Healing the centurion's servant

Healing the centurion's servant is one of the miracles performed by Jesus of Nazareth as related in the Gospel of Matthew^[1] and the Gospel of Luke^[2] (both part of the Christian biblical canon). The story is not recounted in the Gospels of either John or Mark.

Jesus healing the servant of a Centurion, by the Venetian artist Paolo Veronese, 16th century

According to these accounts, a Roman centurion asks Jesus for his help because his servant is ill. Jesus offers to go to the centurion's house to perform a healing, but the centurion hesitates because he understands he is not worthy Jesus should enter under his roof. He suggests that Jesus' word of authority would be sufficient in healing. Impressed, Jesus comments approvingly at the strong religious faith displayed by the soldier (despite not being a Jew) and grants the request, which results in the servant being healed the same day.

Sources

Scriptural sources

The story of the centurion appears both in the Gospel of Matthew and that of Luke:

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly." Jesus said to him, "Shall I come and heal him?" The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour.

— Matthew 8:5–13

When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." So Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.

— Luke 7:1–10

Origins

The story of the centurion is not mentioned in the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the four gospels. One theory is that material not in Mark but found in both Matthew and Luke may have come from a lost source known as "Q". If true then this passage would still be an anomaly as Q is believed to have been a collection of sayings of Jesus (a list of sermons and quotations) with no other contextual material; but the story of the centurion does include background detail. It would also be the only miracle story that originated in Q. One possibility is that only the dialogue was in Q, and both Matthew and Luke added the background details from a shared oral history.^[3]

The Gospel of John does narrate the account of Jesus healing the son of a royal official at Capernaum at a distance in John 4:46–54. Some modern commentators^[4] treat them as the same event. However, in his analysis of Matthew, R. T. France presents linguistic arguments against the equivalence of pais and son and considers these two separate miracles.^[5] Merrill C. Tenney in his commentary on John^[6] and Orville Daniel in his Gospel harmony^[7] also consider them two different incidents.

The basic problem is the difference between the two accounts. Since Luke does not say that the centurion himself came to Christ, but only sent to Him, first Jews, and then his friends. St. John Chrysostom, Theophylact of Ohrid, and Euthymius, all hold that these events in Luke happened first and then last of all the centurion came to Christ. He did this "either for the sake of doing Him honour, or because of the urgency of the disease, and the imminent peril of death." St. Augustine and Bede are of the opinion that the centurion never came to Jesus but only came in the sense of sending his friends as emissaries.^[8]

Use in the liturgy

The statements made by the centurion are used in the Prayer of Humble Access contained in many Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Christian Eucharist liturgies.^[9] His statements are also used as part of the Communion rite in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.

Interpretations

According to I. Howard Marshall, there were no Roman forces in Galilee prior to AD 44; therefore, the soldier was probably a member of Herod Agrippa's troops, which modeled Roman organization. Either way, although his nationality is not given, he is clearly a gentile.^[10]

Meaning of "servant"

Luke 7:2 and 7:10 refer to the person to be healed as δοῦλος (doûlos), unambiguously meaning "slave" (interpretatively tr. as "servant") but has the centurion himself call him παῖς (pais) – which has a number of more ambiguous meanings including "boy", "child" (e.g., Matt 2:16), "son" (John 4:51), "slave", and "servant" (Luke 15:26, Acts 4:25).

Meaning of "such faith"

Christ says, "He did not find such faith in all Israel," which according to John McEvilly implies that he was a Pagan soldier, most likely Roman. He further states that this statement must have excluded those who "from the very nature of things, and the well-known evidence of facts, were excepted." This exception would include the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testament, the Apostles, etc. This is clear when Jesus refers to John the Baptist, saying, "No greater arose among the born of women." (Matt 11:11) And of course he would have excluded himself.^[11]

Gnostic interpretation

In his Against Heresies, Irenaeus conveys that some Gnostics believed the story to be metaphorical, with the centurion being merely a symbol of the demiurge. According to this interpretation, the demiurge tells Jesus that he has tried all he could to save the servant (humanity) but his laws have not succeeded in healing humanity or offering it a proper means towards spiritual development. Accordingly, the demiurge urges Jesus to say a word (spread gnosis) to offer true salvation to humanity.^[12]

Homosexual interpretation

Daniel A. Helminiak, an excommunicated American Catholic priest, theologian and author of What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, states that the word pais, used for the servant, could have a sexual meaning.^[13] Theodore W. Jennings Jr. and Tat-Siong Benny Liew, also authors of various Christian books, further write that Roman historical data about patron-client relationships and about same-sex relations among soldiers support the view that the pais in Matthew's account is the centurion's "boy-lover", and that the centurion, therefore, did not want Jesus to enter his house for fear perhaps that the boy would be enamoured of Jesus instead. The Roman military historian D.B. Saddington writes that while he does not exclude the possibility, the evidence the two put forward supports "neither of these interpretations".^[14]

See also

• Bible portal

• Homosexuality in the New Testament
• Life of Jesus in the New Testament
• Ministry of Jesus
• Parables of Jesus

References

1. Matthew 8:5–13
2. Luke 7:1–10
3. Keener, Craig S. (1999). A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 264. ISBN 978-0-8028-3821-6.
4. Craddock, Fred B. (2009). Luke. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-664-23435-5.
5. France, R. T. (1985). The Gospel According to Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 154. ISBN 978-0-8028-0063-3.
6. Tenney, Merrill C. (1995). John. The Expositor's Bible Commentary Series. Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-310-50011-7.
7. Daniel, Orville E. (1996). A Harmony of the Four Gospels: The New International Version (2nd ed.). Baker Books. ISBN 978-0-8010-5642-0.
8. Lapide, Cornelius (1889). The great commentary of Cornelius à Lapide. Translated by Thomas Wimberly Mossman. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
9. Hatchett, Marion J. (1995). Commentary on the American Prayer Book. HarperCollins. p. 382. ISBN 978-0-06-063554-1.
10. Marshall, I. Howard (1978). The Gospel of Luke. Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. 276–. ISBN 978-0-8028-3512-3.
11. MacEvilly, Rev. John (1898). An Exposition of the Gospels. New York: Benziger Brothers.
12. Irenaeus. "VII. Against the Incarnation". Against Heresies. Vol. Book 1.
13. Helminiak, Daniel A (2012). Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth. Routledge. pp. 192–. ISBN 978-1-136-57075-9.
14. Saddington, D. B. (2006). "The Centurion in Matthew 8:5–13: Consideration of the Proposal of Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., and Tat-Siong Benny Liew". Journal of Biblical Literature. 125 (1): 140–142. doi:10.2307/27638351. JSTOR 27638351.