What Do They Want?

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

Preached at St. John’s Lancaster, 12 February, 2012

II Kings 5:1-19

Just what do they want from us? It is a fair question. Some would say that I must put aside the position held by our holy Mother the Church through the ages that no man comes to the Father save through Jesus Christ. They would say that to hold Christianity as uniquely true while saying that other religions when believed sincerely will not lead to God is a hateful and narrow minded doctrine. Others would say that whatever my own beliefs might be, I must be willing to put them aside for a higher good. That is essentially what the government has been telling our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters over the last two or three weeks. Still others would say that if I say that only the baptized should be permitted to receive Holy Communion, I am excluding people from the kingdom of God and proving myself to be mean spirited and into controlling others. Others would say that if I refuse to redefine that understanding of marriage which has been held by Christians and Jews- and Muslims and Zoroastrians and Hindus and even Pagans throughout human history- that I am judgmental and arcane, and even hateful. There are those in our own denomination who would ask those questions or make those statements. And yet as your priest, as a priest of Jesus Christ, I must answer with Article XX of the Articles of Religion that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it may be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and keeper of Holy Writ, yet,… it ought not to decree any thing against the same.” And with St Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians I would say “stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught.” (II Thessalonians 2:15)

Today’s first lesson from Second Kings Five is most instructive regarding what others may want from us and what God wants from us. Naaman was a very successful Syrian general who was highly favored by his master, who like Naaman was a pagan, or one who worshipped the old nature gods. While the Scriptures are not explicit with details, some Jewish and early Christian scholars believed that God had employed Naaman’s military prowess to destroy the power of Ahab and Jezebel as a punishment for their ravages against the prophets of God. But while Naaman was blessed, he had a major problem. He had leprosy, that dreaded skin disease which in all of its forms rendered the sufferer unclean and eventually led to their rejection by human society in that era. His wife had a young Israelite slave girl who said to her mistress, “there is a prophet in my homeland who could heal your husband.” Now in those days, it was common for people, especially rich people to travel to foreign places to seek medical treatment. We have documents which show the precise nature of such travel and the diplomatic protocols which accompanied such trips. But when the King of Israel received the letter from the King of Syria paving the way for the trip, he was terrified because he thought the Syrians were just looking for some excuse to invade their Israelitish neighbors. When Elisha heard about the king’s dilemma, he sent a message to the king and said, “Let him come to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” Naaman arrived in all of the glory attendant upon his office, and came with faith that this Israelite prophet would pray for him or do some thing which would bring about his healing. He was furious when Elisha refused to receive him, and merely told him to go and wash seven times in the River Jordan. The General exploded! He was not accustomed to being treated in such a fashion. He named the rivers of his own homeland, all larger and clearer and more beautiful than the Jordan, and the Bible tells us that “He went away in rage.” But his staffers spoke to him and said, “My Lord, if the prophet had demanded of you some great quest, you would have complied, so why not do this simple thing?” And he did. “and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”

Most modern scholars see this passage of Scripture as part of a larger group of stories having to do with the power of God, and so it is, but the Fathers of the Early Church saw it as much more. Ephraim the Syrian, writing in the mid-fourth century, notes that Naaman’s pride filled him with a spirit of rebellion, which is a sin against God and the leprosy of the soul. Indeed, Naaman, like all of us needed to be healed and delivered from that disease by Christ’s power, and therefore he is sent to Jordan, which is a prophetic pre-figuring of the coming baptism into Jesus Christ which is to bring all nations to purification “through the bath of regeneration, whose beginning was in the river Jordan, the mother and originator of baptism." Naaman offered the prophet rich gifts, because in his pride, he could not imagine that deliverance was the free gift of a loving God. (ACCS V 167-68) Origin, writing in the early third century in Alexandria, points out that a man like Naaman does not, could not understand the great mystery of the Jordan, because true healing comes from the Lord Jesus alone, and Naaman persisted in the error of his pride. (Commentary on John in ACCS V 168) Bishop Caesarius of Arles, writing in the early sixth century, points out that Naaman is a representative of all of us gentiles, who presume “on our own free will and …merits; but without the grace of Christ” we cannot possess health. It is as we submit to the way of Christ in humility and are baptized that we listen to the advice of Elisha and are “freed from the leprosy of the original and actual sins… Gentiles, although old by reason of their former sins and covered with the many spots of iniquity as with leprosy, are renewed by the grace of baptism in such a way that no leprosy of either original or actual sin remains in them. Thus, following the example of Naaman, they are renewed like little children by salutary baptism, although they have always been bent down under the weight of sins.” (Sermon 129:4-5 in ACCS V 168-69)

And so you see, according to our holy Mother the Church, Naaman, and all of us have received the grace of God because some prophet of God stood firm against our demands that the Gospel message be changed to become more palatable to us who wandered about in our own pride and sin. But because there was a man, or we might say a people, who was faithful to the revealed Word of God, the leprosy of sin was done away and healing came to the nations. Whatever people may want us to say or do, our hearts and our minds, our beliefs and our actions and our words must be carefully conformed to the Word of God, which is the authentic eyewitness account of the acts of God in this world. It is there that we find the record of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who is our salvation. My brothers and sisters, in this age there are many who would have us to change, or at least substantially modify, this Good News which has been entrusted to us. This we must never do. Might we, like those who have gone before proclaim the Faith we have received with love and respect for all people, knowing that true healing, real deliverance, and genuine salvation are found only in the Name of Jesus. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.