Unpalatable lessons - 20th Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kings 5: 1-14. Luke 17: 11-19
It was quite a beginning! Jesus had been baptised by John the Baptist and had gone on to that period of temptation in the desert. Now he returns to Galilee and having made an impression on the locals, he goes to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. At first all goes well until Jesus snatches disaster from the jaws of victory by reminding them of the wideness of God’s love as displayed in stories of old, culminating in a mention of the story of Elisha and Naaman which we have heard this morning. This story enraged them to such a degree that Luke describes its very mention as making the people furious, so much so that;
“They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.”
Not quite an advert for free speech!
But why should this story have such power to create such an extreme reaction?
Well let’s take a look at the story. But first let’s see who the two main characters are.
Firstly, let’s look at Naaman. He is introduced to us as a commander in the army of the King of Aram. Now Aram is basically the country which we know today as Syria. Today there is a difficult relationship between Israel and Syria. On a number of occasions during the past 60 years they have been at war with each other and when not so the peace has been uneasy. Well, some things never change. Our story which dates back about 2,800 years takes us back to another period in which there was seemingly unending conflict between the two countries. And when the Bible speaks of Naaman bringing great victories over Israel, those victories were in the main over Israel. Sure there were periods of what might be seen as armed peace but on at least one occasion after this story, the King whom Naaman served lay seige to Samaria causing a famine so bad that some people cannibalised their own children. So Naaman was a pagan who was complicit in bringing much suffering to Israel, a man who was well and truly an enemy of Israel and so in the eyes of the people of Israel, an enemy of God. A complete outsider!
Now let’s look at the other main character, Elisha. He is one of the great prophets that emerged in Israel. Following the fiery Elijah who challenged Israel to follow Yahweh rather than Baal, Elisha, other than in the story of the cursing of boys who mocked his baldness, connected positively with people performing miracles that pointed to the power of God. Indeed, Elisha would seemed to have performed more miracles than any other Old Testament prophet.
And so to our story. Naaman, despite his wealth and status, develops a skin condition that causes him much anxiety. It probably wasn’t Hansen’s Disease which we think of as being leprosy today. But it was still a social problem even if such conditions did not bring the outcast status that was the case in Israel. Certainly it was enough to greatly disturb his life. And so at this point, hope comes in the form of an unlikely person, an Israelite young girl who had been taken into slavery as a result of Naaman’s raids into Israel. The last person to offer help to Naaman you might think, this girl who had been taken away from all that she held dear. And yet, this girl goes to Naaman’s wife and tells her of the prophet Elisha who could offer a cure to Naaman’s condition. The girl begins a chain of unlikely agents of God’s grace. She, herself, is powerless both as a result of her gender in a sexist society and her status as a captive. But without her, there would be no healing. Next comes Naaman’s wife, the wife of a foreign general, once more an unlikely agent of God’s grace but it is this woman who persuades Naaman to explore the possibility of meeting the prophet of Israel. And later when Naaman doesn’t like the way that Elisha offers to heal him, it is servants who confront him and encourage him to do as the prophet has said. Do you get it? Here in this story we are finding that it is outsiders and nobodies who are emerging as the instruments of God’s grace. For God turns our expectations completely upside down. It is as Paul writes to the Corinthian church concerning the calling of God;
“He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are.”
I wonder if today, we place limits as to who might be an agent of God’s grace. Are we truly open to the possibilities that God’s grace might be brought to us through channels that might surprise us - the asylum seeker, the prisoner, the Muslim or the street person? It is a sad reflection on the poverty of our political system that many of those who lead us or would lead us put themselves in thrall to those whose wealth makes them potential large donors or whose media power makes them the makers and breakers of careers. In contrast to this how wonderful that God works through the least likely persons in effecting real change in peoples’ lives.
Back to the story of Naaman. He goes to the King and tells him what he has learnt from the slave girl. And because he is so valuable to the King, Naaman is sent to Israel with gifts and a letter for the King of Israel. But now comes a low in the story. Israel is going through a bad time and indeed it is a bad time that will only get worse and so the confidence of Israel’s King is low. Receiving a letter that requests the healing of Naaman, Israel’s King fears that it is a ruse in order to provoke a quarrel. After all the request for healing has been made to him personally and he hasn’t a clue how to cure Naaman. Fail and it will be yet another excuse for war!
Still the news reaches Elisha and he tells the King to send Naaman to his home. Naaman turns up with all his entourage and gets an almighty shock. There is to be no immediate cure. Instead he is to wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. This infuriates him. He thinks of the rivers back in his homeland. Surely, he protests, they are better than anything in Israel. And this nationalism almost prevents him from being cured. And it would have were it not for the intervention of his servants who dare to suggest that he would have been responsive were Elisha to ask a great thing of him rather than the seemingly mundane. And today, it remains a temptation to expect God to act in great drama rather than through the mundane. Arthur Benson, whose father whilst Bishop of Truro in the days when the only place one could go after such an appointment was Canterbury devised the Service of Nine Carols and Lessons, wrote the lyrics of “Land of hope and glory.” It contains the lines which enthuse many but frankly cause me to shiver;
“God who made thee mighty
Make thee mightier yet.”
This morning I invite you to consider the possibility that the God who resists models of domination, desires not that we become mightier but as was the need of Naaman more humble. Focusing on our power and our sense of being called above others, is but a step away from God on whom we depend.
Anyhow, ultimately, Naaman does what Elisha has told him to do and the consequence is that he is healed. His initial response suggests that he is a changed person;
“Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.”
But we can not be too sure for the next two chapters of the second book of Kings are devoted to further military aggression from Syria. So, I will not bother to speculate.
Anyhow back to the offence caused by this story. If Englishmen are inclined to think of God as an English gent, the Israelites were even more inclined to identify God with their nation. This goes back to the calling of Abraham who was to be the father of a nation blessed by God. That special relationship is a feature of our Old Testament but always there are the hints that God’s love is not just for one people but for all peoples.
Back in my native Cornwall, there was a row a few years ago when the minister would not agree to the “Song of the Western Men” being sung in a Circuit service. Sons and daughters of Cornwall among you will know that it begins with the violent lines;
“A good sword and a trusty hand
A merry heart and true.
We’re going to show King James’s men
What Cornish lads can do.”
Why was it no permitted in an act of worship. The reason given was that God is the God of all people not of all things Cornish.
This story tells us that human built barriers cannot stand in the way of God’s love and grace. We may tolerate a society which designates some as outsiders but that is not the way of God. Indeed, when we seek to push others to the margins, the scriptures have a tendency to proclaim a message of role reversal. Later in this story, we find this with Gehazi, a servant of Elisha, who thinks that Naaman has got away lightly and so seeks to gain from him the money that Elisha turned down. Gehazi pays a heavy price for his actions as he ends the story with Naaman’s leprosy afflicting him.
So to the crowd that sought to throw Jesus over the cliff. Why were they so angry? Because Jesus had told how in an age of leprosy, the one case of Divine healing had been of not just an outsider but an enemy of Israel.
But before you condemn that angry crowd, answer me one question -------- how would you react if you heard that God had used a Christian to bring a miraculous healing to Osama Bin Laden?
This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday October 14th 2007
It was quite a beginning! Jesus had been baptised by John the Baptist and had gone on to that period of temptation in the desert. Now he returns to Galilee and having made an impression on the locals, he goes to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. At first all goes well until Jesus snatches disaster from the jaws of victory by reminding them of the wideness of God’s love as displayed in stories of old, culminating in a mention of the story of Elisha and Naaman which we have heard this morning. This story enraged them to such a degree that Luke describes its very mention as making the people furious, so much so that;
“They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.”
Not quite an advert for free speech!
But why should this story have such power to create such an extreme reaction?
Well let’s take a look at the story. But first let’s see who the two main characters are.
Firstly, let’s look at Naaman. He is introduced to us as a commander in the army of the King of Aram. Now Aram is basically the country which we know today as Syria. Today there is a difficult relationship between Israel and Syria. On a number of occasions during the past 60 years they have been at war with each other and when not so the peace has been uneasy. Well, some things never change. Our story which dates back about 2,800 years takes us back to another period in which there was seemingly unending conflict between the two countries. And when the Bible speaks of Naaman bringing great victories over Israel, those victories were in the main over Israel. Sure there were periods of what might be seen as armed peace but on at least one occasion after this story, the King whom Naaman served lay seige to Samaria causing a famine so bad that some people cannibalised their own children. So Naaman was a pagan who was complicit in bringing much suffering to Israel, a man who was well and truly an enemy of Israel and so in the eyes of the people of Israel, an enemy of God. A complete outsider!
Now let’s look at the other main character, Elisha. He is one of the great prophets that emerged in Israel. Following the fiery Elijah who challenged Israel to follow Yahweh rather than Baal, Elisha, other than in the story of the cursing of boys who mocked his baldness, connected positively with people performing miracles that pointed to the power of God. Indeed, Elisha would seemed to have performed more miracles than any other Old Testament prophet.
And so to our story. Naaman, despite his wealth and status, develops a skin condition that causes him much anxiety. It probably wasn’t Hansen’s Disease which we think of as being leprosy today. But it was still a social problem even if such conditions did not bring the outcast status that was the case in Israel. Certainly it was enough to greatly disturb his life. And so at this point, hope comes in the form of an unlikely person, an Israelite young girl who had been taken into slavery as a result of Naaman’s raids into Israel. The last person to offer help to Naaman you might think, this girl who had been taken away from all that she held dear. And yet, this girl goes to Naaman’s wife and tells her of the prophet Elisha who could offer a cure to Naaman’s condition. The girl begins a chain of unlikely agents of God’s grace. She, herself, is powerless both as a result of her gender in a sexist society and her status as a captive. But without her, there would be no healing. Next comes Naaman’s wife, the wife of a foreign general, once more an unlikely agent of God’s grace but it is this woman who persuades Naaman to explore the possibility of meeting the prophet of Israel. And later when Naaman doesn’t like the way that Elisha offers to heal him, it is servants who confront him and encourage him to do as the prophet has said. Do you get it? Here in this story we are finding that it is outsiders and nobodies who are emerging as the instruments of God’s grace. For God turns our expectations completely upside down. It is as Paul writes to the Corinthian church concerning the calling of God;
“He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are.”
I wonder if today, we place limits as to who might be an agent of God’s grace. Are we truly open to the possibilities that God’s grace might be brought to us through channels that might surprise us - the asylum seeker, the prisoner, the Muslim or the street person? It is a sad reflection on the poverty of our political system that many of those who lead us or would lead us put themselves in thrall to those whose wealth makes them potential large donors or whose media power makes them the makers and breakers of careers. In contrast to this how wonderful that God works through the least likely persons in effecting real change in peoples’ lives.
Back to the story of Naaman. He goes to the King and tells him what he has learnt from the slave girl. And because he is so valuable to the King, Naaman is sent to Israel with gifts and a letter for the King of Israel. But now comes a low in the story. Israel is going through a bad time and indeed it is a bad time that will only get worse and so the confidence of Israel’s King is low. Receiving a letter that requests the healing of Naaman, Israel’s King fears that it is a ruse in order to provoke a quarrel. After all the request for healing has been made to him personally and he hasn’t a clue how to cure Naaman. Fail and it will be yet another excuse for war!
Still the news reaches Elisha and he tells the King to send Naaman to his home. Naaman turns up with all his entourage and gets an almighty shock. There is to be no immediate cure. Instead he is to wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. This infuriates him. He thinks of the rivers back in his homeland. Surely, he protests, they are better than anything in Israel. And this nationalism almost prevents him from being cured. And it would have were it not for the intervention of his servants who dare to suggest that he would have been responsive were Elisha to ask a great thing of him rather than the seemingly mundane. And today, it remains a temptation to expect God to act in great drama rather than through the mundane. Arthur Benson, whose father whilst Bishop of Truro in the days when the only place one could go after such an appointment was Canterbury devised the Service of Nine Carols and Lessons, wrote the lyrics of “Land of hope and glory.” It contains the lines which enthuse many but frankly cause me to shiver;
“God who made thee mighty
Make thee mightier yet.”
This morning I invite you to consider the possibility that the God who resists models of domination, desires not that we become mightier but as was the need of Naaman more humble. Focusing on our power and our sense of being called above others, is but a step away from God on whom we depend.
Anyhow, ultimately, Naaman does what Elisha has told him to do and the consequence is that he is healed. His initial response suggests that he is a changed person;
“Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.”
But we can not be too sure for the next two chapters of the second book of Kings are devoted to further military aggression from Syria. So, I will not bother to speculate.
Anyhow back to the offence caused by this story. If Englishmen are inclined to think of God as an English gent, the Israelites were even more inclined to identify God with their nation. This goes back to the calling of Abraham who was to be the father of a nation blessed by God. That special relationship is a feature of our Old Testament but always there are the hints that God’s love is not just for one people but for all peoples.
Back in my native Cornwall, there was a row a few years ago when the minister would not agree to the “Song of the Western Men” being sung in a Circuit service. Sons and daughters of Cornwall among you will know that it begins with the violent lines;
“A good sword and a trusty hand
A merry heart and true.
We’re going to show King James’s men
What Cornish lads can do.”
Why was it no permitted in an act of worship. The reason given was that God is the God of all people not of all things Cornish.
This story tells us that human built barriers cannot stand in the way of God’s love and grace. We may tolerate a society which designates some as outsiders but that is not the way of God. Indeed, when we seek to push others to the margins, the scriptures have a tendency to proclaim a message of role reversal. Later in this story, we find this with Gehazi, a servant of Elisha, who thinks that Naaman has got away lightly and so seeks to gain from him the money that Elisha turned down. Gehazi pays a heavy price for his actions as he ends the story with Naaman’s leprosy afflicting him.
So to the crowd that sought to throw Jesus over the cliff. Why were they so angry? Because Jesus had told how in an age of leprosy, the one case of Divine healing had been of not just an outsider but an enemy of Israel.
But before you condemn that angry crowd, answer me one question -------- how would you react if you heard that God had used a Christian to bring a miraculous healing to Osama Bin Laden?
This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday October 14th 2007
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