Luke 7:1-9; 11-16a. And Luke 7:18-23; 36-47.

If you follow films you will be aware of a change that marks the coming of what is sometimes, for want of a better word, call postmodernism into the movies. Classic films tend to follow a linear story line. A single major plot line drives the action from beginning to end. It’s a powerful narrative method, which has gripped audiences from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest with its thriller twists, to the current film Invictus about the life of Nelson Mandella. But a number of recent films have broken this mould. They run not one, but three, four, five stories in parallel. The connections between the stories are often minimal, reflecting the complex, fragmented and layered nature of contemporary life. Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Paul Anderson’s Magnolia are examples.

People who design lectionaries, that is, set readings to be used in church through the year, tend to go for Invictus style of reading. Single stories from the Gospels or other parts of scripture are selected, which is sensible. The passages have a dramatic integrity that makes them memorable and manageable. You know where you’re going. And when I look at the way I have tended to preach it is definitely in the Invictus style. I tend to go from A to B and C pretty much in a straight line. This leads to this leads to that. Amen. But the Bible, and especially the Gospels, don’t necessarily follow this linear pattern. Luke chapter 7 is an example. It is more like Magnolia than Invictus. It is made up of four separate cameos. The Capernaum centurion with the sick servant, the widow of Nain with her dead son, a puzzled John the Baptist and his friends, and the woman who gate crashes Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party. Nothing connects the major figures in the stories, nor their circumstances. The only link is Jesus.

But isn’t that itself already an instructive insight into the nature of Christ’s community, us, the church! If we just read these stories as independent and self contained dramas, we miss a real point that Luke is making. These four—the Roman soldier, the widow of Nain, John the Baptiser, the woman of tears—are utterly diverse. They have nothing in common with one another—apart from the fact that they all have significant connection with Jesus. All of them are outsiders of one kind or another. The centurion an ethnic outsider. The widow a social outsider. John a political and prophetic outsider. The woman of tears a moral outsider. Nothing holds them together, except their connection with Jesus.

But for Luke that connects them eternally, to each other and to us. Luke addresses these disparate stories to us, precisely to draw us into them. For there is a fifth story here. Our story. Nothing connects us to the centurion, the widow, the prophet, the gate-crasher, except Jesus. But in Christ we all belong eternally to each other in the communion of saints, because we belong to him.

My Invictus-style of preaching pulls me here towards reflecting further on the implications of the gate-crasher at Simon’s party for our understanding of the Lord’s Supper and the nature of Christian community. Take this great little story and push it further, I feel instinctively. But the Magnolia form of Luke 7 nudges me, well shoves me, in another direction. Luke’s four stories not only tell a tale about what the community of Jesus is like: its openness, diversity, compassion and the like. But they also confront us with Jesus himself. Who is Jesus in these stories? For we can’t understand much about Jesus’ community if we don’t understand something about Jesus himself. Well, if we start with the woman at Simon’s party, clearly Jesus is saviour; the one who forgives her sins. ‘I tell you’—this is Jesus to Simon—‘her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one (no prizes for guessing who!) to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ This view of Jesus; Jesus the forgiver of sins, was the absolutely dominant Christology of the Brethren meeting in which I grew up as a child. This was the only Jesus. And the only link we could have with Jesus was that of repentant sinners. Now there is real truth in that of course. Here it is in this text. But Luke wants to say to the Brethren child in me: ‘Ah, but that’s not all he is’. Read Magnolia style, Graeme. The centurion, at the beginning of the chapter, isn’t asking forgiveness for his sins at all. He needs help for a sick servant. And he knows that it depends on a word of authority. ‘For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one "go", and he goes, and to another "come" and he comes.’ ... ‘Lord, only speak the word and my servant will be healed’. That insight and faith astonished Jesus himself. This is not Jesus the saviour. It is Jesus the Lord; the Lord of all glory; the Lord of all powers. The Lord who takes the fight up to all those forces in the world that threaten and often break our human lives. The Lord to whom we flee for refuge and strength when sickness and death amongst family and friends swarm around us and swamp us. This is a Jesus that I need to know more intimately and trust for fully than I have in the past. And I don’t find it easy to do. But the Centurion’s faith offers me the chance and encourages me to take it.

But the desperate widow of Nain, walking beside the coffin of her son, she has no idea of either saviour or Lord. She knows only a suffocating grief. The Jesus who stands beside her, comes in another guise altogether. ‘Young man, I say to you arise.’ ... ‘I am the resurrection and the life:’ that is Jesus for this woman at this time in her life.

And John the Baptist? His encounter is different again. ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ John needs to know if Jesus is the fulfilment of the long story of God’s covenant with Israel. Is he the real presence of the liberating kingdom of God in human history? Is he the final manifestation of the heart and the intention of God for God’s creation? Is this what God is really on about? Or are we still in the business of waiting for some new and greater self-declaration of God. And Jesus lets the question hang. He says to John’s disciples, go tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor receive good news. This is the promised kingdom of God, as envisaged by Isaiah and the prophets, the kingdom come in person. Do you have eyes to see it and ears to hear?

Jesus is Lord, but also life; Jesus is liberator, but also saviour. Just like its view of the church, this Magnolia narrative of Luke 7 says to us of Jesus: don’t box him into some narrow theological or moral framework. Open your eyes and hearts to the breadth of God’s grace to this world in the coming of Christ. It’s bigger than you think.

But the Magnolia reading doesn’t let us stop there, with the nature of Christian community and the vision of Christ. It goes on. How do we, who are confronted with this un-boxable Jesus in his extraordinarily inclusive community, how do we approach him? In other words, how are we to pray? The Centurion? He doesn’t even ask that Jesus come to his house. And he prays not for himself, but for another. He trusts completely to the word of Jesus at a distance. ‘Only say the word, and he shall be healed’. Prayer here is in and through the word of the Lord. That is why it is good from time to time to pray with the word of scripture close at hand. To pray in and through these words. The psalms especially are a great guide and companion in prayer. They speak the word of the Lord that comes to us before we can come to God. "I also am a person set under authority" when I pray. And the words help.

But the widow is too blinded by tears to think of words; she has none; and she expects nothing; and asks for nothing. For her, Jesus simply appears; she just finds him there beside her in the misery of her shattered life. And he says what only God can say in such circumstances. ‘Do not weep’. Our prayers are sometimes like that. We are at the end of our resources, overcome by grief or fear or anxiety. And sometimes we find that God is just there in the horror of it all. Beside us. Not so much our prayer but his presence makes the connection. And a glimmer of hope is born within. ‘Do not weep my child.’

John is different again. He is battling with a difficult and dangerous ministry. And spectre of doubt creeps over him. At the start of Jesus’ ministry John was so sure. ‘Behold the lamb of God!’ he announced, pointing to Jesus. Now it all looks different. Things aren’t going well for him or the kingdom he was proclaiming. Conflict and hostility are building. He sends to Jesus to ask: ‘are you really the one?’ This time we notice Jesus isn’t there; and he doesn’t make any effort go to John. That’s a remarkable response to doubt, and worth pondering in relation to our own praying. Jesus simply says to John: ‘look at my works; listen to my word’. Is this too prayer, and its answer, do you think?

And the woman of tears. Unlike the others, she knows exactly where Jesus is to be found: at this table. And she deliberately makes her way to it. She has nothing in particular she wants; she is clear what she has already received; her one aim is, in Christ’s presence, to pour out a sacrifice of gratitude and love, at this table. This is her prayer; and her acceptance by Christ at the table is its answer.

Who is Jesus? What is the church like? How can we pray? Read Magnolia-style Luke 7 presents an amazing rainbow coloured answer, or perhaps we should say, series of answers to these questions. For me it subverts my tendency to live and think too much in straight lines, or tidy boxes. By telling a series of different stories side by side, and precisely not trying to make them fit too neatly together, it opens our hearts and minds to see the rich and inexhaustible diversity to be found in the community of faith; to meet with the surprising presence of the risen Christ in ways we had not perhaps anticipated, and to explore the many different pathways that make up the life of prayer. This is—or might become—our journey of Lent.