The Centurion and Jesus
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, June 28, 2026
The grace of God works in mysterious ways. Some call these "ways" miracles and they are.
Not the spectacular kind like the parting of the Red Sea, but in small ways as we walk with Christ through our daily lives. Look for the Lord in the tiny details of life, in, as the Sufi poet said, in the smallest house of time. What is the smallest house of time? That house has a name. It is the present moment. Each one sparkles with grace if we are open to seeing it.
There is a quotation from St. John the Baptist that has intrigued me for many years. "I must decrease so that he may increase." Jesus says it like this, "Die to yourselves. Take up your cross and follow me." That means, as we shall see, the willingness to sacrifice our reputations. Matthew 6:5 and 6 shows us the way. "And when you pray don't be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogue to be seen by others...but rather, go into your closet, close the door, and pray to your Father."
A true leader does not work to become more popular, more essential, more visible. They fade into humility and point away from themselves. "I must increase" is not the language or attitude of the Gospel. It is its opposite. Thomas Merton once defined a saint not as someone admired by all, but rather someone who has come to admire everyone else. One of the Optino fathers, St. Barsanuphios wrote, "If a man thinks he is something, he is already lost."
We must be the poor, peaceful, nearly invisible servants of the crucified and resurrected God, transparent and vulnerable as we walk through this life.
The poignant story of the Centurion and his servant is a good example of what this looks like. A miracle began in something not at all typical. In began in the love of the Centurion for his servant. I would like to say that was ordinary, but it was not. Servants were often treated like animals. This The Centurion broke the mold. In fact, there was so much love between him and his servant that the Centurion detached from military protocol and humbled himself publicly begging an itinerant Jewish rabbi for his help. He was, in that moment, in the world but not of the world. He divested of his military reputation and publicly begged Christ to "just say the word" and heal the boy. All that mattered to him at that moment, that tiny house of time, was that.
Is that not what we pray during the Hymn of the Cherubim that we may "Lay aside all earthly cares?" I think that includes the burden of our pride and our very heavy, carefully crafted egos, our titles, and trophies. That is to free ourselves from all forms of self-idolatry. By laying aside everything we decrease so that God may increase...in us.
After that hymn we pray that the Holy Spirit may descend on us AND on the bread and wine so that they and we may become the Body and Blood of Christ for the life of the world.
In Christ we become a eucharistic presence in the world. We must, said a wise man, "Risk being seen in all our glory." Consider this: in every act of love we become the Second Coming of Christ.
Olivier Clement commented in a brilliant article that, "There is a certain way of witnessing to the Resurrection without speaking of it, by becoming truly alive, by becoming a living, compassionate being." This is what Our Lord would make of each one of us if we only allow it to happen. The yeast of his kingdom is in us awaiting the warmth of the Spirit and our tears of thanksgiving to rise.
The more centered in Christ the more authentic we are. When we are no longer the center of our own lives instead of projecting ourselves on the world we will see God in everything.