The king of Israel took it as a political threat, a ploy: The king of Syria is setting me up. If I fail he will use it as a pretext for war.
How often do we take things politically -- interpreting all actions as political acts, as power plays. Everything must have an ulterior motive, some political motivation.
The king missed the real issue: A man’s need of healing and an opportunity for the mercy of God. He was too busy consulting his political advisors and lawyers.
III
Elisha, the prophet, however, heard of Naaman’s leprosy and sent a message to the king: "Why are you in such a tizzy? Send Naaman to me. I’ll show him there is a prophet in Israel."
So Naaman traveled with his horse and chariot to the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha heard him pull up, but did not go out to greet him. Instead he sent out his servant with this instruction:
Imagine being a famous person with a serious illness who goes to the Mayo Clinic to visit a renowned physician, the best in treating your disease. You get there. The doctor is nowhere to be seen. A nurse appears with a slip of paper that says: Go to the fountain in the downtown park. Dip seven times in it, and you will be healed.
Naaman flew into a rage and wheeled to leave.
The general had in his mind how it was all to happen: The proper protocol for a healing. He makes the trip, the prophet comes out, bows in respect, waves his arms, says the holy words and heals him. Then he pays the prophet the silver, gold and fine garments and leaves.
Naaman was a sick man. But like us all he wanted to diagnose his own illness, prescribe his own medicine and plan his own cure. We all prefer to self-medicate.
We can sympathize. It’s bad enough to be sick, to be humiliated by our illness and our powerlessness over it. At least we ought to be able to choose how we want to get well.
Naaman had it all worked out: His part, the prophet’s part, God’s part. But now he gets to Elisha’s house. Elisha doesn’t even come out to see him but sends a servant with a ridiculous message: Go wash seven times in the Jordan.
Naaman was livid. At least he could come out to see me; and as far as dunking seven times in the Jordan, that Jewish sewer, I’d just as soon swim in a septic tank. Damascus has beautiful clean rivers. I could have stayed home and washed there. Dip seven times in the Jordan? No way! And he wheeled to leave.
In his human pride he resists the word of God as command. Sometimes the word of God comes as comfort, sometimes as forgiveness, sometimes as the best news you’ve ever heard. But sometimes it comes as command: Go, dip. And our salvation, our healing, our wholeness depend on what we do.
The command violates Naaman’s sense of dignity -- dipping in the Jordan -- and confounds his rationality: What’s the connection between those muddy waters and my being cleansed of leprosy?
So he wheels to leave. Enter now his servants. If the first hero of the story was the Hebrew servant girl, these servants are the next heroes. They speak right to the point:
Smart servants -- and not a little brave to speak the truth to their master, who has power over them and is not in a very good mood.
They knew him well -- know us well. We’ll do something big and glorious, something heroic to match our estimate of ourselves, but we’ll not do the little thing that can make a difference. Naaman would have done some great heroic thing to be healed, but dipping in the Jordan? Too little, too lowly. And it made no sense.
But the servants knew the truth and knew their master and were brave to speak. Naaman saw the truth in their words. So following the word of the prophet, he went down to the Jordan and dipped seven times. And when he came up the seventh time he saw his flesh restored like the flesh of a young boy. He was clean!
Naaman returned with great thanksgiving and said to Elisha: "Now I know there is no God in all the earth except in Israel." Then he offered the gifts he had brought as an expression of thanks.
Elisha looked at the silver and gold and lavish clothes and said, "I will accept nothing." Naaman urged him to accept. Elisha again refused. This was the second miracle of the story: A minister refusing money. Elisha would never have made it as a televangelist. Such behavior would get him kicked out of the Professional Televangelists Association.
Elisha then blessed Naaman and said, Go in peace.
IV
Sometimes healing comes as command. We hear the word and do it. Often we don’t hear and do it until we have to, but finally we are sick enough of our lives and ready to be healed and we do it. Go to AA! You must change your life! Your behavior is harming yourself and those you love. If you do not change you will die.
One of my heroes from Union Seminary days was Rabbi Abraham Heschel of Jewish Theological Seminary. He was a close friend to American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and the two often held programs together. Once Niebuhr asked him why he still obeyed the Jewish dietary laws. Heschel replied:
Here was this brilliant Jewish theologian saying that sometimes he obeyed, not because he understood, but because he didn’t.
I think this spiritual posture cuts across the grain of our society and of our liberal protestant stance. We tend to obey only that which we understand.
But if that is the case, are we worshiping God or are we worshiping our own understanding -- which is not always reliable and is prone to follow other more powerful interests and urges? I do not think the command of God will violate our rationality, but it may well transcend it. Sometimes we are called, says Heschel, not to a leap of thought but to a leap of action: We do more than we understand in order to understand what we do.
Sometimes salvation comes in the imperative, as command. God said to the Hebrew people on Sinai. I have borne you on eagle’s wings and rescued you from slavery in Egypt. Now, if you want to stay free and be whole, hear and obey, ten words:
We may resist: What do these have to do with me, with my health and freedom and salvation?
Sometimes salvation comes as command. So Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom, forgiving sins, healing the sick . . . and offering these unforgettable commands:
In Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth he almost got lynched by his hometown congregation.
Part of the reason was when he said:
And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.
Was this because Naaman was able to see that sometimes salvation comes as command? There is no famine of the Word of God in our land -- only a famine of hearing and doing.
Praise be the God of Israel and Syria, the United States and Cuba.
Praise be young girls who have learned the mercy of God and act it out.
Praise be grizzled prophets and brave servants - -
And a general who was willing to wash seven times in the Jordan River.
Praise
Praise
Praise.
