It's funny sometimes,
the way that you and I can have a profound effect on someone else's life--
without our ever actually intending it. And often, we were never even aware of
all that we may have done. All it takes
is a simple act-- a chance remark, a casual statement of faith, a well
intentioned deed. Often very little is needed to radically alter someone else's
whole way of living and being in the world.
And we
never in our wildest dreams, imagined that it would turn out that way. We were just trying to do someone a good
turn. We weren't necessarily trying to make a witness or convert them. We just
thought it might do them some good-- just tryin' to help was all. But it was
God who put those words in our mouth.
That's the way it was
for that little Hebrew girl captured by the Arameans. She was sent to work as a
maid in the household of the great general Namaan and his wife. Maybe they had treated her well. Maybe she
just had a good heart. In either case,
it was an act of kindness to even casually mention that there was a holy man
back in Israel who could cure her master’s skin disease in no time flat.
That nameless little
Hebrew maid didn't owe the great general Namaan anything. There was, after all,
no good reason for a slave to do her master a favor. Throughout history, most
slaves were more likely to spit in master’s soup than do him a favor. She had
no good reason to make that caring remark.
But she did. She allowed God to speak through her compassion. And what an effect that simple act of
kindness must have made on Namaan's life.
It must
have been quite a scene when Namaan and his retinue pulled up in front of
Elisha's house—up North in the sticks of Samaria. Generals don't usually tend
to do things by halves. If Namaan was at all typical of that breed, he probably
had a couple of companies of bodyguards, some staff officers, a couple of
aides, some calvary and chariots, probably a band, some staff doctors, maybe
his personal chaplain, and of course, assorted servants, slaves, cooks,
orderlies, camp followers and other hangers-on. Maybe three or four hundred
people-- not counting some of the local riff- raff who had seen the procession
and followed the parade for the sheer novelty of it.
No doubt all those
people who arrived that day at the prophet's house were expecting to see
something of a show. How often, after all, do you get to see a holy man do a
major miracle? To see someone cured of
leprosy would be something to tell your kids about.
Then, even more than
now, leprosy was a frightening disease-- dramatic and disfiguring and horrible
and mysterious. There was no known cure.
Little was known about its cause. It was
thought to be incredibly contagious.
Lepers were shunned and feared.
The fact that Namaan had retained his high rank in spite of this disease
must have been testimony to his skill as a soldier, and his value to the king
of Aram.
In any case, the
whole atmosphere around Elisha's house that day must have been more reminiscent
of a three ring circus than a worship service as we would know it. What with
all the excitement and expectation, the actual event must have come as quite a
disappointment to the crowd. Instead of making a dramatic entrance, the prophet
simply sent his servant out with a brusque message to the foreign general.
"You
want to be healed? Go bathe in the Jordan River. Dip yourself in it seven
times. That should do the trick."
I recall when Donna and I visited the Jordan River. I was
franky somewhat disappointed. As rivers go, it’s not very impressive at all.
Just a little stream really. I understand that it nearly dries up at certain
times of the year. It was hard to
realize that this dirty little brook
was the mighty Jordan River that I read about, and sang about, and heard about
and preached about all my life. It just wasn't very impressive.
Apparently, proud Namaan felt the
same way.
"What!
That's it? Just dip myself in that muddy little crick? For that I came all the
way here? We've got better streams than that back home in Aram! That's all?
Isn't this holy man gonna come out? Didn't you tell him who I am? Isn't
he at least going to pray over me, or lay hands on my heard, or anoint me with
holy oil? No sacrifice? No healing service? That's it?
Some holy man he is! What a gyp!"
Obviously Namaan was
enraged and insulted. But Scripture tells us that his servants finally calmed
the general down and got the great man to agree to do it. He had after all, gone to considerable
expense and trouble to journey here. And it certainly couldn't hurt, could it?
Who knew? It might help.
Then they threw in
the argument that cinched it. If the holy man had commanded Namaan to do
something really hard or dramatic in order to prove he was worthy of a miracle,
wouldn't Namaan have done it? Climb a mountain, conquer a city-- he would have
done it wouldn't he?
Suppose Elisha had demanded a huge
offering? Didn't Namaan in fact have ten talents of silver and six thousand
gold shekels and ten brand-new Ormani suits loaded onto pack mules in
anticipation of just that demand? If the
prophet had commanded a great task Namaan would have done it, why not do a
small task? All that the holy man had asked was that Namaan would wash and be
clean. He could certainly do that, couldn't he?
God waited patiently while a proud
man muddled toward health, toward a restorative knowledge of God and himself.
But he makes progress only by ragged fits and starts. He has a clear
self-interest -- a cure for the disease that threatens his career, his place in
human company, his very life. The people who care about him appeal successfully
to that self-interest, but the pull of other passions almost derails him.
Namaan craves respect almost more than he wants health. He is so sure he knows
what he needs, he almost refuses what God wants to give.
Almost. But not quite. While Naaman
doesn’t get the attention he thinks is his due, God waits, letting him vent and
strut. No lightning bolt consumes him
in
mid-rant, no disapproving angel descends. God waits until Namaan acquits
himself of our odd human propensity to work against our own good. And when,
after stalking off, he relents, we see in this raging big shot what God had
seen all along – a humble man of faith.
Because Namaan did
indeed bathe himself seven times in the Jordan. And Scripture tells us that his
skin was miraculously made whole, healthy, and clean. Because he finally obeyed
God's command-- through the prophet-- to wash and be clean-- it was so. And
Scripture tells us that Namaan was converted to belief in the God of Israel.
By
global and historical standards, you and I live in Namaan’s Aram. We live in
the greatest empire in history, the only remaining superpower, the heart of the
“First world”. We enjoy the trappings of
power and privilege-- cars, cell phones, computers, and all the other stuff
that is supposed to secure our lives. You
and I are not so terribly different from Namaan, surrounded by all his power
and prestioge. When he journeyed to the tiny, neighboring, third-world nation
of Israel, Namaan made sure that he had a caravan of power and wealth in tow.
But Naaman already knew that all that stuff was of no worldly use to him. It
hadn't kept him from developing a dreaded disease, and it wouldn't cure it, or
even purchase a cure. Something else was needed.
Christina Rosetti, the Victorian poet wrote:
Can peach renew lost bloom
or violet lost perfume?
Or sullied snow turn
white overnight?
Man cannot compass it yet...
The leper Namaan
shows what God will and can.
God who worked then is working here;
Wherefore let it shame,
not gloom betinge thy brow.
God who worked then
is working now.
God who worked then
is working here. God who worked then is
working now. Wash
and be clean, Namaan's servants advised him. But that proud general couldn't believe that
the God of his enemy could or would bother about him. He couldn't believe that the Creator could or
would work in such a simple, straight-forward manner on behalf of an outsider. Wash and be clean. Surely that wasn’t all all there was to being
healed!
But it was-- all along.
We’d be wrong to regard Namaan’s healing and
conversion as
something completely new, an unexpected
miracle out of the blue. God was waiting
for Naaman. God had already begun the fitful progress of transformation in the
great man even before he ever set foot on the soil of Samaria or wadded in the
puny Jordan -- a slender opening, first apparent when the great warrior finally
humbled himself enought to take advice from slaves and women and stiffled his
disgust at needing help from an enemy’s god.
Divine Grace had already kindled a spark
in the mighty General -- irregular, flickering perhaps, but the spark
was not snuffed out by Namaan’s
unchecked rage. When Namaan finally gave up, lets go and lets God, and washes
in the water, there isn’t a lot more healing for the river to do. All that
remains is for Namaan to meet, knee-deep, the One who had been waiting for him,
the One who engineered his victories and presided over his life. Awash in the
revelation, Namaan, "a great man" from the start, becomes God’s man
for good.
I know quite a number of people--
and I’m sure you do as well-- friends, family,
neighbors, physicans, tenured professors, CPAs, attorneys, business people, teachers, fellow clergy--even ourselves, who
have suddenly found themselves in a situation not unlike that of Namaan the
General. They have struggled-- sometimes for years-- with a deceptive and
tenacious adversaries –fears, or addictions, or inappropriate attitudes, or
relationships. That personal struggle has eroded self-confidence and competence
and messed up lives and cast them-- perhaps cast us-- into a pit of loneliness, fear, and deep self-despair.
Just as Namaan eventually had to come to a place where he
had to leave behind power and prestige and walk humbly and courageously into
the Jordan, so in order to begin recovering, each and every one of those people
has had to leave behind power and prestige and walk into his or her own Jordan
river.
That healing stream
may have been a treatment program, or counselor, a confrontation, or a prayer service, or an intervention, or a 12 step meeting-- or maybe just a
regular old Sunday morning Worship Service—anyplace where God was waiting for
them.
The irony is that healing - whether
of the flesh, or of the mind, or of the
spirit,
has only begun--- can only begin when you and I finally come to acknowledge our
vulnerability, our inability to be in charge. True healing can only come
about when we encounter and acknowledge a grace and power beyond our
own.
We must yield--turn ourselves over
to that topsy-turvy other kind of power.
Instead of denying our weaknesses, we must learn to acknowledge our
frailties as part of our humanness. Instead of wallowing in our accomplishments
and pride, we must learn to allow our failures and imperfections to teach us
humility.
Instead of always striving for autonomous mastery of our
environment, we must begin to learn to
listen to unexpected guides – maidservants or people who have been to the pit
themselves, people who have died and gone through hell and come to life again
through programs, or counseling, or therapy, or small groups, or spiritual
discipline, but above all, and always, through faith.
And when you and I acknowledge and open ourselves to that
power, our own healing will finally begin.
And eventually we will find ourselves-- like that anonymous little
Hebrew maid, allowing God to speak through our compassion—telling the broken
that there is one who can
heal them. That there are
healing streams that can cleanse and cure.
When you and I dare to turn to someone in pain—even
someone as unlikely as Naaman—and point to them the way out of the pit, then
our healing will have penetrated beyond the surface into our deepest hearts
Then our transformation into full wholeness will begin.
. For all the
gifts that counseling and psychotherapy and small groups can contribute to our
growth, there is still an ultimate reality behind them all-- a truth, a power
outside us, beyond us, coming at us, striving to make us whole - -the
astonishing, unexpected power of grace and new life seeking us, waiting for us,
surprising us, calling us, healing us. Call it exodus. Call it resurrection.
Call it God. Call it the Spirit or Jesus. A different kind of power.
To be vulnerable, to learn to trust
God and others is not giving up. Not at all. It is, however,
surrender. There is a crucial difference between giving up and surrender.
Giving up is lying down believing there is no hope. Surrender is going forward
not knowing what lies ahead, but trusting that God leads the way. Amen.
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