Sermon: “Humbled But Healed”

Text: 2 Kings 5:1-15

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

February 15, 2006

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning is from the Old Testament book of Second Kings, the story of how, through the prophet Elisha, God healed Naaman of leprosy.  Naaman was the commanding general of the armies of the king of Aram in Damascus.  And Aram (also called Syria) was an enemy of the northern kingdom of Israel, which had its capital at Samaria, where Elisha lived and prophesied. 

As the story begins Naaman is in his home in Damascus.  An insignificant young Israelite girl—in Hebrew, a naarah ketonah—who is a slave in his household, suggests to Naaman that if he were only with the prophet who lives in Samaria—Elisha—then the prophet would cure Naaman of his leprosy.  When Naaman tells the king of Aram what the young girl said, the king sends Naaman to the Israelite king with rich gifts—including 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold—plus a request for healing.  The Israelite king knows that he is unable to cure Naaman.  He suspects the king of Aram knows it, too, and is actually seeking a pretext for another attack on Israel.  But the prophet Elisha discovers the matter and gives Naaman the prescription for a cure.  When Naaman finally follows Elisha’s advice, his skin became like that of a small young boy—in Hebrew, a naar katon.  And with this word the story comes back around to its beginning, for this is the male equivalent of the term used in verse three to describe the servant girl—the naarah ketonah.  Thus the text implies an equivalency between the small and insignificant young Israelite slave girl and the great and powerful Naaman, who, through God’s healing miracle, now lives in the skin of a small and insignificant young boy.[1]

Sermon.  When we had the Souper Bowl of Caring several weeks ago, we all had to figure out which team we were going to cheer for.  I don’t really have a favorite NFL team, so for me the decision boiled down to the fact that my friend and mentor, Dr. Morgan Roberts, is a big Steelers fan.  So I was for the Steelers.  But I remember a number of you saying that you were for the Cardinals.  And why?  The answer I heard most often was, “They are the underdogs, and I always cheer for the underdog.”  If that’s the way you think, then today’s story from Second Kings will be one of your favorites.  It’s all about big and little, significant and insignificant, powerful and weak; and the little, insignificant, weak people get the upper hand.

Think about the young Israelite slave girl.   It would be hard to find a person of lesser significance in ancient society.  She had more than three strikes against her.  She was very young in a time when children had no status.  She was female.  She was a slave.  And she was from a country with which her master was in conflict; in Damascus, she was a foreigner.  Yet she was the one with knowledge of where Naaman could be healed.  Moreover, unlike the king of Israel, she had faith that through the prophet Elisha, God could heal her master.

As a reader or listener we might presume that the king of Israel would be something of a great figure in the story, but he doesn’t even get a name.  And instead of acting like a king, he tears his robes in dismay when he senses that international tension may be brewing.  He seems not even to be aware that the greatest prophet alive resides in his kingdom.  Unlike the king of Aram, who receives a neutral treatment, the king of Israel is portrayed in almost humorous terms.

We might also consider the geography of the region.  Israel was tiny, indeed, as it was only the northern half of what had been the united kingdom of David and Solomon.  Aram (or Syria), while it did not compare with Egypt or the empires of Mesopotamia, was of respectable size and significant military prowess.  Its capital, Damascus, had not one but two rivers, the Abana and the Parphar, which run to the north and south, respectively, of the city.  Either one of those rivers, in terms of volume of flow would put the Jordan to shame.  So Naaman was right when he compared the Jordan unfavorably to the waters of his homeland.  His rivers were large, and the Jordan was small; yet the waters of the Jordan accomplished what the rivers of Damascus could not.

In ancient times, it was pretty much accepted that you could tell the power and greatness of a god by how well that god had protected his or her worshippers.  A nation’s god was supposed to help fight its battles.  Thus, a defeated nation in the ancient world might well give up on its traditional gods and adopt the gods of its conquerors.  Yet the God described in Second Kings doesn’t operate this way.  Right at the story’s outset, we are told that Naaman’s victories (the actual Hebrew word means “salvation”) had come not by virtue of his own strength, but rather from God.  Naaman seems to have had a very local idea of gods, and in his view—at least at the beginning of the story—the God of Israel was small indeed.  By the end of the story, he admits that the God of Israel—a weak and insignificant country—was supreme: as he said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”

Speaking of Naaman, I mentioned in the scripture introduction how the Hebrew words used to describe Naaman’s skin imply that, although he has been healed, he is no longer the big and powerful guy he thought he was, but rather is small and insignificant like the Israelite slave girl.  Note that Elisha never treats Naaman with the deference that Naaman expects.  When Naaman arrives with all his chariots and horses, and stands at the entrance to Elisha’s house, Elisha does not even come out.  Instead, he sent his servant—probably Gehazi—to meet the important general and give him his instructions.   Naaman became angry, not only because of the down-to-earth prescription for a cure, but also because of Elisha’s snub:  “I thought that for me he would surely come out!”  Moreover, the great Naaman would never have been healed unless he had been helped, not only by the Israelite slave girl, but also by his own Aramean servants.  They are the ones who prevail upon him to perform the small washing, just as he would have done some great deed to obtain his cure.  Again—“small and “great”—this whole story is riddled with these contrasting ideas.[2]

Flannery O’Connor, in her short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” writes of an older southern woman who was very proud of her family’s heritage, although most of the family money was now gone.  Even so, she had recently been to the small town’s department store and had splurged on a green and purple hat.  The woman described the purchase to her adult son Julian: “This hat looked better on me than any of the others, though when she brought it out I said, ‘Take that thing back.  I wouldn’t have it on my head,’ and she said, “Now wait till you see it on,’ and when she put it on me, I said, ‘We-ull,’ and she said, “If you ask me, that hat does something for you and you do something for the hat, and besides,’ she said, ‘with that hat, you won’t meet yourself coming and going.’”  After debating a few more times with herself whether she should take the hat back and use the refund to pay the gas bill, she decided to keep the hat and wear it on the bus to her exercising class at the Y. 

She never went out without hat and gloves.  However, the buses had just been integrated, and she was not comfortable riding alone, so she pressed her son Julian to go with her.  As people got on and off the bus, she maintained a constant stream of conversation about how important it was to maintain an air of gentility, despite the general decline in standards.  The bus became more and more crowded, and finally a large African-American woman got on the bus.  The story continues and takes a tragic turn, but before it does there is a delicious moment when O’Connor reveals to the reader that the African-American woman wears a green and purple hat—the exact hat sported by Julian’s mother—the hat in which “you won’t see yourself coming and going.” 

The book of Proverbs tells us that “[p]ride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”[3]  God has a way of letting us know when we get too big for our britches.  It’s so easy to see it in other people:  which one of us has not deplored the Wall Street executives who don’t seem to understand that receiving millions of dollars in bonuses is inappropriate when the company has gone bankrupt and the bonus money comes from taxpayers?  It is outrageous.  Human beings have a knack for thinking we are big when we are small.  If we read the entire book of Second Kings, we learn that the northern kingdom of Israel was feeling pretty uppity, too.  They failed to pay attention to the warnings of the prophets, they did not honor God, and they were conquered by the Assyrians.  As Jesus said, “the first shall be last.” [4]  The great will become small, and the self-important will lose their clout.  All of us will have our times when we see our prized hat on someone else’s head.

  But Jesus also said that the “last shall be first.”[5]  Time and again throughout the biblical narrative, God’s purposes are advanced through those who lack worldly power, authority, prestige, and wealth.  Naaman was healed because a lowly Israelite servant girl passed along a crucial piece of information and because his own Aramean servants would not give up on him.  King David was the youngest of Jesse’s sons.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, was completely insignificant according to the standards of her day.  God does not always come in the rush of a mighty wind; sometimes we hear God’s voice in the still, small voice of silence.[6]  This should give us hope; for there are times when we do not feel particularly powerful, when people don’t seem to be paying any attention to us, and when we wonder whether we have the resources we will need to accomplish the tasks we have set for ourselves.  As Paul wrote, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” [7]

All of worship is a matter of keeping the right perspective on who we are and on who God is.  If we are proud, we can expect to be humbled.  If we are humble in spirit, God can lift us up, heal us, and accomplish great things through us.  Take it from a stubborn foreigner with the skin of a young boy: “[T]here is no God in all the earth, except [you, O Lord].”