A healing more than skin deep

 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/

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-14-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-14-7

‘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

peace

Two people walking the dusty roads of the land arrive at a village. It is dusk, or morning, or in the heat of the day. Who are they? What do they carry with them? What will they find in the village?

Hospitality or rejection? 

They greet the people they meet there. The young, the old, the men and women. And they say, “Peace be with you.” Shalom aleicheim. Salaam alecum.

An ancient greeting. Meaning no harm, but good. Like a raised hand in greeting, between people of no common language. 

Here though people know what it means - what it is supposed to mean.

Maybe they turn them away. We know what that’s like. No welcome. 

Maybe they’re afraid. These could be soldiers in disguise, or drifters, here to assault our young girls. Or just crooks. We don’t know them. We don’t want the trouble they might bring.

So the travelers clean off their sandals, in a ritual way, and prepare to move on. 

But before we go, they say, there is something we want to leave with you. It is this: “God’s commonwealth of peace and freedom has been very close today.”

Suppose though the travelers are greeted with Middle Eastern hospitality. “And also with you.” (They take the risk.) Come sit down leave your sandals by the door. Here is water. Share our food. Break our bread.

And now the story is quite different. The travelers, known or unknown, have a message, something they want to give to the people of this place.

“The commonwealth of peace and freedom for which we have longed is being established by God - now. Here. Among us.” 

Justice is coming to a land parched with the thirst for it. 

Free to worship God without fear.

Peace.

And so they receive the hospitality of that household, eating what is set before them. And as guests they have something to offer.

It comes with the assignment they have been given. “Heal anyone who is sick.” A special gift indeed! And it is a sign: that the one who heals is nigh.

And the travelers, the messengers, tell them the portent of the sign. It points to this: “God’s kingdom - the commonwealth of peace and freedom - is right on your doorstep!”

The travelers took a risk in coming. They were sent with next to nothing - nothing but the message and the power of the Spirit. The power of love.

Go! Get out there and speed the word, prepare the way. Travel light. Take nothing extra and do not linger to pass the time of day. There isn’t much daylight left. 

And so they went, to spread the news. They had no power, no right, to coerce anybody. They were not troops, or machete carrying thugs. They brought with them only empty hands, hands that were extended in peace.

What they had was authority - the authority of the love of God that they showed. And that built relationship with the people they came to on their journey.

There is a kind of power that has a coercive element to it. Authority, by contrast, has a non-coercive element. “You can do what I ask of you because you have to do what I have the power to make you do. Or you can do what I ask of you because you want to do it out of respect for who I am to you. The difference between the two motives is huge.” (Peter Marty)

And this coming reign of God is not like the empire of the world the people of the Holy Land knew so well. It comes without coercive force. It comes only with love, with care - shown in that sign of healing - and with the message.

So the travelers are sent, like lambs traveling through the midst of wolves. They carry this good news. And they are received - or not. Received or not they have delivered the message and done the sign. Their task is done. The outcome is not theirs to own. That belongs to the Spirit.

Later in the story of the church that is the Acts of Apostles we hear how the Spirit moves people and guides them. Philip is on the Gaza road, and he sees a chariot headed toward Egypt. Go up to that chariot and see what’s going on, he feels prompted. And he goes, and finds a man, an Ethiopian, reading and pondering the words of Isaiah. He interprets them in light of the gospel. And soon he finds himself in quite another part of the country, preaching that gospel to village after village.

The Christians at Antioch, a burgeoning faith community, send two of their number, Paul and Barnabas, out on mission, to spread the word of the good news they have experienced together.

Silas, Paul, and Timothy, coming along through the west of Turkey toward Istanbul, have a plan for where to head next. But the Spirit redirects them. Through a dream they feel the calling: “Come over to us and help us,” a Macedonian voice calls. And so they cross to Europe and bring the gospel there.

All these cases, in the confidence and the vulnerability of the Spirit, show the spreading of the message. A message that began with a simple word, heard or unheard, left outside or taken to heart, a simple word:

Peace. 

***

Peter W. Marty, "From the publisher: The secret of authority" (The Christian Century, June 22, 2016) 3.

Zadie Smith, "Two Men Arrive in a Village" (The New Yorker, June 6 and 13, 2016) 44ff. 

Ryan Marsh, sermon series on the Spirit, The Church of the Beloved, Edmonds, WA (June 26, 2016).

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Looking up from the New Town in Edinburgh toward the Castle atop the Royal Mile, I could hear a bagpiper in the gloaming. When I took the tour of the Castle the next day, I saw Saint Margaret’s Chapel, commemorating her returning Scotland to the strong roots of its faith in the 11^th century.

I saw something more recent too: a large building, one of the most prominent on the top of the hill – a sort of mausoleum or temple, a sacred space of some sort.

It was a war memorial, a remembrance place, dedicated to honoring those sons of Scotland who had given their lives in the First World War.

All around me, when I went inside, were books, large books, inscribed with the names of the fallen. There were men attending who explained the index.

 In those books somewhere in large letters you could find the name of one person in particular. If you stepped back you could see them all – names written in the books of honor.

We don’t know about each particular person, how they lived or how they died. They died not knowing if their cause would succeed. We do know that they served. And their names were written in the books of honor.

What we encounter repeatedly in the Bible is the image of a book in which names are written: the book of the covenant, the book of life.

In this Gospel’s telling today, it is the book of those who went forth to love and serve the Lord, by proclaiming and living the Word, so that they could say, to those they passed, receptive or inhospitable, that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

That is what matters – to serve. Faithfulness, yes, even in unfaithfulness to repent and return to serve.

Now how did Jesus send them out? What tasks did he set before them? He sent them to prepare the way – by bringing healing and good news to places he himself purposed to go. They were in that sense sent on in advance.

Go — go urgently — without staff or spare sandals or knapsack for provisions. Go – even into a foreign land, Samaria. Go – depending on the people who receive you.

Go – depending even more profoundly on the Word of God, on the message I send with you.

That becomes your family, that becomes your identity, and that becomes your home: the message of the Kingdom of God that you carry with you.

This utter trust in the Word of God can be demonstrated in small and simple ways – remember now Naaman the Aramean, the great general of Syria, sent by his king for healing.

This adventure began when someone listened to a small voice – the voice of a slave girl, a captive from Israel, serving Naaman’s wife. “If only he could see the prophet in Samaria,” she said, “he could be healed.”

Her mistress listened to this voice of a little one – one easily dismissed as of no power or influence, a slave after all and merely a child – but she listened and the great and mighty were changed.

For the king sent the general, and the general, with mighty expectations, went forth, ventured out of his own land, for healing from a stranger. He was outside his territory, and even his family, and soon without even the dignity of his position.

Go tell him to jump in the river Jordan, said the prophet from inside his house.

Eventually the man did – he was persuaded to take this small step that really was a great leap for a man of his kind.

It was an adventure into obscurity, a humbling – and with that journey completed he became as a little child – and came to know and worship the living God.

The story continues: “Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’” (v. 15a)

Remember now those 70 others that Jesus sent out – these are not the disciples whose names we know. Their names are written in the heavens and that is their glory.

We do not know who they were. They need not have been the mighty of the Earth. Some of them could have been as obscure as slave girls and children.

But we know they went forth and we know the message they proclaimed: “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near you.”

If we can hear it,

If we can welcome it,

If we can make it at home with us,

If we can show it, and

If we can carry it forward into our world, then we can say it too:

“The Kingdom of Heaven has come near you – today.”

May it be so. Amen.

JRL+

CProper9 2013

July 7
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9: 2 Kings 5:1-14. Psalm 30. Galatians 6:1-16. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.