A HEALING DEEPER THAN THE SKIN
Imagine a play in five acts with several actors…
Act I. Naaman’s house. Syria.
Slave girl from the land of Israel, a captive (to Naaman’s wife):
“If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
Act II. The Palace. Syria.
Naaman tells his king what the girl said.
The king of Syria:
“Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
Act III. The Palace. Israel.
Naaman presents the letter. It reads:
“When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
The king rends his garments, and says:
“Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
Act IV. Scene 1. Elisha’s house. Israel. The prophet hears the king has rent his clothes. He sends a message:
“Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”
Act IV. Scene 2. The palace, Israel. The message is delivered. Naaman goes.
Act IV. Scene 3. The entrance to Elisha’s house.
Elisha sends a messenger to Naaman. The message reads:
“Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”
Naaman reacts angrily, and goes away mad, saying:
“I thought…”
Servants of Naaman:
“Father, if the prophet…”
Act V. The river Jordan. Naaman washes. He is made clean.
***
A healing that goes deeper than skin
Five places, several characters - a small play in itself. If there were a feast of the healing of Naaman, we could have a pageant, choose parts and wear costumes. Maybe a paper mache crown or two, and a cloth river. Or a tub. The costume department might be wary of lending anything good for royal robes.
If you have visited a Jewish friend’s synagogue on the feast of Purim you might have enjoyed a dramatic or even musical comedy performance of that story, about the salvation of Jews in Babylon from certain death, through the intervention of a brave woman and her uncle.
In this story a brave girl, and some servants, all unnamed, speak up. The girl, a slave in a foreign house, tells her captor’s wife how he can be healed. And the servants of that powerful man, a mighty warrior, speak truth to power, even when he is angry, to further the cause of healing.
The man himself, the Syrian general, comes on stage third. He has listened to his wife who has listened to the girl, and now he reports to his king. Who sends him on his way to the small kingdom of Israel, with a letter.
This is not a story about saving Jews, it is a story about Jews saving others. The girl, and then the prophet, who appears only through messages, work the work of healing a person that they might not like or want to help.
And yet, as Jesus points out, God sent the prophet Elisha to the stranger Naaman to heal him, rather than to anyone in Israel.
What is God up to here? What is this story about?
We see a mighty man, humiliated. First, by a disease, seemingly incurable except by some extraordinary means. Then, by the prescription written for him. Go jump in the creek, that one over there.
We see a king expecting a royal favor, from another king, possibly one in fear of his greater power. We see the other king, knowing he is powerless, not only in front of the other king, but in front of God.
And yet - when the first message from the prophet arrives, he sends the leprous general to him.
(By the way, the word leprosy is used here, not of Hansen's Disease, the affliction we commonly call leprosy, but of something else, a scaly skin affliction which rendered the sufferer unclean.)
Naaman goes to the prophet’s house. At the door he receives the second message.
Like the king he has served, the prophet sends Naaman on his way with a message.
This seems underplayed, even impertinent. Perhaps the prophet does not want this mighty stranger, perhaps an enemy, in his house. We don’t know.
But he sends him to do something simple. Not royal, not flashy. Worse than that.
It requires the great man from Syria to humble himself before the one true and living God.
That takes some persuasion. Bravely, the servants speak simple truth to power.
If he had asked you something difficult, would you not do it?
This is difficult!
It requires a revolution. Perhaps in the past the general had believed that “the exercise of power is the same thing as the exercise of leadership”, as was observed of a 20th century President.
He learns differently now.
Humility and obedience. Before not a king, not an army, but in front of something greater than any human force.
He washes. And is clean.
And God accomplishes a healing that goes deeper than skin.
***
While I tend to think of healing as a personal, even private, thing, it was hardly so for Naaman the Syrian - or the followers of Jesus. For the Aramean commander to submit to the Jewish God had political implications - and certainly what the 70 had done, when Jesus sent them out two by two, must have made a vast impact upon the Galilean countryside.
Who is this prophet and the God that he serves? Kings send messages - and now so does he.
Who is this later prophet who does the same - and more? Is he also above all earthly kings? Is his healing also more than physical? Yes, it is, for it is the proclamation, the showing, of the kingdom of God.
Even the demons submit to them, the messengers come in his name, as they report with joy - and the word spoken in the name of the Lord does not return empty.
Israel’s northern kingdom, in the time of the prophet Elisha, might fade, as did Aram, its enemy, because north beyond the Jordan and even the distant rivers of Damascus lay Assyria, a greater imperial power than all of these.
And later, in the days of the Gospels, you would think there would be no greater power than this then ultimate empire of Rome.
But there is something beyond earthly powers that transcends them all, and even as Naaman the Syrian and the Gospel people of Galilee bow their heads to it, they acknowledge that power and healing come from the one in whom they put their ultimate faith.
As the servants invited their master, as the servant girl informed her mistress, there is something more, beyond earthly ideas of power and leadership. And then indeed his strength is found in our weakness, his power in our humility, and his healing in our trust.
It won’t look like earthly healing, not necessarily, but at work it is more than we could ask or even imagine.
***
This story turns in focus from court and king to prophet and country, from human power to God.
We are invited to do the same. To recognize that the powers of this world, however confident, are small.
The real power is in something unstated here, except through the simple words of servants, and the messengers who bear the word from the prophet to the powerful.
Maybe we can do some of that too. Like Naaman realize that God does not require our bribes, however magnificent. He doesn’t need that stuff, not silver, not gold, not royal robes, not fanfare.
Just trust. Obedience and humility, and beneath and behind them, trust.
And that faith will change the world.
****
JRL+
Sunday, July 3, 2022.
Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson.
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp9_RCL.html
https://members.sundaysandseasons.com/Home/TextsAndResources#texts
***
The Jewish Study Bible, ed. 2, Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. Oxford University Press. 2004, 2014. Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh translation. 1985, 1999.
Feasting on the Word. Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Year C, Volume 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Westminster John Knox Press. 2010.
http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper9c.html
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=269
http://www.textweek.com/yearc/properc9.htm
https://politicaltheology.com/resource-less-or-resourceful-2-kings-51-14/
‘Nixon believed, Gergen wrote, that “the exercise of power is the same thing as the exercise of leadership.” – Elizabeth Drew. Richard M. Nixon. The American Presidents. Thorndike Press. 2007. 72. quoting David Gergen. Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. New York: Simon and Schuster. 42-45.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SZ-pwx2rX4
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