Cooling Things Off
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2022
The Rev. Robin Teasley
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel."
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "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."
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, `Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. 2 Kings 5:1-14
Tomorrow we celebrate Independence Day. We like to think we are independent, and when everything is going right in our lives and in the world around us, we might not think about who is really in control. But in our moments of loss or fear, when God is not meeting our assumptions, when God seems to have disappeared and our sense of control is slipping, we sometimes find ourselves anxious or even angry. This is when we need reminding that it is God who is in control, not us; that God is with us and hears us, and yet sometimes when God answers us the answer is not what we expect!
We all have our assumptions and expectations of God. We want God on our side, we want God to solve our problems. We want a god we can easily explain, who acts like we think God should act. But is God like that? Is a god whom we can control truly God? If we could keep God in a bottle, like some sort of wish granting genie, emerging on command to solve our problems, what sort of a God is that? What power would that kind of god really have? The God of all creation gives us some agency, some free will, so that we can learn, grow, and solve problems in community together. We have been given responsibility for the care of creation and at the same time, we know that ultimately it is God who will have the final word.
In our first reading today Naaman was a great commander serving the king of Aram. He was a victorious general who was used to being the center of attention, large and in charge. Naaman trusted in his own strength and power – he was strong as the mountains, as the psalmist described. Only one thing threatened Naaman and it was not any human power – it was disease. Leprosy. A disease that was very contagious, and for which there was no cure. Lepers were the true outcasts of society, labeled unclean and banned from the community.
Naaman knows that leprosy will soon take command of his life if he doesn’t do something to stop it. He hears through a slave girl about somebody in Israel who can cure leprosy. So he goes to the king of Israel with a letter of recommendation from the king of Aram. As a show of his power and authority he travels by a caravan of horses and chariots, loaded down with silver, gold and garments. Very impressive!
The king of Israel was fearful of Naaman’s request, suspecting this was some kind of trick from the king of Aram. In his panic he told Naaman that he could not cure him. But the prophet Elisha heard about it, and he sent for Naaman. Naaman arrived at Elisha’s house, along with his servants and all of his extravagance, expecting the royal treatment. But Elisha did not give him the reception he expected; Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to greet the powerful general. Instead, a messenger came out and told him to go and wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be cured.
While the Jordan River flows through scripture with great theological significance, it is not all that impressive to see. Imagine if you were diagnosed with a disease and instead of your doctor sending you to the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins, she told you to go wash in the Pamunkey River! Definitely not the answer you expect!
Naaman was outraged. Surely this prophet had no idea who he was talking to. How dare he refuse to see him and instead send him to wash in the muddy backwater of the Jordan River! Naaman had expected a miraculous healing, a spectacle of which he would be the center of attention! Why was this prophet not out here, calling on the name of the Lord and healing his leprosy on the spot?
But his servants spoke truth to Naaman, so he went down to the Jordan River for a swim, and “according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”
We have all, at one time or another, behaved in just the way Naaman did when things haven’t gone our way, or the way we expected them to. And if we go back and look at this story again, we see that Naaman really had very little to do with his own healing. It took a slave girl who cared about him to get him started. It took the king who cared about him to help with a letter of introduction. It took Elisha to call for him, and it took some other servants who cared about him to convince him to do what the prophet said. Without the urging of the community who cared about him, Naaman would have died of his leprosy!
He may have been as strong as the mountains but his leprosy was his pride and his ego. He needed a community for his healing to occur. He needed to be open to new and unexpected forms of healing. Naaman needed to realize that he was not all powerful, that answers to problems are not always complicated or found by our own power and resources, but are discovered in community.
Community empowers healing, and healing creates community.
We face many challenges. Some are a part of life and others are unexpected. Perhaps we could call them leprosies? We struggle with financial challenges, conflict in relationships, a volatile political landscape, and power instability among nations. Like Naaman, we may be fearful of facing our leprosies when the cure is not what we expect, or when we don’t believe it could possibly work. As Naaman had to let go of long-held assumptions and expectations to be healed of his leprosy, so must we, as the Church, as followers of Jesus, be willing to envision new ways of being a community of faith.
This Independence Day our nation is very divided. We are having a hard time setting aside our pride to heal our division. There is much to love about our country, much to be thankful for, but perhaps we have forgotten that God is the author of our liberty, that God is our sole strength.
God very seldom comes to us in the ways we assume or plan. God’s vision and purposes are far broader, far deeper than we can imagine, with ways that remain partly mysterious and unknowable. God is not concerned about our own sense of self-importance, but rather with our relationships with God and one another.
We will never contain God’s power in bottles of our own making. When we, like Naaman, attempt to control or manipulate things into our preconceived expectations and assumptions, we interfere with God’s greater purposes. For then we are choosing to trust not in God or one another but in our own power and ability.
The good news is that Naaman realized his pride was getting in the way of his healing. God’s kingdom draws near as we learn to live in community with all of God’s people, trusting God to work through us and for us to bring about healing in this world. And maybe on a hot day in July a swim in a river would be a great way to cool things off.
Naaman Bathing in the Jordan, Cologne Cathedral
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