A Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant remotely, reasoning that Jesus, like an officer, need only "say the word"; Jesus commends his faith as greater than anything found in Israel, and the servant is healed at that moment.
Further context
3 min readA centurion in Capernaum has a servant he values highly, and the man is ill and about to die.
Centurions commanded around eighty men and were the professional backbone of a Roman army. This one is not in Roman service, since Galilee was governed by Antipas and had its own troops, so he is most probably an officer of the client king's forces, and he is a Gentile.
He is also, according to the Jewish elders who bring the request, a man who loves the nation and built their synagogue. A foreign officer funding the local place of worship is exactly the sort of arrangement that produced the class of sympathetic Gentiles who appear throughout the later missionary work.
The two accounts differ in a way that repays attention rather than explanation. Matthew has the centurion come himself. Luke has him send Jewish elders first and then friends, and never appear at all. Ancient reporting frequently attributes to a principal what he did through intermediaries, and the difference is the kind that arises when two people describe the same negotiation.
The message he sends is the part that matters. Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is not only modesty; a Jewish teacher entering a Gentile household incurred ritual impurity, and the officer knows it and is protecting him from the difficulty.
Then the argument that produces the reaction: just 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. He is reasoning from military command structure. Authority operates at a distance, through the chain, and does not require the officer to be present.
Jesus is astonished, which happens twice in the Gospels and the other occasion is at unbelief in his home town. He turns to the crowd and says, I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.
The word Luke uses for the servant means a slave, and the phrase attached, that he was valued highly, is unusual enough to be worth noticing. An officer petitioning a foreign teacher on behalf of a slave, through intermediaries, and calling off the visit to spare the man's ritual purity, is not the behaviour the word centurion normally conjures.
The men sent return to the house and find the servant well.
The verdict on an occupying soldier is the highest given to anybody in the ministry, and it is delivered to a Jewish crowd about a Gentile who never met him.
A centurion commanded around eighty men and was the professional backbone of the Roman army, promoted from the ranks and long-serving. This one is described by the local Jewish elders as a man who loves our nation and has built our synagogue, which places him among the Gentiles who attached themselves to the local congregation without converting.
The message he sends is a piece of military reasoning applied to something else: I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, go, and he goes. Say the word, and my servant will be healed.
He grasps that authority is delegated and works at a distance, which is the point nobody else had reached.
He also refuses to let Jesus come to his house, on the grounds that he does not deserve it, and that spares his visitor the ritual difficulty of entering a Gentile home, which he evidently understood.