|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| 2 Kings 5:1–14 |
Psalm 30:1–6 |
1 Corinthians 9:24–27 |
Mark 1:40–45 |
The portrayal of many of the people in the Bible unabashedly touches on various aspects of their humanness. It is not so that we are to necessarily emulate their example, but because there are profound lessons that we are to learn from their example. We are not to conduct our life like King David or King Solomon, but we can certainly draw lessons from their lives.
The story about Naaman is not so much about his cure from leprosy as it is a lesson about the universality of God’s compassion and about the importance of conquering our pride. Naaman is not merely a foreigner, he is the leader of the army of a powerful adversary of the people of Israel. The record is quite clear. One of his wife’s servants was a girl captured and taken prisoner on one of Naaman’s raids. Open hostility still existed between the tribes of Israel and Naaman’s nation. It is no wonder that the King of Israel was so fearful when he appeared before him with a generous bribe, but a seemingly impossible request. Nonetheless, the premise of the story is that God operates and speaks not only to people outside the community of faith, but even to people considered enemies of people of faith.
Undoubtedly, if the premise of this story is taken seriously, in times of conflict it could generate a lot of heat and controversy, if not severe condemnation, for being quite seditious. Naaman was an outcast of the worse kind and yet, God still cared about his welfare.
The second lesson from this story and, I suspect, the reason the story has been paired with the story of Jesus healing the leper, is that Naaman’s pride matched his high position, and that it was his pride, not his disease, that caused a barrier to his healing. It was only after every other alternative in Naaman’s life failed, that he was willing to listen to those at the lowest level of his social scale. People whom Naaman would ordinarily consider to have nothing worthy to say, who were accounted expendable and insignificant, became the way Naaman was given new life. He would have completely missed his chance, if it were not for the extraordinary patience of people he considered underlings. The lesson that was communicated to later generations of people of faith was that it is in the context of humility that trust is built. Pride is always the enemy of wisdom and spiritual insight as well as healthy relationships.
The leper Jesus encountered on the road was in completely desperate straights and knew it. The leper pushed himself forward with no pretension, almost to the point of impertinence. To expect Jesus to heal him was completely off the wall. The Gospel translates that Jesus was moved with pity, but the original phrase implies that Jesus was quite upset and disturbed. How and why Jesus was upset, is tantalizingly ambiguous. Jesus did not cure everyone of leprosy and from the first Jesus did not want to be known strictly as a healer of mental or physical maladies. Yet it is apparent that this hapless leper had put every bit of his hope in Jesus’ hands. Perhaps from the standpoint of the people who initially witnessed this encounter, the most amazing thing that Jesus did was that he did not distance himself, but stretched out his hand and actually touched the leper. Jesus was willing to touch and in a real sense to reestablish a relationship with this outcast. The most dreaded manifestation of this disease wasn’t physical scaring or degeneration; it was alienation from God and separation from community. Jesus’ touch reestablished community. Yes, Jesus did heal the man and then sent him to give thanks and rejoin fellow worshippers in the Temple, but to remain silent about Jesus himself. Nonetheless, that man was so thankful and his trust in Jesus was so overwhelming that he could not help but sing Jesus’ praises. He had to tell the world how much he trusted in Jesus and that He had truly touched him,
The message from this encounter is not if you have enough faith and persistence you will be healed. That is simply a cruel and false premise that Jesus never implied. Saying that Jesus doesn’t cure but heals, more often than not is playing a game in semantics that I find hard to justify. The problems of pain and suffering hold no easy solutions or answers.
The overall point that ties both these stories together is that it is trust, not great deeds, that changes and transforms things. Restoration of relationships, be it among people or with God, involves such an acknowledgement of trust.
By chance I came across this quote from the classic daily devotional, My Utmost for his Highest, by Oswald Chambers. It is under the title of “the discipline of heeding”, but I also think it could be titled “the practice of trust.” Perhaps it is a fitting conclusion to the lessons about Naaman the proud foreign general and this desperate unnamed leper:
“Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will talk in the wrong mood: darkness is the time to listen. Don’t talk to other people about it; don’t read books to find out the reason for the darkness, but listen and heed. … When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light. … Now he gives you the gift of humiliation which brings softness of heart that will always listen to God now.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, devotional for Feb. 14th.)
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
