Like
many of us here today, I’m a person of relative privilege, a person used to
nurturing the illusion of control over my life. I’m used to having my aches and
pains treated and cured by top-notch doctors; I’m used to managing capably any
bumps on my journey. I’m used to having things mostly turn out fine in the end.
That is, until they don’t. At some point in our lives, all of us find ourselves
stymied by life, whether it’s from chronic illness, or a broken relationship,
or a natural disaster, or drastic changes in our country or our church.
Look
at General Naaman: he’s a person of wealth, power, success, importance. He’s
used to directing troops, telling others what to do. But now he’s sick, likely
with the disease of leprosy, a death-sentence in his day. Suddenly, he has the
dreaded disease that turns kings into outcasts; the disease that turns beloved
family members into shunned figures on the margins of society, their very flesh
rotting on their bones. Naaman is used to top-notch treatment from the best
healers that money can buy. He’s used to managing his cure. But this time, he
appears to freeze in panic, unable to take any action.
Instead,
it’s his wife’s Hebrew slave girl who puts things in motion for Naaman. Did you
hear that? The one who offers help is a slave, a foreigner, and a young woman
at that! And where is he told to go for healing? To the backwater country that
he’s recently defeated in battle. Then, despite Naaman’s chariot-load of
riches, the King of Israel is afraid to receive him. Instead, Naaman gets
shuttled off to see some unknown prophet, and the prophet won’t even bother to
come out and meet with him. The prophet Elisha sends out one of his servants,
who tells the great general to go wash in the muddy waters of a second-class
river. Oh, how I can feel Naaman’s desperate indignation! It’s like expecting
help from a renowned specialist, yet only being seen by a medical student, who
tells you to take a few Tylenol and rest for a week!
Of
course, the lesson here for all who seek healing is that God doesn’t need our
wealth, our power, or our knowledge in order to make us whole. Instead, God tends
to work through slave girls, obscure prophets, and muddy little rivers. God works
through poor, unwed Mary, shepherds, and babies born in stables. God works
through ordinary bread, wine, and a body broken on a Cross. Like Naaman, we’re
expected to grab the hands of the people God sends us, no matter who they are.
We need only to lower the barriers that we hide behind and allow ourselves to
feel vulnerable, to listen, to let love do its work. And it’s the lesson that
Jesus wants to teach us in today’s Gospel reading, as well.
Jesus,
too, strips his followers bare of all illusions of control as he sends them out
on their mission of healing. I love how preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber paraphrases
Jesus’ command: “OK, [she writes.] The
first thing you need to know is that we are under staffed. Second, there’s a
high wolf danger so watch out for that. Third you can’t take any money or
change of clothes or bag or even sandals. Forth, stay with whoever will share
the peace with you and don’t try and trade up and if there are sick people
around take care of them and fifth, the food might stink but eat it anyway.”[1] Jesus’s followers aren’t
to demand or expect success. If they accomplish amazing things, they’re not to
take the credit. There’s no promise of glory, no promise of nice church
buildings, or financial pledges, or pews full of families with young children.
There’s merely the command to show up and to heal the sick and broken in Jesus’
name.
I
can still remember having disdainful thoughts on my first day of clinical
pastoral education in seminary. The hospital chaplain was lecturing us newbies
on the importance of simply showing up in a crisis. We didn’t need the answers,
he said. We just needed to be present. “What?!” I thought, “How dumb. Just
stand there with no explanations while people are suffering?! What good does
that do? That’s way too simple. Who wants to see a strange pastor-type they
don’t even know lurking around in times of grief?” As I found out, that’s
exactly what people want. Loving presence. Standing with. Vulnerability. Showing
compassion, like a young slave in a foreign land helping the general who led
the assault that likely led to her capture.
Between
the Covid pandemic, the Marshall Fire in my town, traumatic events around the
country, and my husband’s illness, the shield of my beloved privilege feels
like it’s slipping. My certainty that everything will work out has been deeply
shaken. In these recent turbulent weeks, I feel as if I need to do something
as an American, and certainly as a priest. I want us to be healed of our
collective leprosy. I want to fix things for those who are suffering. But
everything that I can come up with sounds too weak and common, like trying to
cure a deadly disease by bathing in a foreign stream, like holding the hands of
dying patients in the hospital.
Today’s
readings reassure me that no act of love is too inconsequential. Jesus is asking
us to show up, vulnerable and open, like Naaman, like sheep among wolves. Throughout
the Hebrew scriptures, “wolves” are symbols. They don’t just represent violence
and danger. They are metaphors for corrupt and greedy religious and political
leaders who devour the poor and marginalized. Jesus-followers are to enter
their presence unprotected, vulnerable, dependent only upon God and the
hospitality of Christian community. Indeed, the very Kingdom of God, that
Kingdom that Jesus says has come near, it’s an image for how the brokenness of
this world could be healed, if each of us would turn back to living for the God
who is love.[2]
Joining God in bringing about this restoration of creation through Love is our
very mission as Christians.
So
what do we do when our lives or our world seem to be going haywire? We sit and
eat with those in need of good news, live among them, stay with them, listen to
them, live regular lives together, don’t waste time in places we aren’t wanted,
and let God’s healing happen. It’s not very flashy. But such is the Kingdom of
God. May we find, like Naaman, true healing there, in spite of ourselves.
[1]
Nadia Bolz Weber, “Sermon on Naaman the Leper and How the Common Can Heal Us.”
In Sarcastic Lutheran. Patheos, July 7, 2016. Found at
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2016/07/sermon-on-naaman-the-leper-and-how-the-common-can-heal-us/
[2]
Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt,
The Love that is God: An Invitation to Christian Faith (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2020), 30.
No comments:
Post a Comment