Today's primary lections, both old and new testament are stories of illness and isolation,
two qualities that even in our modern world too often sadly go hand in hand. Taken together we have a tale of two
"lepers," which is how these stories are usually described, and even in saying that we show how we continue
the short-sightedness described in these twin tales.
The American Leprosy Society recently challenged organized religion on it's insistence of continuing to make use
of the term "leper" from the pulpit. They would prefer that we put into practice what we know to be a
truth that a "leper" is first and foremost a "person" who has been infected by what we now
know is a treatable germ. A "person," just like a person with cancer, or chicken pox, or emphysema, none
of whom we refer to as "a cancer," or "a chicken pox" or "an emphysema," but as "people"
who are struggling with these diseases.
You have heard countless sermons I'm sure on how the disease of leprosy brought incredible shame and increased
hardship on the victims as a result of their forced expulsion from community life. Leprosy had no respect for wealth
or station, and its victims were found in all sectors of the population. In our Old Testament lesson, Naaman is
a famous general whose very name brings terror to the people he has conquered. He is a foreigner, he is a pagan,
and he is not used to being "limited" in any way. His story is one of the more developed in the Book
of Kings, and we even get to know what happened to him following his miraculous recovery. It is however meant to
be more of a story about the dangers of arrogance than about the dangers of leprosy.
By contrast the Gospel account tells us very little about the victim who sought Jesus' help, and like so many people
who received miraculous healing in the synoptics, we don't even get to know his name. Whereas Naaman came laden
with gifts to buy his cure, this man came falling on his knees and begging for intervention. He knows that the
"choice" of whether to respond or not is totally up to Jesus and he knows that he is totally dependent
upon Jesus' mercy. He is delighted when Jesus chooses to act, and one can picture his joy much like that current
commercial about the man who stops everyone on the street to tell them that he has "just lowered his cholesterol."
Naaman on the other hand is quite angry at the fact that the prophet despite offering a cure did so through a messenger,
and didn't even bother to come out and meet such a great man. There is no contact, no fanfare, no magic touch,
...it hardly seems enough!
In the end however it worked and Naaman was cured because he followed directions even when they made no sense to
him, and in fact insulted his pride. The second man was also cured but purely as an act of compassion. He then
failed to follow the directions despite the fact that they were "sternly" given, further complicating
Jesus' already complicated life.
Traditional Bible scholars have interpreted these two accounts to be parables about life under the Law and life
under the power of Grace. The Law requires absolute compliance, and despite the difficulties involved, being steadfast
in following directions will produce results. Grace on the other hand though equally certain in terms of outcome,
is very risky regarding an individual's response. There is no obligation in acts of grace…it is always "undeserved
favor," and thus there can be no expectation.
Throughout the gospels we find God's healing grace present and offered even in the midst of overt human enmity.
This begging man believes in Jesus' purpose, His power, His passion for people, and His promise. Having received
the one thing he wanted more than anything else in the world he runs off and forgets just how wonderful that gift
really was. Isn't it true that we do the same thing with the gift of our salvation. It was everything once…how
often do we ignore it now?
Both these stories consider healing to be a holy action, gained by divine intervention. The Gospel however adds
that one does not need high status or affiliation with the right people to receive blessings from Almighty God,
just God's will.
All of the "healing miracles" are for the sole purpose of testimony, they tell us what Jesus' mission
is truly about. In the driving out of the evil spirit, or in last week's healing of Peter's mother-in-law, or next
week's paralytic we find a common theme of "leaving." The evil spirit, the fever, the leprosy all "left."
In each case peoples' lives had been "overcome" by something, but when Jesus touched their lives, something
else had to "leave" to make room.
Think about it,…when is it, after all, that our faith is strongest or that there is a sense of spiritual fulfillment?
Usually when we have been emptied the most. Even when we arrive as worshipers to hear God's Word, we need to be
conscious of just how filled with other concerns we are. The true task of our coming together may be one of making
room for the hope and new life we receive in Christ through, at first, an emptying...then a filling.
Jesus once taught that when an evil spirit is cast out of an individual it goes wandering about looking for a new
place in which to dwell. If the person from whom that spirit was cast out has not filled the space with something
better that evil spirit will return in even greater numbers and fill the vacuum again.
Early on in Jesus public ministry he was extremely popular with all the right people. His concern for the outcast,
which sounds so noble to us "in theory" was having a paradoxical but predictable effect on him. He was
in fact becoming an outcast, not only by his identification with the poor but also through his increased contacts
with those who were considered to be both unseemly and unclean. His actions always offered the option of restoring
the "outcast" to polite society, but in effect they were also marginalizing his own acceptability. In
the end Jesus himself was the "outcast" isolated from everyone except those who willingly chose to come
to him as true disciples, taking on the same work and way.
Our "hope" should not lie in trying to figure out how to get back into he mainstream once we've realized
that we too are outsiders, that's impossible. Our "hope" is found in the fact that Jesus chose to become
an outsider too. At the cross, outside the city, Jesus challenged the whole system.
In 1 Corinthians Paul is reminding us that living every day in the Kingdom and experiencing its blessings is liberation,
not just coming on the one day I need something. Grace allows us that privilege, discipline challenges us to take
seriously the gift we have been given.
We've been told that people all over the U.S. are presently buying up duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal up
their houses because of the real or imagined threat of biological warfare. Maybe as "people of faith"
we should be getting beyond such hysteria, and stop trusting in those band-aids that treat the symptoms but not
the disease. True healing or cleansing cannot be superficial like waving one's hands over the injury, or calling
fire down from heaven…it happens when the heart of the individual feels the simple but all encompassing touch of
the Holy.
Neither the "king of Aram" which is present day Syria nor the "king of Israel" (v. 5) are named,
but they are most likely Ben-hadad and Jehoram. If so, this event occurred around 850 BC. The story tells us that
Israel's God has made Aram more powerful than Israel, that "the Lord had given victory to Aram" (v. 1).
It's always God's choice if we believe in God's all encompassing power.
In the end, Naaman says "'I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel," and he acknowledges
God as the god of all, and contrary to the normal practice of the time, Elisha will accept nothing in payment for
the cure, knowing for certain that it is God who heals (v. 16). One of his servants however, seeing all that wealth
runs after Naaman, and asks for some claiming that it is for the prophet but planning on keeping it for himself.
His deception results in him receiving the very leprosy of which Naaman had been cured. Is there a lesson to be
found there as well?
There certainly is a sad alternative to the good news. William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom, a novel of family
twists and horrors describes "a dream state in which you run without moving from a terror in which you cannot
believe, toward a safety in which you have no faith."
Grace offers us endless opportunities, but without a self-imposed discipline of faith in action the opportunities
of grace will ultimately come to naught. There will come a time when grace ends, and God will rightfully demand
an accounting. To be clean, we must come clean…whose side are you on?
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