I’ve been reading a fascinating novel called The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, written by Jose Saramago, the Nobel Prize author from Portugal. It is a sort of reimagining of the life of Jesus, with almost everything familiar to us from the Bible included. In Saramago's telling, Jesus is a lot more human but not less divine. But Jesus is a reluctant volunteer for the Cross, and in exasperation at God, declares he won’t do any more miracles, “Doesn’t matter,” God tells him, “the miracles will happen anyway, whether you’re there or not.”

In other words, “there’s something about you, Jesus, that evokes miracles; there’s something about you that just produces faith; there’s something about you that folks just want to believe in!” God is at work in the Divine Christ, even when the human physical Jesus is not present.

This reminds us of a wonderful story told in the Bible. It seems there was a Roman centurion in Israel who was actually a nice guy, well respected by the Jewish leaders, even though he represented the enemy occupiers, Rome. The Roman centurion had a servant who was near death. The Bible says this was a servant who was “highly valued” by the centurion. So the centurion and his Jewish friends begged Jesus to heal the servant. When Jesus agreed and started to go to the Roman centurion’s house, Jesus was told, “Don’t’ trouble yourself! You don’t need to come to the house. I know the authority, the power you have, just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10) Jesus was impressed by that Roman centurion’s faith. Here was a man who was politically the enemy and theologically a pagan, yet he had enough faith to call on Jesus and to count on Jesus. And so the servant was healed.

It’s a wonderful and comforting story because the miracle gets done, even without Jesus being physically present, even when the main characters are enemies and slaves and pagans and oppressors. The miracle gets done because even with unusual situations and unlikely people, faith wins out.

Think about it. The Roman centurion was a slave-owner and a Jew-oppressor; that’s why the soldier was in Israel in the first place. They had conquered Israel, now they had to win it, control it, squeeze it dry, oppress it, and the Roman centurion was one of the main cogs in the Roman machinery. And what of the slave? Probably some conquered young man from Gaul or Egypt or Ethiopia or Greece, someone taken in battle, a possession, a thing. Yet, here we have the making of a miracle. Two people, a Roman centurion and a slave, enemy and outcast, wrong profession, wrong country, wrong religion, a political and economic and theological opponent, with a background of oppression, slavery, and paganism! Yet, in the story, there is enough faith, enough friendship, enough compassion to work a miracle.

There are really two parts of this story that are interesting. One is that Jesus didn’t even have to go to the centurion’s house for the miracle to get done. The physical Jesus could be absent; the Divine Christ could still be present. The second is that this story combines an unusual cast of characters: a Roman centurion, a slave, a group of Jewish leaders. Jesus is going around stirring up controversy, upsetting the status quo, turning the applecart upside down, building a new religious movement – behavior  that will soon get him killed. Yet, here we have Jewish leaders, lobbying in behalf of an enemy Roman centurion for the benefit of a pagan slave. We have faith coming from an unlikely place, the Roman centurion, and a miracle going to an unlikely place, to the pagan slave of a pagan enemy Roman soldier.

In other words, there’s no limit to what God will do … or whom God will do it with. We may divide ourselves up into nations, religions, colors, political parties, denominations. But not God. That’s sort of the essence of our church’s ministry, day in and day out: no limits on God, no limits on God’s love, period!

This past week our friend Azariah was visiting here from India. He spoke here last Sunday. We took him over to several of the Habitat projects to meet some of the Habitat families and volunteers. We had a couple of great fellowship events and dinners with people in the church; we did a lot of business, trying to figure out how to get all the money we can, to do all the good we have the chance to do.

We’ve had a lot of great experiences working together, but some disappointments, too. A few years ago, a church group was thinking of supporting our FOCI work in India, so I provided a copy of my book, Consider Jesus, for the board members, and I wrote a proposal, and a presentation was made. But suddenly we were flat-out rejected! Once they discovered that our mission work was for anybody and everybody, when they found out that little Hindu kids come to our school and Muslims are allowed at our hospital – non-Christians everywhere -- once they figured out that we feed hungry non-Christians, we shelter homeless non-Christians, we embrace and love and heal and teach pagan, infidel, stranger, untouchables – in other words, anybody outside their circle – once they figured we actually believed that Jesus Christ, at the request of Jewish leaders, would do a favor for a Roman centurion by healing his pagan slave – once that church group heard that, we were rejected! The beauty of this miracle story is that it defies every convention, it breaks down every barrier. For us, no limits on God!

That’s good news for us because much of what we do as a church we do in behalf of Jesus, we do in his stead, and often we do long distance! And much of what we do as a church we do among the stranger, the alien, the pagan, the foreigner, just as Jesus did with the Roman centurion and the slave; much of what we do is with people much different from ourselves.

After 9/11, when we sent church help to Afghanistan, it wasn’t because they were born-again Protestant believers in a two-party democracy! We sent help because we could and we should, no matter how different their economics, their politics, their culture, their religion, their history. They had a need. We had the ability. That’s all that mattered. Jesus didn’t have to walk to Afghanistan. We didn’t have to fly to Afghanistan, but God’s love got to Afghanistan.

Long-distance faith is central to our church ministry. Wednesday night we had our Vespers memorial service for 1,300 Americans killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. None was from our church. None was from our neighborhood. But we made them and their loved ones part of our church. And we made their neighborhood, their battlefield, their Kabul and Najaf, our neighborhood.

And so, across 10,000 miles, across even the great divide of death, across the mountains of sorrow, across the huge obstacles of political opinion and posturing, we took the loving touch of God in Christ. We don’t have to be there to be felt there.

As part of the service we shared two letters, one from a marine in Afghanistan, another from an army captain who just finished a year in Iraq. They thanked us, they said, “for taking time to honor the lives of 1,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have died doing this ‘Global War on Terror.’” They urged us to “remember the injured as they try to fight their way back from amputation, burns, etc.” and sent us specific names of wounded buddies: “Waite, Self, Reed, Dooling, Tillman, Riley.”

They reminded us that the 23^rd Psalm is the “personal Bible passage of the 1/501^st Marine Division, with its boldness and hope. ‘”Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil … thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies … I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’”

They warned us about ”disingenuous politicians with guilty consciences,” and a “media without ethics.” They challenged us to look hard at “problems, hopelessness, and poverty“ that are at the root of terror. And they added their own prayer to ours, asking the “Lord to watch over those who have lost a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a mother, a father” … and “to provide us as a nation with fortitude and to rid the world of terrorism.” All this across the miles.

Our Vespers service Wednesday night was tough – just look at the list of names on the wall; imagine all those families and another 5,000 or 6,000 wounded; add the civilian contractors, the coalition soldiers, the Iraqi police. Try to get a handle on the number of civilian deaths of the truly innocent. The numbers are already numbing; that’s why I didn’t want to wait. We want those numbers to add up to something. We want each name to mean something. That was the power of Jesus’s ministry: as great as Jesus was, as heroic, as messianic, as important as Jesus is in the grand, divine scheme of things. Jesus never lost the personal touch. Everything was one-on-one for Jesus -- individual, personal, intimate. A Roman centurion had a slave who meant something to him. Their friendship, their affection transcended the barriers of class, oppression, politics.

Master and slave – somehow, they each rose above the roles assigned to them. Each was more to the other, and each one more to himself than simply master or slave. Likewise, the Roman centurion and the Jews had somehow forged a relationship beyond the bounds of oppressor and oppressed, victor and victim, powerful and weak, even pagan and Jew. Each refused to be limited by the prejudices or assumptions or expectations of the other.

Everybody in this story Jesus included, rose above the hang-up, the prejudice, the fears of society at that time. Jesus saw the situation for what it was, on a human level, on a personal level. Someone needed him, someone believed in him, someone was open to him. In this story, there was a little love, a little faith, and a little humanity – enough to build on.

I started this sermon by telling you a little about Jose Saramago’s novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I described it as a reimagining of the life of Christ, lifting up the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth without putting down the divinity of Jesus Christ, elevating Jesus without diminishing Christ. A little imagination is a good thing, half of the fun of the Bible is imagining what might have happened after:

For example, what did Lazarus do after Jesus raised him from the dead? What did the woman caught in adultery do with her life after Jesus saved her from being stoned to death? What did the 10 lepers do after Jesus cleansed them and gave them back their health? What did those people do with their second chances, their fresh starts, their new beginnings?

That’s what I wonder about this story. I like to imagine what happened to the slave, to the Roman centurion, to the Jewish leaders. The slave had been “sick unto death,” the Bible says, his miserable life of servitude, oppression, bondage, his life without freedom, without identity, without hope – all that had almost ended! Could he have been relieved to be healed? Glad to have a new lease on life? Determined to make the most of what little he had? Willing to even see his slave-master in a new light, to be forgiving even while being oppressed? Could he have decided to use what little life he had, in whatever tiny sphere of influence he enjoyed, to make  a difference? To be like Christ?

And what of the Roman centurion? Any chance he might have been forever transformed by this encounter with Christ? After a lifetime given to violence, of conquering and killing and enslaving, is it possible this Roman centurion, this pagan, this enemy oppressor slave-owner might have gone back home … and set his slaves free? And a few years later, when Rome decided to destroy Israel, to wipe the Jews away once and for all with their own “final solution,” could he have been one lone voice, courageous enough to stand against the genocide?

And what of those Jewish leaders, unusually sensitive and tolerant for their day, befriending a Roman centurion, compassionate toward a pagan slave, open-minded when it came to Jesus … when the tide turned against Jesus, when politicians and  clergy of that time turned against Jesus, did they speak up for him, and did they defend his love?

I like to think so. I like to think that whenever we export the spirit of Christ into any endeavor, any effort, any situation or circumstance`, any person or group, the result can be exactly what it is in this story: true healing, true humanity, true love.