Gospel Harmony Joy Note 13...

One of the best parts of reading a parallel Gospel happened with the next section I read.  Reading Matthew 8:1, 5-13 and Luke 7:1-10.  I am not sure why, but the words servant and slave are so very different to me.  I suppose I could call someone who knows the Greek, but I suspect it is my knowledge of American History that colors my response.

What master would seek healing for a slave from someone bruited to be a prophet, perhaps even the Messiah?  Wow!  That kind of care, of commitment, is as extraordinary as what came next.  Healing from believing.  

At church, for the Monday evening services, Divine Service Setting One is used.  In it is an offertory that we do not actually sing, which comes right before the Service of the Sacrament.  In that offertory is the same stance that the centurion took:  Lord, I am not worthy.  For the centurion, he was not worthy to have Jesus come to his house.  For us, we are not worthy to approach the Lord's Supper.

One of my most favorite parts of the Large Catechism, as I have oft now said, is Part V.  In particular, start reading at paragraph 55.  There begins this wonderful exploration of the journey our sin and doubt takes us down.  Down and away from the forgiveness, the healing, the sustenance waiting for us.  Oh, yes, I am a wretch, I think as I read.  And Luther agrees.  Yes, you are.  Your worthiness will never get you anywhere.  Because I am unworthy, I am worthy in Christ.

Faith is what earned the slave his healing.  Not even his own faith, but the centurion's.  Not even the centurion's, but the faith in Christ, of Christ, given to him.

All that for a slave, for someone history deems sub-human, viewed as property.

What I am trying to say is that I knew the story as a servant, not a slave.  To me, with all my knowledge of servants and slaves, I appreciate the difference between the words, the class, the perspective.  And it humbled me.

That same awe and humility came in reading one of the signs given to speak back to John the Baptist:  the poor having the Gospel preached to them.  The poor!

There is a praise song that used to be sung in evangelical churches ... long, long ago:

Hear O Lord and answer.
I am poor and needy.
Guard my life for I am devoted to You.
Hear my prayer, O Lord 
and my cry for mercy;  
in this day of trouble I will call for You.

From the Psalter, yes.  I find it sort of ironic that the praise songs that I liked the best stemmed from there.  When I was a missionary in Africa, I learned to sing some straight from the Bible. Those I loved the best.  So, I still sing this song and the ones I learned in Africa.  But, tonight, just now, the poor and needy suddenly made sense.

The psalmist ... and me ... is not poor in money, but in the Word of God.  He is needy in his sin and the sickness, the poverty of being separated from God.  He knows is.  And He knows that God is generous and merciful in the giving of His Word.

Well, at least to me, that is the way of poor and needy.

And I am.
Poor.
Needy.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!