A homily for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14C. Readings for this Sunday: Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, and St Luke’s, Creemore.
Readings for this Sunday: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6),7-16; Luke 10:1-11,16-20
“Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man, and in high favour with his master” (2 Ki 5.`)
Today I’d like us to spend some time thinking about our first lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, which I think is one of the best and finest stories in scripture. The two Books of Kings are full of stories about the kings of Israel and Judah, their enemies, and their relationships with God and with God’s prophets. Some of these kings are wise and faithful, but most, not so much. Usually in these stories, it’s the prophets that are the voices we should pay attention to, and not the kings.
In today’s except from Second Kings, we are introduced to quite a range of characters: a general, several kings, a slave girl, and a prophet. Which one of these characters do you think is the most important, the one we should pay attention to?
If you said the general, that would be understandable, because we can all have images of generals. Perhaps you imagine someone with a stern expression and an impressive collection of medals, someone who looks like they get things done. If you’re of a certain vintage, you might think of George C Scott in the movie Patton, standing in front of that giant American flag, mean and convinced of his own reputation.
(Of course, as Canadians, we might think of Jennie Carnigan, our top soldier, throwing out the first pitch at the Blue Jays game on Canada Day, friendly and approachable, but that’s another image altogether!)
I suspect Naaman from our first reading is more in tune with the traditional idea of an army general as a swaggering, authoritative sort of figure, more like Patton than Carnigan. Naaman is from Aram, which is the biblical name for Syria, a neighbour and ancient rival of Israel and Judea. We’re told that “the Lord has given victory to Naaman”, which may seem odd seeing as he’s not an Israelite. But in the Old Testament often God gives the upper hand to the enemy when Israel needs to be punished. And that mention of “the Lord” at the beginning is a hint as to who this story is really about.
So Naaman is a mighty general, he travels with “horses and chariots”, which seems a very impressive sort of thing to do. But there’s one problem - he has leprosy, which makes him human. He needs to be cured, and that’s when we meet the second character in the story.
This character doesn’t have a name, she’s a slave girl, an Israeiite, and she’s far from home and is the maid of Naaman’s wife. But she remembers her home, and she remembers that there is a holy man, a prophet, who could heal her master. Often in the Old Testmanent it’s a humble character, often a women, like this who sets things in motion - think of the Hebrew woman who puts Moses in a basket in the Nile to save him.
As is often the case, a woman’s ideas aren’t really listened to. Naaman goes to the king of Aram, tells him there’s a guy in Israel who could heal him, so the king gives him a bunch of presents for the King of Israel and a letter saying “Hey, King of Israel, please heal my guy Naaman.” Now the slave girl didn’t say anything about the King of Israel, she said it was a prophet who could heal Naaman, but I guess the King of Aram, being a king, just assumed that another king could help. Important people seem to assume that other important people make things happen.
As I said, there’s a lot of humour in this story, and part of it comes from the king of Israel’s reaction, which is basically a loud scream that echoes through his palace. The poor king is at least self aware enough to know that he’s not a doctor or a prophet, and has no power to heal anyone, so he assumes that this is some sort of trap, and Aram will invade because he hasn’t been able to help Naaman. So all he does is rip his clothes and complain. At this point, we might well ask, how come a young Israelite slave girl in Aram knows that there is a prophet in Israel but the King of Israel doesn’t know this? Not a good look for the King of Israel.
Fortunately word gets out that the King of Israel is complaining and pouting, because word gets to Elisha, and here we have to stop and remind ourselves of who Elisha is. It’s confusing, because there are two prophets in Kings, Elijah, who comes first, and then Elisha, who Elijah takes on as his pupil. Think of Elisha as a Jedi padwan in Star Wars if that helps. After Elijah is taken up into heaven, Elisha takes over.
Elisha is a faithful prophet, he can perform miracles but he’s kinda cranky. There’s a story in Kings about how a group of kids follow him one day and make fun of him because he’s bald, so Elisha curses them and at that point two bears come out of woods and maul the children (2 Kings 223-24). Not surprisingly, he sends a slightly cranky message back to the King of Israel, basically “Why are you making such a fuss, I’m the prophet, send this guy Naaman to me”.
Did I mention that Elisha was cranky? Another seen that makes me laugh is when Naaman and all his horses and chariots are parked outside Elisha’s house. I’m not sure what Naaman was expecting, he was probably used to red carpets and people making a fuss over him, but all he gets is a message from the house saying “go wash in the river Jordan seven times”.
Elisha isn’t the only one who’s cranky. The mighty (but leprous) Naaman is highly offended, not only because this prophet wouldn’t come out and give him some sort of personal prophet treatment, but because (and this is a weird bit of nationalistic pride), if all he had to do was dip in a river, well, he could have stayed home in Aram where they have better rivers! Harrumph! Fortunately, Naaman gets good “what have you got to lose” advice, does the seven dips in the Jordan, and is cured.
So other than a few chuckles (I hope you agree with me that there is humour in this story), what can we take away from it? I would say the first and major lesson would be that God is in charge. When we think of powerful generals in the Hebrew Scriptures, we might think of the Egyptian army, also with horses and chariots, that is swept away in the Red Sea. Scripture is always suspicious of military power, which is why Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey instead of in a general’s chariot. In our age of dictators that increasingly seems to value military might, this seems like an important lesson.
Also, I think the lesson says something about the generosity of God and how God’s grace and favour isn’t confined to just one people. Naaman is a soldier who is an outsider, a non-Jew. In the sequel to this story, he returns to thank Elisha, and says that he now realizes that the God if Israel is greater than the gods of Aram. He thus reminds us of people like the centurion Cornelius who is baptized with his family by Peter (Acts 10) or the centurion at the foot of the cross who recognizes that Jesus is the son of God.
Finally, we see here, with the servant girl and with Elisha, who was a farmer before Elijah chose him to be a prophet, a lifting up of the humble and lowly that runs all through scripture. Today’s story began with kings and a general, and ended up reminding us that these people can be blinded by their own power, whereas the humble see the saving power of God clearly. May it be so with us.
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