Once upon a time, Moses descended from Mount Sinai with a new teaching from God for Israel, a revolutionary way of being human. His time on the mountain with God had been so intense that his face was now shining, not just reflecting light but emitting light. The divine energy that had soaked into his skin was so intensely visible that the Israelites’ reaction was not joy, but fear. Now, Matthew 8 begins with Jesus descending the mount having preached his Sermon and given us his instruction for how to be truly human. And there is a reaction. The people have heard his one-of-a-kind Sermon and deduced that his is an authority unlike any other.
And so, as soon as he’s down from the mount, a leper approaches and kneels before him. “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean,” the leper says (Mt 8:2). If healing is to be found, surely it is with the uniquely special Jesus. And shortly after healing the leper, he meets a centurion, that is, a high-ranking Roman military officer, who asks for healing on behalf of his servant, a request Jesus is happy to oblige. In fact, Jesus loudly announces his happiness with the centurion after the centurion approaches Jesus in spite of feeling unworthy to do so. “Not even in Israel have I found such faith!” Jesus says. This is Matthew 8’s definition of faith: to approach Jesus, to ask and seek and knock as Jesus told us to, and to not let “unclean” and “unworthy” get in the way. And what do you know – Jesus has no hang ups whatsoever with the unclean and unworthy people that come into his presence asking for healing. It inspires Jesus to preach a little sermon – “Many will come from east and west and take their place at the banquet with Abraham and his family (Mt 8:11).”
For the remainder of Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount will echo through the stories in one way or another. And Matthew doesn’t waste any time. As soon as we’ve descended the mountain, the Sermon is still making itself heard; we see the Sermon dramatized. For one, Jesus is quite harsh on gentiles in the Sermon on the Mount. Theirs is a behavior and theology that is to be avoided; the gentile knows only how to anxiously scramble for a false sense of security and gratification. And yet, here is Jesus, so quickly after the Sermon, praising a gentile for possessing faith that is hard to find even in Israel.
But that is not to throw Israel or its law out the window (you know, just like Jesus said back in Matthew 5:17-20). Right before praising the centurion’s faith, he instructs the healed leper to follow the instruction of Leviticus 14, go see a priest, and offer the appropriate sacrifice. Torah (Jewish law) is being upheld, just like Jesus said he wanted to do. He is maintaining religious law and stretching it at the same time.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus said moments ago in the Sermon, “but only the one who does the will of the Father.” Matthew seems to adding, “as well as the one who sees Jesus through the eyes of faith, no matter how unclean or unworthy.” God’s table is open for all the broken, unclean, and unworthy people who come in faith. And everyone else, no matter how clean, how polished, how respectably religious, “will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 8:12).” We ought to jump at the chance to have lepers and outsiders in our church family. If the Gospels are any indication, we’re going to learn more about faith from them than from any polished churchgoer.