Quiet places with a noisy soldier Lent 2 March 13th
Festus came into the Dodgy Brothers inn the other night with a smashing great yarn about Claudius our idiot boss. Claudius has many servants but it happens that one of them, Romulus, wakes up paralysed and in great distress. Can’t move a muscle and is in tears. Now Claudius… did I mention he’s an idiot, I think I might have, Claudius does not know how to manage people. His style is to strike first and ask questions later. There is no fair work place or trade union. You live day to day not knowing if you will have a job tomorrow which is why every denarius is important. You’ve got to make a stash for your own superannuation fund. All that being true, I’ll now say this for Claudius. He does care for his personal servants. So when Romulus wakes up paralysed Claudius will do anything and everything he can to help him.
Festus picks up the story from here.
“After having tried excessive amounts of wine and the local physician, Claudius gets desperate. He had heard about a travelling healer called Jesus who has a reputation for lepers. So Claudius reckons that if it’s good enough for Jesus to heal a leper, he can sure as hec fix up a bit of paralysis. What’s a centurion got to lose? Claudius sets off to Capernaum to try and find this Jesus guy. The story goes that Jesus offers to come and heal Romulus in person.
Another thing in Claudius’s favour is that he understands authority of the spoken word. So when Jesus offers to come and make a house call free of charge, Claudius won’t hear of it and explains that when he gives an order, it happens.
So if Claudius asks fifty soldiers to jump into the river Nile on a freezing cold night, then they do it. Or if he asks 100 soldiers to go and attack 256 heavily armed Philistines it happens. If Claudius asks Festus to wash his socks and polish his 7 shiny stupid helmets then Festus sighs heavily, rolls his eyes and resigns himself to an afternoon of tedium.
So Claudius says … ‘Just say the word Jesus and I know it will happen’.
Jesus is impressed and says ‘Off you go then, let it be done according to your faith’ which is a very clever way of saying that if you are palavering with me, Romulus won’t be healed. But if you are authentic and really do believe, then your servant Romulus will be healed. When Claudius gets home he discovers Romulus doing the dishes. The floors are swept, the roast lamb is cooking and the washing hung out to dry.”
It's a great story and I’ve given you the edited, polite version. Festus is often one to embellish a bit and sprinkles his stories liberally with some colourful adjectives. This is the PGR version .
We’re onto our second goblet of wine now and I really want to believe the story, but Festus has only got it third hand. Surely such things don’t happen, can’t happen and yet … and yet..I so want it to be true.
Sometimes when Festus is onto his third goblet of wine he says some rather deep things. It’s one of the things I like about him. The profound truth often lies at the bottom of the wine.
It’s one of those moments. He holds his goblet almost tenderly as you would a child . He looks me in the eye and says.
“You know what this means don’t ya? It raises the question of authority”
I grunt and try to look as though I know exactly what he’s talking about. I don’t of course. I haven’t a clue.
“Yeah, there’s the authority of our uniform. When we put it on, strut and swagger through the streets we command a certain amount of authority and we can get our way. There is the authority of Claudius which I know only too well with his 7 helmets and stinking, festering socks. There’s even Herod's authority which is the biggest, but not necessarily the brightest, in all the land.
But authority over illness and possibly death, that’s a different thing altogether.” Festus takes another slug of his wine.
“It’s an authority that makes you vulnerable for it is not about self, it’s about the other person who is less fortunate. When I stand over Peter for a free feed of fish it’s about me.”
The wine has made my head fuzzy, but somehow I know he’s right. This is a different kind of ‘getting things done’.
I so want it to be true.
Tomorrow life will go on… I’ll get up, put on the uniform, extort, belittle and intimidate; have a great time… … and yet… and yet…