Uncle Bazel

Message shared at West Richmond Friends Meeting, 18th day of the First Month, 2026

Given by Tom Hamm

Based on Matthew 8:25-13

Many of you know that I am very interested in family history and genealogy. In fact that is how Mary Louise and I met—we’re fifth cousins twice removed. Because I became interested when I was a teenager, I was able to talk with older relatives and hear their memories. One of my favorite stories came from an elderly cousin in southwestern Virginia about my great-great-great-grandmother Hamm’s brother, Bazel Taylor.

Great Uncle Bazel was not a Quaker. He was a deacon in the Hardshell Primitive Baptist Church. He firmly believed in one of its cardinal tenets, predestination, that an all-powerful God had before the foundations of the universe were laid, decided in his sovereign power who—mainly Hardshell Baptists—would go to heaven, and who would not. Joining a Hardshell church meant proving to the satisfaction of the deacons and pastor that you were one of the predestined elect.

One day in the 1870s or 1880s Uncle Bazel was called to a deacon’s meeting. When he got home his wife, Aunt Nancy, could tell that he was upset. So she asked him what was the matter. Uncle Bazel replied: “Nancy, today George Reeves came to us to narrate his experience. There’s no doubt that he is one of the elect and is qualified for church membership.” “But Bazel, shouldn’t it make you happy that there’s another soul saved and bound for glory?” “Nancy, George Reeves is a Republican. If Republicans can go to heaven, I don’t understand the Lord’s ways as well as I thought I did.”

Uncle Bazel’s story is about how we make sense of and organize our world. We create categories—positive and negative, like and dislike, most importantly, good and bad. It is not a bad thing to do this. Much of the Gospel is about Jesus teaching us what is pleasing to God and what is not, what and who are good and what and who are bad. But the story of Jesus’s encounter with the centurion shows us the proper way to do it. Our judgments should not be based on prejudice and assumptions about group identity. Instead we should judge individuals as individuals. The account from the Gospel of Matthew that we have had read is a good illustration of this.

On first reading, this story is like many others we find in the Gospels. It emphasizes healing and faith. But something else is happening here.

The person who asks Jesus to heal his servant is a centurion. He was part of the Roman army of occupation. As a centurion, he was commander over one hundred soldiers, the equivalent of a master sergeant today. He would have risen to his position through the ranks after fifteen or twenty years of service. He was undoubtedly a tough professional soldier, someone who carried out orders and made those under him obey them. He was one of props of the hated occupation force. Yet, in a slightly different account of this incident in the Gospel of Luke, we are told that this centurion loved Jews, that in fact he had built a synagogue in the city of Capernaum. That isn’t what you’d expect from a Roman army officer. It would be like someone from ICE building a multicultural center in Minneapolis.

Jesus’s response is to show compassion. He offers to come to the centurion’s house and heal the suffering servant. But then we get a surprise.

The centurion responds with humility, saying he isn’t worthy that Jesus should enter his house. That certainly isn’t standard operating procedure for a Roman dealing with subjected people. He explains further by saying that he is a man under authority. When he receives orders, he carries them out. And when he gives orders, he knows that they will be obeyed. By comparing himself with Jesus in this way, he is implicitly acknowledging Jesus’s power. All Jesus has to do is put forth his power and things will happen. And only someone with divine authority could make this happen.

Here we get another surprise. We are told that Jesus was amazed. That raises some interesting theological questions. If we are strict Trinitarians, as I am sure Great Uncle Bazel was, we believe that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Jesus. If we assume that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, how could He be surprised by anything? Personally, I like the idea of a God who can be surprised. It raises all sorts of interesting theological questions.(Those will have to be the subject for another message at another time.) But we are told that Jesus was surprised. It was a good kind of surprise, one that led Jesus to praise the centurion. And Jesus healed the paralyzed servant.

So what are the implications of this account? How do we follow Jesus?

First, we do what we can. Jesus saw someone who was in need and he helped that person.

Second, we act in humility. One of the things that made the centurion praiseworthy was that this tough Roman soldier asked one of the subject race to do something for him that he could not do himself. His request acknowledged Jesus’s power.

Third, we see the humanity in others. One of the central tenets of Quakerism is George Fox’s realization that there is a divine Light in all people. If we are obedient to that Light, it will lead us in the ways that God would have us go. Jesus recognized that Light in the centurion, and I think that that Light led the centurion to Jesus. Of course we must be mindful that disobedience to the Light risks extinguishing it, temporarily or even permanently.

Finally, we, like Jesus, must embrace the Unlikely and the Unpopular. We are often reminded that Jesus wants us to be on the side of those who are marginalized. But Jesus went beyond that. He showed compassion for and praised an officer of an occupying army. He called as one of His disciples the tax collector Levi, who became the Apostle Matthew, someone who must have been only slightly less unpopular than a Roman occupier. And when he wanted to teach us about neighborliness, he chose to illustrate that teaching with a Samaritan, another group that the Jews around him despised.

We are called then to recognize not just that God chooses us, as Great-Uncle Bazel believes. We also choose God. God embraces all those who seek to do good, to do what is good to seek and walk in the Light.