Jesus and the Centurion

[Apologiaphoenix]

How did Jesus treat someone who represents the enemy?

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How did Jesus treat the centurion? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I had said I would do some talking on Jesus and the crowds. I wish to now speak a little bit more on the story of Jesus and the centurion in Matthew. To begin with, we need to try to see this from the perspective of a Jewish person living in Israel.

This centurion is said to be a good man as he paid for a synagogue for the people, but even today, in a similar situation we would be suspicious. “Of course that politician paid to get a new hospital put up! Look at how much press coverage he gets over it!” This centurion could have very well been noble in what he did, but some people will look with suspicion. Some won’t, but some will.

What was inescapable however was that this centurion is a reminder that the Israelites don’t own their own land. Who provided the synagogue? An outsider. What outsider? One that represents the ruling power in the world that hopefully, the Messiah will deliver us from.

Even if this guy has done a lot of good, Israel would by and large prefer to not have him around. They would prefer to have the land to themselves. They were still waiting on the deliverance of God.

So now here comes Jesus and how many could already be wondering if this guy is the Messiah? If so, well surely He’s going to deal with this centurion. He’s going to tell him he’s an intruder and needs to get off the land. Those who think in such a way will be highly disappointed.

This centurion has a simple request. He wants one servant healed. When he asks, he tells Jesus that Jesus doesn’t even have to enter his house. This centurion, a man or honor and prestige in Rome, is not worthy to have Jesus in his house. All Jesus has to do is say the word. The centurion illustrates this by explaining how he says a word to a servant and they do it.

This centurion is understanding that as he has authority over the realm of his servants, Jesus has authority over the realm of at least sickness. Who knows for sure how far this goes? Keep in mind this is a pagan gentile giving this statement. (He could have been a God-fearer, but we have no explicit data showing otherwise. Either way, he would have been seen as outside of the covenant.)

After the healing, Jesus turns to the crowd of people and what does He do? The exact opposite of I’m sure of what many people were expecting. He tells them He hasn’t seen a faith like this in all of Israel. Sorry guys, but this gentile here has you beat!

Not only this, but he pulls this over to the next world. He says that many will come from all over the world to join the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but many of the Jews themselves in Israel will be cast out and not entering. If you are a Jew in the audience sick of Rome and wanted to see Jesus lay down the law on these guys, you got the exact opposite of what you wanted.

This is not a good day for you.

Something we can think about here is that Jesus did not say something to please the crowd. If anything, He said something extremely offensive to the crowd. Jesus in all His talks never apologizes. He never takes back anything that He says. He says it and it’s out there and that’s it. If you don’t like it, He’s not responsible for your feelings.

I am not saying we need to be needlessly offensive, but if Jesus was not afraid of offending His audience with the truth, why should we? A huge problem in our Western society today is that offensive statements are deemed unallowable because someone’s feelings could be hurt. Everyone’s feelings will get hurt sometime and the more we coddle this, the more we make it that we can’t handle anything. As a pastor I was talking to yesterday said, “The early church was willing to face death for Jesus Christ and we breakdown if our air conditioning goes out.”

Not only this, but Jesus is considered one of the greatest personalities and speakers of all time as well as one of the holiest and best men who ever lived. Now as a Christian, I think he’s the best of all time period, but even non-Christians can praise the life of Jesus in these areas and often do. Aside from the crazy position of mythicism, most everyone would tend to agree that Jesus is a figure that is admirable in many ways.

Jesus did not sway to popular opinion.

Perhaps we should be the same way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

How did Jesus treat someone who represents the enemy?

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What was inescapable however was that this centurion is a reminder that the Israelites don’t own their own land. Who provided the synagogue? An outsider. What outsider? One that represents the ruling power in the world that hopefully, the Messiah will deliver us from.

This centurion was not Roman. Capernaum was in Galilee, at the time a separate client kingdom to Rome.

[Faber]

Probably why Luke 7 adds the detail that the centurion had to send some Jewish elders to request Jesus to come to his home. Perea and Galilee were under Herod Antipas until AD 39, but Judea was a Roman province as early as AD 6. Then there was Caesarea, where the Procurators over the Roman province of Judea governed. Such was the case years later with the centurion Cornelius. There is no reason to think that the earlier centurion could not have been Roman or even Greek.

[tabibito]

This centurion was not Roman. Capernaum was in Galilee, at the time a separate client kingdom to Rome.

https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-...review/19/5/10
New evidence indicates that Romans indeed lived in Capernaum in the first century A.D. Moreover, far from being a poor, isolated village, Capernaum, the center of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, was quite prosperous and was apparently home to gentiles as well as Jews. In the centuries that followed, Capernaum expanded and continued to prosper, in part as a Christian pilgrim center, in part as an important fishing and commercial center, and in part as a haven for displaced Jews. It continued to include a mixed population of Christians and Jews, as well as others.

For nearly 1,000 years Capernaum, known as Tel-Hum (or Tal-Hum), was unoccupied, used only by Bedouin for seasonal agriculture and grazing. In 1852 the American scholar Edward Robinson correctly recognized the remains of a synagogue at the site but failed to identify it with Capernaum, which he located about two miles southwest of Tel-Hum, a site known as Khirbet Minya.¹(This site, as we now know, was not inhabited before the early Arab periods [seventeenth centuries A.D.].)²

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-...review/19/5/10
New evidence indicates that Romans indeed lived in Capernaum in the first century A.D. Moreover, far from being a poor, isolated village, Capernaum, the center of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, was quite prosperous and was apparently home to gentiles as well as Jews. In the centuries that followed, Capernaum expanded and continued to prosper, in part as a Christian pilgrim center, in part as an important fishing and commercial center, and in part as a haven for displaced Jews. It continued to include a mixed population of Christians and Jews, as well as others.

For nearly 1,000 years Capernaum, known as Tel-Hum (or Tal-Hum), was unoccupied, used only by Bedouin for seasonal agriculture and grazing. In 1852 the American scholar Edward Robinson correctly recognized the remains of a synagogue at the site but failed to identify it with Capernaum, which he located about two miles southwest of Tel-Hum, a site known as Khirbet Minya.¹(This site, as we now know, was not inhabited before the early Arab periods [seventeenth centuries A.D.].)²

Not as a serving member of the Roman army. Rome had no military forces in Galilee at this period. More to the point, why would it need to?

Nor in the early 30s CE does one suspect there were any Christians there either.

However, Herod the Great did model his army on that of Rome and so if this centurion actually existed he would have been a member of the Herodian army of Antipas.

[Christianbookworm]

Wonder why only Gentiles trusted that Jesus could do a miracle from a distance?