Did you notice that Jesus never actually meets the centurion in the story? Everything the centurion says he says from off-stage, through messengers. Even so, Jesus is amazed at him. That’s what we read in vs 9. Jesus says: I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel. That’s a more shocking declaration than it appears at first. Jesus himself had anticipated that it would be so back when he taught in the synagogue in Nazareth.

1. We love to divide the world

We love to divide the world into two sides.

When we were children, the games we invented always depended on it. There were the goodies and the baddies. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. If we were playing cricket — Australia vs England — and just to be clear, Australia were the goodies.

Usually it was your younger brother or sister who had to be the baddie.

But it’s not just a childhood thing. It’s a habit we take with us into adulthood, because the world feels safer if there’s clearly an us, and clearly a them.

It can be political: left vs right. It can be cultural: progressive vs conservative. It can be religious: believer vs atheist, Christian vs Muslim. It can even be moral: good people vs bad people.

And once you’ve drawn that line, everything else follows. The insiders deserve to be here and the outsiders don’t.

And it’s a sad feature of the contemporary landscape that there are ‘division farmers’: those who insist on heightening the sense of us and them so that they can bolster their own platforms.

But in Luke chapter 7, Jesus tells a story that rearranges that map completely.

Because the person who turns out to be closest to the kingdom of God is not one of the insiders. He’s not part of the covenant people. He doesn’t belong in the synagogue.

He is, in fact, an enemy: a Roman centurion. He’s a representative of the occupying army. A man whose job it was to enforce the rule of Caesar over the people of God.

And yet, when Jesus looks at him, he says: “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” How is this possible? Well, it comes down to two sentences that this man speaks.

“I am not worthy.”

“But just say the word.”

Jesus says: that is faith. Which means that the real dividing line in the world is not between insiders and outsiders, or the religious and the secular, or even the moral and the immoral. It is between those who think they deserve to be here and those who come empty-handed, saying:

“I am not worthy… but just say the word.”

2. The desperate centurion/ the curious enemy vs 1-5

This is why Luke puts the story of the centurion at Capernaum right after Jesus telling us to love our enemies. Because here is a story about an enemy. As we’ll see though, this isn’t just a model of how to love an enemy but a surprising story about an enemy who loves us.

The model of enemy love is, it turns out, an enemy.

Luke tells us that Jesus entered Capernaum. We know that Capernaum was a garrison town and a hub for commerce and travel. It was technically under the Jewish king Herod Antipas, but he was a puppet and needed the help of the Romans to suppress uprisings by his countrymen.

It’s no surprise that there was a centurion stationed in the town. Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army, commanding 80-100 men. They enforced taxation. They could take your donkey or requisition your land. They were the face of oppression.

But this centurion had a slave who was about to die. And he ‘valued him highly’. That might sound like a merely economic concern. Slaves were, after all, property in the Roman world. But what follows suggests something more like affection than asset management.

So he asks Jesus for help through the local Jewish elders. That reveals something remarkable about this centurion, because when the Jewish elders come to Jesus, they are fulsome in their praise of this Roman. It turns out that this occupying soldier, a representative of the oppressing power, is a great friend to the Jews. So the elders really turn it on for Jesus: This man deserves to have you do this because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.

He’s a mensch, as they say in Yiddish.

There’s the ruins of a massive synagogue visible today in Capernaum, although this one was built about 300 years after this story. Beneath it, however, there is a 1st-century structure which scholars suggest is the synagogue built by the Roman centurion.

Just think for a minute how extraordinary this is. It’s as if a Muslim businessman paid for the restoration of St Mark’s roof. Or the Chinese Communist Party paid for one of our ministers. This uncircumcised centurion had been captivated by the God of the Jewish people, even though he could not share in it, because he was an outsider – and worse than that, an enemy, at least officially.

And this had clearly so deeply impressed the Jews that they told Jesus he was deserving of this miracle for his slave, even though he was a Roman centurion.

3. The amazing faith of the enemy vs 6-8

So Jesus went with the Jewish elders to find the centurion and his ailing slave. But he wasn’t far from the house when he received a second delegation from the centurion. It’s a very different approach.

The first appeal to Jesus in vs 4 was that the centurion was deserving. He sent the elders to act like a LinkedIn profile. What a great guy he is! He’s been so generous! It is true. These are remarkable things.

But the second delegation (vs 6) says the opposite. The centurion now says to Jesus: I am not worthy. I don’t deserve to have you come to my house.

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