eddie. In his younger years Eddie had been a Soldier who'd fought in the WWII Pacific Campaign. However, first author Albom introduces the reader to a much older version of Eddie. Eddie is working as a maintenance technician at an amusement park. He is, as soon we find out, near the end of his life.

The first significant glimpse of Eddie is in the course of his work as a maintenance man. Strolling through the amusement park Eddie is warmly greeted by fellow employees and guests alike. The little ones loved Eddie. He had a talent. You have seen this in parks and at community festivals. Eddie blew up those long balloons and then twisted them into animal shapes. The children loved to be entertained by Eddie when he blew up the balloons and talked to them about what he was making.

While walking Eddie he looks up at a gondola ride, one he has seen and worked on hundreds of times. However, this time something is not right. A cable from which the gondola is suspended has begun to fray. Though Eddie walks with a painful limp, nonetheless he picks up his pace. Soon in his halting gait he is running across the yard of the park. He can see that an unsuspecting little girl is walking beneath the gondola. Just then the fraying cable snaps and plummets toward the child. Despite Eddie's truly heroic effort, he is not successful and cannot save the child. Eddie reaches the child just as the gondola makes contact, and he dies as well.

This begins Eddie's sojourn in heaven. While I am not entirely sure what I expect heaven to be, my meager expectations of that realm of existence are far from Albom's descriptions. Not long after his arrival in heaven Eddie meets up with his "captain," the Army officer who had been his commanding officer during WWII in the Pacific; the man who led Eddie and the other Soldiers through their combat engagements; the man whose mantra was, "I want to bring them all home." Actually the Captain might have succeeded had he and his men not been taken as prisoners of war. After their capture in the Philippines, they were held in crude bamboo cells. Through repeated episodes of torture by their captors, the Soldiers were gradually hardened to point at which they became almost immune to physical pain. Then one day, through no small amount of creative cunning, the captive soldiers managed to escape. In some very important ways their escape would set the stage for the central confrontation awaiting Eddie.

Both Eddie and his Captain would soon experience significant physical losses. Eddie's knee was shattered by a well-intentioned bullet. As a result, for the remainder of his life Eddie would hobble along with a debilitating war injury. In contrast the Captain literally sacrificed his life. On a road the escaping Soldiers needed to transit the Captain was walking ahead of their truck scanning for explosive mines embedded and hidden in packed roadway. Through a misstep – or perhaps an intentional step - the Captain detonated the explosive device that killed him, an explosive device which would have killed Eddie and the other Soldiers. Through this act the Captain saved the lives of his men. The Captain gave his life that his men might live and get to go home alive.

In what I can only describe as Eddie's transitional heaven, Eddie is emotionally, morally and spiritually stuck. He can't seem to get beyond the fact that as the result of the war experience, he lost at least 50% of the use of one leg. Eddie had assumed the role of an unforgiving victim, and he could not get unstuck!

In the next scene the Captain, now post-death and very much alive again, returns to engage Eddie in a dialogue. Through a heated exchange between the two, the Captain brings Eddie up short for his self-victimization and says to him:

"'Sacrifice,' the Captain said. 'You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. "You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices'...Eddie shook his head. 'But you...' He lowered his voice. 'You lost your life.' The Captain smacked his tongue on his teeth. 'That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.'"

Jesus said it: if we want to inherit eternal life and be his follower, we are going to engage in personal sacrifice, adopt the way of the cross and engage in kingdom behavior. Jesus calls us to separate ourselves from the false gods to which we cling - and which wrongly we think will give us satisfaction. For more than a few of us, our refusal to sacrifice our blame of the other and embrace forgiveness is one of those false gods.

When you work with active duty military men and women, and veterans, sooner or later there will be some talk about sacrifice, often as it relates to forgiveness. This is particularly true for combat veterans. Once they begin putting words to the sights, sounds and smells that are so embedded in their memories, something begins to happen. With little or no prodding, they will talk about things done and things left undone. They can teach all who will listen about sacrifice – and may even tell you about sin and the need for forgiveness – both forgiveness of self and forgiveness of the other – who may be the enemy.

Edward Masure was a clergyman who lived in France during WWII. There he experienced the brutalities of combat and in simultaneous contrast, numerous courageous acts that saved lives as well. Reflecting upon his observations he defined the courageous acts as sacrifice: something a person does when he or she knows that the other needs what you can give and for which you can get nothing in return.

You can test this definition. Find a service-member or a veteran and ask him or her to tell you to what it's like when you give to and serve others, when you have neither hope nor expectation that you'll get anything in return for what you have given. Listen closely and you'll hear about how people of character give and forgive out of the the deepest part of their being.

In the environment in which most of my priests work this challenge is no small thing. Most of them would resonate with the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer's statement that "Whenever Christ Calls us, his call leads us to death." They know that during the last decade plus of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, // and Afghanistan and Iraq again, though the death may not have been theirs, death was all around them. The priests knew the sacrifices they had to make in order to be Christ-followers who travel into the valley of the shadow of death with those they serve. They know that for them, there is no higher calling.

This story of the officer of the Roman occupation is a story of radical exception to the rule. During Jesus' day, the colonial Roman occupying force had a well-deserved reputation of brutal terror that brought people to their knees and to submission. Yet this Roman officer, the one charged to lead a centurion, or group of 100 men, is no ordinary man with intention to enslave and devastate the Jewish people. Reminiscent of humanitarian assistance scenes you might see the US military today in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had seen to it that the Jewish worshipping community had a new Temple built for them. This officer had credibility with Jesus' people. Power can be used to destroy OR, and quite literally in this case, can be used to build and create more than just a building. The centurion had created a relationship built upon trust and goodness.

Between two traditional opposites, occupying Roman soldiers and Jewish leaders, who were almost natural enemies, this unusual centurion has reached out across the divide between them to do bear witness to something good within him. Through his actions of both a construction project and healing help for a sick slave, he leaves us with evidence that even traditional enemies do not have characterize the other as different and evil.

Sebastian Junger, whom many of you will know from his books The Perfect Storm and Restrepo, has written about the experience of American combat troops who come back home from the combat theater of operations and are confronted by the dysfunctions of our very strident and dysfunctional society. In his latest book Tribe , Junger chronicles how service members who may have spent upwards of 15 to 18-month combat deployments working in that are between intense and impossible, all the while not giving in to temptations to be divided by race, sexuality, politics, or religion. When these men and women come home they find that those of us who live in their towns, villages, and cities are very much divided by these forces. Junger's conclusion is that the readjustment challenges for returning service members may be more than only post-traumatic stress. The Roman centurion gives us a model for another way of relating to and engaging with people with whom we do not agree.

On the other side of the equation is Jesus, a person of rapidly growing power; power that came into being because of the authority given him by the people he served. On that day in Capernaum, the Roman centurion absolutely did his part to confirm his view that Jesus was a person of authentic power and authority. Jesus' took a huge risk by interacting with the Roman officer. Sure, the Jewish elders would have liked for him to help the soldier's slave, but what about all the other holy people of his day? What about those who viewed this leader of alien occupation troops as infidels and heathens? What would they think when Jesus expressed his amazement at the man and said, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith?"

Why would Jesus take such a risk? Why not play it safe – and say "NO, I can't help you?" Similarly, when the centurion called for Jesus to heal his ill slave, he took a huge risk at being alienated, if not punished by the Roman officers over him. Not only could this risk have ended his military career, but it could have even ended his life.

Both Jesus and the centurion were taking huge risks, and were willing to sacrifice all for the sake of a good act, the care of a slave, a person of questionable value in their culture.

Most of us calculate risk; some of us even in terms of frequency and severity. I believe that a large portion of those who have sacrificed their lives in the context of a combat mission have done so because over and above the frequency and severity of the risk, they concluded that there was no other choice than to risk everything for the sake of their colleagues and the mission. To me, that is an example of a life of value that was worth living, and therefore, valuable in terms of the sacrificial impact.

Life without risk is life that is unfulfilled. The same can be said for life without personal sacrifice. Jesus uses the centurion to remind us that his followers are called to engage in the radical kingdom behavior of sacrifice; to be so committed to this radical behavior of sacrifice that it is no longer radical behavior, but rather our new normal.

AMEN.