“I am myself under orders.”

Luke 7:8 (NEB)

Our Gospel lesson this morning turns on the phrase “under orders.”  The Roman centurion beseeching Jesus to heal his sick servant says: “I’m not worthy for you to come under my roof.  I am a man under orders myself.  I give commands.  They are obeyed.  You just speak the order and my servant will be healed.”

All the Bible commentators call this expression, “under orders,” a difficult phrase. The King James Version and the R.S.V. translate it: “I also am a man set under authority.”  What does the centurion mean as he speaks of himself and Jesus as both being men “under orders.”

Last week a United States Naval Board of Inquiry, after reviewing all the available evidence associated with the deplorable destruction of the Iranian civilian plane shot down by the USS Vincennes killing 290 civilians, rendered its verdict that the officers and crew of the Vincennes were not to be censured or punished as they were acting “under orders” authorizing their patrol duty protecting shipping in the Persian Gulf.

A couple of weeks ago the citizens of Czechoslovakia celebrated the 20^th anniversary of the invasion of their nation by the Russian army, come to crush their attempted revolution to establish political and economic reforms that were very much like the reforms now being pushed for the Russian nation by their leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

When the Russian army of occupation rolled into Czechoslovakia 20 years ago, two colonels – one Russian and the other a Czech – met near the Prague Radio Building and exchanged words that went something like this:

The Czech: “After 45 years of friendship between our countries you come and shoot our people.  What is the reason?”

The Russian: “We received our orders.  We are soldiers.  We follow orders.”

The Czech: “Did you think about the order?  You came at night – without invitation.  You started to shoot our people and our children.  If you received orders to shoot the Russian people would you have done it?”

The Russian Colonel:  “We received our orders and we cannot think about them.”

Let us this morning grapple with this phrase, “under orders,” from the ancient Roman centurion in the New Testament, and the Russian and Czech Colonels, and our own National Security authorities.  For this phrase “under orders” has always been crucial to Christian discipleship and is in our time increasingly crucial to personal integrity and national survival.

First of all, the acknowledgment, “I am a man under orders,” signifies respect for authority.  The Roman centurion was a part of the military structure of the Empire.  He received orders from his superiors and obeyed them.  He gave orders to his subordinates and his instructions were carried out with dispatch.  The whole intricate system was based on respect for authority vested in responsible people.

What is patently true in the military order must hold also in the spiritual realm this centurion believed.  He had seen enough to convince him that Jesus had authority in that realm to both give orders and have them carried out.  For the healing of his servant it was not necessary for Jesus to come to his house and lay a healing hand upon the wasted and quivering body.  All that was necessary for him was that Jesus speak the healing word.

From prehistoric times men have recognized that respect for authority – having men work under orders – was absolutely necessary for the structuring of society and the accomplishment of social and political goals.  How our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in England erected on the Salisbury plain Stone Hinge, that mysterious grouping of enormous stones, transported there across many miles and fitted into a pattern synchronized with the earth’s revolution about the sun – how they did it, nobody knows; but what is evident is that this remarkable accomplishment was the result of many men working together under the orders of some organizing genius inspired by a great idea.

Ours is a day of waning respect for authority.  The question is repeatedly raised, “What if authority is not worthy of respect?”  The Czech Colonel questioned the rightness of the orders issued to the Russian Colonel.  The political demonstrators converging last week in Poland at the Gdansk Shipyards and in the United States at abortion clinics do not respect the authorities operating those enterprises.

A few weeks ago Episcopal Bishops from all over the world gathered at Canterbury England for their Lambeth Conference to discuss and rule on the issues confronting the Church.  I remember that when the last Lambeth Conference was in session in Britain a daily feature on the B.B.C. was a program appearing under the title of “To Hell with the Bishops”, pertly posing the waning Anglican respect for the authority of the Church.

“Under orders” is a troublous phrase, fundamentally referring to respect for authority, a concept unpopular and in eclipse in our time for many.

In the second place, that difficult phrase, “under orders,” refers inescapably to personal discipline.  When the Roman centurion said, “I am a man under orders,” he meant that he disciplined himself to live a life in keeping with the authority exercised over him.  Respect for authority is an empty thing if it goes no farther than lip service.

Polibius, the Roman historian, records the personal qualifications of Roman centurions: “They must be men who are not so much seekers after danger as men who can command, steady in action and reliable; they ought not to be over anxious to rush into the fight; but when pressed they must be ready to hold their ground and die at their posts.”

Yes, this is the root meaning of being “under orders” – being a disciplined person.  Only he who has learned how to obey is qualified to command.

St. Paul was as impatient with a discredited and unworthy authority as any man could be.  He rebelled against his youthful allegiance to the Mosiac law.  He repudiated it as an authority unworthy of man’s highest allegiance.  But Paul ever thought of himself as “the slave,” “the bondservant,” of Jesus Christ.  He wrote to Timothy: “Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”  The Christian can never be anything but a man or woman “under orders,” a disciplined person who has taken the yoke of the mind and spirit of Jesus Christ as his authority, to respect and to serve.

But there is a third and supreme meaning of this difficult phrase, “under orders,” both in the Gospel story and in the story of our lives; the ability to speak the healing word always proceeds from the reality of being a person under orders.

Is not this the main thrust of the centurion’s remark and Jesus’ rejoinder, and the resultant healing of the centurion’s sick servant?  In essence this Roman soldier is saying: “I believe in spiritual realities.  I believe that there is a supreme power in the universe, unseen, but mighty, ruling over all human affairs, concerned for human welfare, including my beloved and sick servant.  I believe that you, Sir, are in close touch with that spiritual power, that you are obedient and faithful to its laws and order.  When you say the word, give the command, these unseen powers will do your bidding.”

And this man’s faith, the like of which Jesus said he had not found in Israel, was rewarded.  His servant was restored.

This is the way it always works.  Only the one who is under orders in the spiritual universe can speak the healing word.  I heard someone say in the midst of an agony over a ghastly debacle in human relationships: “No one has ever helped me so much in so brief a space of time.  In just a few words he set my problem and me in the very midst of the heart of God. With his compassion, deep wisdom, and just one verse of Scripture: ‘For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.’  With just that, he brought the healing and the help I needed.”

Why and how did it happen?  Because the comforter and counselor was a man under orders – under the strict, self imposed discipline of the mind and spirit of Jesus Christ.

When in a crisis cranial surgery must be performed, who can be trusted? Only that one who has submitted himself to the demanding, arduous disciplines of neurological surgery. Who, in the crisis of a battle, can be trusted to make the decisions and issue the commands? Only the disciplined military expert.  Who, in the spiritual crisis of our desperate national and world situation, can be relied upon to speak the healing word? Only the men and women who are the bondservants of Jesus Christ and are in glad obedience under his orders.

Who can speak the healing word in our sick business economy?  In spite of social security and old age pensions and labor unions, and wage and hour contracts, men and women are sometimes treated as commodities and cast on the junk heap, not only in the rank and file labor pool but in the managerial classes as well.

Who can speak the healing word in our horrible warfare in the tropics and Central America, and Africa, and the mountains of Afghanistan, and on the streets of our nearest cities?

Who can speak the word to heal the world’s great hunger in Ethiopia and India and Appalachia?  There is no lack of food in the world, even in this time of drought.

An American clergyman, when asked what he thought of the artistic triumph of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, said: “What a pity that so much has been spent for bricks and stone and glass when there is such pressing human need in the world.”

The Christian conscience, when confronted by the vast need of a desperate world, needs to remember the folly of that Egyptian monk of the early Christian era who, when reading Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler: “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me,” took it literally for himself and went out and sold his only possession – the precious handwritten manuscript of the gospel — and gave the money to a beggar, thereby impoverishing himself not only materially, but spiritually.

The great need of our time is not to further economize in investments for spiritual ministry, but rather for us Christians to take seriously our waste and extravagance in personal, family and business expenditures.

It all comes back to the question of whether or not we are men and women under orders of Jesus Christ.  If we are, somehow, through us and our disciplined lives, the healing word will inevitably be spoken.  Only he who is under orders of Jesus Christ has that remarkable wisdom and compassion which is the sluice-gate into human history through which the divine grace can flow as a healing stream.

Michelangelo’s famous Pieta in St. Peter’s at Rome was done when the artist was quite young, in his twenties.  It depicts Mary, the Mother of Jesus, holding the lifeless body of her crucified son in an embrace of infinite compassion.  It symbolizes the great, wounded heart of God grieving for suffering humanity.

But there is another Pieta in the Cathedral at Florence, done by the aging Michelangelo, years later, shortly before he died.  The central figures are still the same, Mary the Mother holding in tenacious embrace the tortured body of her well loved son.  But there is a third figure in this Florentine Pieta – an old man bending over the mother and the son with an expression of infinite compassion, and that old man bears the unmistakable features of Michelangelo at 80.

The aging artist has gained the perception to put himself into the Pieta.  After a lifetime of bringing all his talents and thoughts and emotions to the service of Christ, he understands his role as that of entering into the suffering and struggles of humanity under the orders of a compassionate Christ – of doing what St. Paul, in his Colossian letter, said was the essence of Christian service:  “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.” (Colossians 1:24)

God grant us all the grace not to wait so long before we put ourselves into the World’s Pieta under the orders of Jesus Christ.