Sermon:  Lurch Toward Healing

Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30

Date: February 12, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Reflecting on Namaan’s story brought a poem bubbling up to the surface of my memory. It’s by Alice Walker, who is best known for her novel The Color Purple. The poem is titled “Baptism”:

They dunked me in the creek;

a tiny brooklet.

Muddy, gooey with rotting leaves,

a greenish mold floating;

definable.

For love it was. For love of God

at seven. All in white.

With God’s mud ruining my snowy

socks and his bullfrog spoors

gluing up my face.[1]

It certainly paints a picture, doesn’t it? I’m intrigued by the way its spare words bring to light the contrast between the ritual that’s all about the grand love of God, signaling the beginning of a new life, and the child’s attention on the mud ruining her beautiful, snowy white socks.

At age seven, little Alice Walker could hardly have been expected to tune into the deep meaning of her baptism. But leaving age aside, I think the poem points to a human tendency to get bogged down in smallness even when something truly significant is on the line. You know that old saying, “Can’t see the forest for the trees”? There is a good reason why that proverbial phrase has endured for centuries—it tells a deep truth about human life. It is incredibly difficult to see the big picture when we are all occasionally what George Bernard Shaw described as a “feverish, selfish, little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making [us] happy.”

The selfish little clod shows up a couple of times in the Namaan story. Not that his ailment was a figment of his imagination. Namaan had some kind of serious skin disease. It’s called leprosy in the story, but that term covers a broad range of skin conditions in the Bible, so it’s a little difficult to tell if what he had was actually leprosy, what we call Hansen’s Disease now. It’s enough for us to know that it was a real problem for him, and that he was eager for a cure.

So eager that the great man, a successful and highly decorated general, was willing to listen to the recommendation of his lowly servant girl to seek healing from a prophet in neighboring Samaria, which was part of the kingdom of Israel at the time. Of course, seeking treatment must be done right for someone of his stature. There are procedures and channels. Namaan goes first to his master, the King, who gives him permission to go, sending a letter to Israel’s king along with their request for the cure. Oh, and he takes a ton of money and some nice new clothes along to grease the skids.

These two nations have been fighting right along—there is really no possibility of normal human relations between them at the moment. It appears that Aram (now called Syria) had the upper hand in recent skirmishes. The servant girl who recommended the prophet had been taken in a raid on Israel. You can see the power of Aram reflected in the terrified reaction of the king of Israel to the letter demanding a cure for Namaan. The king flies into a panic. He knows he can’t cure leprosy, and figures if he says so that the peeved king of Aram is going to send more invaders. He thinks the letter is a trick. Can you hear the feverish clod of ailments and grievances emerging in the king’s words: “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!” And he rips his robes in anticipatory grief over impending disaster. He manages to mention God in his tirade without it ever occurring to him that God might have something helpful to say or do in this situation.

The prophet Elisha hears somehow—did the rending of royal robes make it onto the evening news broadcast?—about what’s going on. He suggests that the king’s panic is premature. “Send him over to me,” he says, “and he’ll learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

Namaan moves on, probably reluctantly, from the palace to the prophet’s humble abode. He’d probably much rather stay in the equivalent of the Lincoln bedroom while the king sends out for the cure. But off he goes. Then the prophet insults him by not bothering to come out and see him in person. He sends a servant with a message to go out and dip himself seven times in the Jordan river if he wants to be cured.

Now, here’s the first time Namaan’s pride in his status and position almost trip him up. This guy is totally used to people treating him with the respect his position deserves. He is the General of all of Syria’s generals. Head of the armed forces. The king’s right hand man. If his status doesn’t impress the prophet, the military power he has completely at his disposal ought to get him kowtowing. Furthermore, Elisha won’t accept the wagonloads of loot he has brought in payment for the treatment. Double dishonor! And Namaan’s got pride in his home country that also enters in. Why should he wade into the muddy little Jordan when the rivers in his country are ten times more beautiful and pure?

Can you hear Namaan’s inner clod coming out now? Don’t they know who I am? Why aren’t these bumpkins, these nobodies, devoting themselves to making me happy?

I wasn’t the only one recalling poetry as I thought about this story. Benjy Cunningham recited a poem of Emily Dickenson’s for the Bible study class:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

How dreary to be Somebody. Namaan’s “Somebody-ness” very nearly derailed him on his journey to healing. His status loomed up in front of his eyes so large that he almost lost sight of the gift that was being offered to him. Social standing shouldn’t mean much when one is desperate for help, but pride can be as addictive as any drug that drags people into ruin.
The Nobodies called servants once again intervene to save the day. They sort of jolly him into giving it a try, appealing to his ability to do some difficult task in the interest of a cure if it had been asked of him. They soothe his wounded vanity a bit—I imagine they speculated on what great deeds he could have done. Run a marathon barefoot over hot gravel carrying a two-hundred pound backpack, that sort of thing. C’mon, boss, why not do this simple task and see if it works? Nothing to lose.

Namaan is not only cured by his dip in the muddy Jordan but also saved. He meets the living God and vows that this is the only God to whom he will sacrifice from now on—although he may have to go to the old Aram temple and bow a bit when the king expects it. He is still the general of all generals, after all, and he’s got to do the done thing in the public eye.

J. Mary Luti wrote a great commentary on this story that points out how Namaan muddles his way to health and salvation, lurching in fits and starts toward wholeness, almost undone by his craving for respect. She points out that all of us humans act out of a muddled maze of motivations. She recalls that when she first became an administrator in a graduate school someone tried to tell her that everyone basically acts out of self-interest. Her job, this advisor said, was to try to uncover what self-interest would drive a person to do in a given circumstance, and try to maneuver people in such a way as to steer this self-interest to an outcome that would serve the greater good. She discovered in her work that self-interest was indeed a factor, but not the only one. She writes,

If people acted only from simple self-interest all the time, things would be easy. But it’s more complicated than that. We’re all impelled by a bewildering array of interests, contradictions and passions (self-interest being the friskiest, but not always the strongest), most of which we do not know and never name.

In such a case, you don’t get far psyching people out and playing to what you find. The maze of motives thwarts you every time. The most you can do is make it OK for people to muddle along the best they can, at their own pace, and intervene occasionally to keep them focused. The trick is not so much to outfox as to out-wait. Most of the time, the ragged human convoy of divergent perceptions, piqued honor, high-minded posturing, insecurity, good humor and basic generosity will wend its way to insight and accomplishment.[2]

She thinks that God, who really wanted to heal Namaan, basically out-waited him while he threw his little hissy fits and got over himself. In Luti’s words, “God waits until Naaman acquits himself of the odd human propensity to work against one’s own good.” God out-waited his feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances phase, intervening through nobodies and prophets to keep him focused, and finally got him to accept the healing that was offered. Luti writes, “When he finally gives up, lets go, obeys his servants and washes in the water, there isn’t a lot more healing for the river to do.”

Mighty good news in this story for all of us who are muddling along toward healing and wholeness and salvation. The portrait painted of a God who lets Namaan lurch toward God’s gift, leaving him alone without ever leaving his side, is encouraging for all of us who are lurching toward God’s gifts in our own way. God wants us to be whole, and God is willing to be patient while we take a lot of detours on the road to the river of life.

What stands in the way of your spiritual health? Are you too proud to admit your need? Are you resisting the messages the “nobodies” in your life are sending that will direct you to new life? Are you so used to your particular pattern of sin that you’re not sure who you will be without it? Are you so obsessed with looking like you’ve got your act together that you can’t let your guard down even to God? Are you nervous about the errands of love God might send you on if you were stronger? What is standing in the way of your healing? What is standing in the way of your wholeness?

I invite you to meditate on that question a bit while I play a song for you performed by some friends of ours in the Montana Logging and Ballet Company. “Somebody Loves You Like a River”—let it remind you that God longs to heal you of all that harms you.

Once again, J. Mary Luti’s words: “God outwaits us while in weakness healing begins. God outwaits us while we locate the fissures of mercy in the heaped debris of fear and anger -- and learn to breathe the Spirit’s air. We change and grow, believe and love by grace, the best we can. We are going to the river, whatever the reason or unreason that moves us; we are going to wade right in. Knee-deep in unaccountable love, we’ll meet the One who gives us all our ragged victories and presides over our life.”[3]

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[1] Walker, Alice “Baptism” Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, p. 23

[2] Luti, J. Mary “Muddling Through” Christian Century, September 23-30, 1998, page 859; linked at textweek.com

[3] Ibid