Finding Jesus in Real Lives

Today begins a new series where we will follow Jesus throughout the Gospel of Matthew - starting here with chapter 8

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

May 3, 2026

“Finding Jesus in Real Lives”

Matthew 8:1-9, 13 - The Message

1-2 Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. Then a leper appeared and dropped to his knees before Jesus, praying, “Master, if you want to, you can heal my body.”

3-4 Jesus reached out and touched him, saying, “I want to. Be clean.” Then and there, all signs of the leprosy were gone. Jesus said, “Don’t talk about this all over town. Just quietly present your healed body to the priest, along with the appropriate expressions of thanks to God. Your cleansed and grateful life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done.”

5-6 As Jesus entered the village of Capernaum, a Roman captain came up in a panic and said, “Master, my servant is sick. He can’t walk. He’s in terrible pain.”

7 Jesus said, “I’ll come and heal him.”

8-9 “Oh, no,” said the captain. “I don’t want to put you to all that trouble. Just give the order and my servant will be fine. I’m a man who takes orders and gives orders. I tell one soldier, ‘Go,’ and he goes; to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

13 Then Jesus turned to the captain and said, “Go. What you believed could happen has happened.” At that moment his servant became well.

Today we are beginning a new series.  For the next several months we are going to read through the Gospel of Matthew together, chapter by chapter.  Not literally every verse, but starting with chapter 8, we’ll hear one story per chapter to experience the Gospel of Matthew not as a series of isolated teachings, but as one living story with movement.  A story from the very beginning with tension.  

Let’s quickly remind ourselves of the context first.  Chapter 1 is just genealogy we usually skip over – impossible names and endless “begats.”  But Matthew begins there for a reason.  Right away, we learn that Jesus is not born to a pure or perfect family but one marked by relatives engaged in scandals from prostitution to murder.  And then there’s his mother pregnant before marriage.  And a father who chose compassion over shame.

In chapter 2, his birth terrifies a paranoid King Herod, who lashes out in violence, forcing Jesus to spend his earliest years as a refugee family escaping a massacre and political terror.

 And so, in chapter 3, as a young man he stood in the waters of baptism in solidarity with all humankind.  

In chapter 4, he is led into the wilderness where he experiences loneliness and hunger and the human temptations to power, domination, and religious manipulation.  He rejects all of it and then begins calling disciples.  He teaches in the synagogues and heals people with every kind of disease and pain.  Growing crowds come to hear him announce the kingdom of heaven.  

In chapter 5 he addresses those crowds on a mountainside and describes an entirely different kind of world:

Blessed are the poor, the grieving.
 Blessed are the merciful, the peacemakers.
 He taught them:  You have heard it said, hate your enemies, but I say love your enemies.

You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, but I say pray for those who hate you.

Throughout chapters 6 and 7, he presents a way of life that runs counter to nearly every popular notion we have about success, power, revenge, and self-protection.  He challenges fear, exclusion, violence, performative religion, and imperial power.  

 And then he comes down the mountain in chapter 8 where we watch him walk those teachings into real life – not abstract ideals.  And he does it all with mercy, healing, and radical love.  

And so today, he’s down from the mountain and the very first thing he does is reach out and touch someone everyone else avoids.  A shocking demonstration of that mercy he just spoke of.  Next, a Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant.  

Later that day he calms terrified disciples during a severe storm and then confronts demons, whom Jesus orders into a herd of pigs who rush off a cliff and drown.  All in a day’s work.

Though the story involving the leper is an important signal of inclusion to those who are outcast, I think the more shocking story involves the Roman centurion.  And the one I think is more challenging for us as disciples today.

Jesus entered the village of Capernaum, a crossroads of the Roman Empire, always lots of traders passing through from exotic countries.  And always full of soldiers taxing the commerce and enforcing order.  

A centurion, a captain of those soldiers, came to Jesus in a panic, pleading:  “Master, my servant is sick.  He’s in terrible pain.”  Jesus said, “OK, I’ll come and heal him.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to put you to all that trouble.  Just give the order and my servant will be fine.”  

Jesus is taken aback.  “How could he have such faith?”  And then he explains what not everyone is going to want to hear:  “This outsider is just the beginning of something bigger.  People from everywhere are going to come into the kingdom I am proclaiming.  Outsiders.  Foreigners.  Unexpected people.”  They already saw it happen with the leper.

And, that’s all fine and good, but he added:  “And some of those who assumed they automatically belonged are going to be shocked to discover they are completely at odds with what God is doing.”  

A stunned crowd watches Jesus turn to the captain and say, “What you believed could happen has happened.”  And at that very moment his servant became well.

The crowd was stunned because centurions represented everything that made their lives hard.  This wasn’t simply “a guy doing his job.”  He enabled the very machinery that ground down their daily life.  

Jesus could have scored an easy win by appearing to stand up for the little guy. “You evil and wicked man.  Go away!  You don’t deserve my time and attention.”  You can just hear the cheers.  “Yeah!  Yeah!  Tell him Jesus.”

But Jesus has just come down from the mountainside where he preached:  Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  Blessed are the merciful.  And so, Jesus begins with a conversation with him.
 
 

But, to be clear, helping the centurion isn’t to excuse the oppression of the Roman Empire.  He’s teaching them not to surrender their hearts to hatred or fear.  

In 1971, Durham, North Carolina was torn apart over school desegregation.  Black families were exhausted after generations of unequal schools and broken promises.  White parents resented change.  Threats were constant and tension hung over the city.

To calm things down, city leaders organized what was called a “charrette” – which in reality was ten exhausting days of public meetings where angry parents, activists, clergy, and community leaders were forced to keep coming back into the same room together.  

There were two appointed co-chairs.  One was Ann Atwater, an outspoken Black community organizer.  She was fearless and completely done being polite.  Unwilling to tolerate nonsense.

The other was C. P. Ellis, the Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan.

Not a former Klansman or someone who was “rethinking things.”  An active Klan leader who was openly hostile and wore his racism unapologetically.  He even refused to sell gasoline to Black customers at his gas station.

The meetings were ugly.  The two co-chairs argued constantly. “You people want everything handed to you.”  Ann fired back, “You people have had your foot on our neck for generations.”  

But remarkably, neither walked away.

C.P. received condemnation from fellow Klansmen for participating in this exercise but Ann also faced criticism because how could someone work so closely with a man representing violent white supremacy.

Their story was turned into a movie, The Best of Enemies, played by Taraji P. Hensen and Sam Rockwell. They capture that tension well and then we see what begins to happen.  Not agreement.  Conversation.

About their children.  Medical bills.  Working long hours and trying to survive.  Feeling ignored by politicians and manipulated by powerful people who kept poor Black and poor white communities angry at each other while nothing actually changed.  

Things really change when C.P begins to realize that the KKK has given him someone to hate, but that hate hasn’t made anything better.

And so, after 10 exhausting days of arguments and conversations and long meetings, on the last night, Ellis stood up in front of a packed room and did the unthinkable.  He cast the final deciding vote to desegregate the schools.  He also held up his KKK membership card and tore it in half.  The room went silent.  

It cost him.  His life was in danger from the Klan.  He lost standing in the very world that had once given him identity and belonging.

Racism didn’t magically disappear but two people the system wanted to remain permanent enemies had spent enough time face to face to begin seeing each other as human beings.  

Jesus saw a man wearing the uniform of the very system making life miserable for his people.  He stood front of Jesus pleading for someone he cared.  Jesus makes a choice.  The crowd probably would have loved it if Jesus had humiliated him.  

But what he demonstrates is this:  You can assert that what he is doing is brutal.  And still not surrender your heart, your humanity, to fear or hatred.  

The Gospel refuses the easy temptation to divide the world into pure good guys and pure bad guys.  And that is much harder than making people into enemies and walking away.  

In Durham, North Carolina, something real shifted.  The process Ann Atwater and C. P. Ellis co-led made actual progress in reducing violence and integrating Durham’s schools more peacefully. 

The two remained friends for the rest of their lives and when Ellis died in 2005, Ann delivered the eulogy at his funeral. 

The city didn’t solve racism, but the Atwater-Ellis story became part of Durham’s moral memory.  People saw enemies speak to each other differently.  Proof that a system of entrenched hostility did not have to define the future.  Not then.  And a system of entrenched hostility need not define our future today.  But what do we do?

Theirs is not a plea, “Can’t we all just get along?”  No.  The question Jesus answers is:  How do my disciples resist injustice without becoming consumed by hatred?

By loving your enemies.  Not payback for those who persecute you.  But prayer.

Because once hatred becomes the thing driving us, we are no longer following Jesus down the mountain.

Following the road of Jesus – a name that is healing, a name that brings life – means breaking down the strongholds and barriers that separate us.