The Healing of Naaman
12th February 2006, Parish Communion
2 Kings 5, 1 - 14
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A long journey to health and faith – that could be the headline above the story we have just heard from the 2nd book of Kings. Naaman, a commander of the king of Aram, the region north of Israel, is successful; he is in favour with his king. He is known as a hero, a good fighter, strong and famous. But there is a shadow hanging over his life that makes it impossible for him to enjoy his fame and success. Naaman suffers from leprosy, a disease that makes him unclean and isolates him. He is desperate for help and healing.
The people close to him know that, and especially one young girl feels pity for him, a captive from Israel, who works for Naamans wife and lives under one roof with his family. We don’t know her name, but she plays a key-role in the whole story. She remembers the Prophet Elisha back in Israel and how he healed people. She tells her mistress about him, she wants to help, although she is probably the last person Naaman expects help from. Why should she care? The Arameans didn’t show sympathy for her when they took her as a captive. But she is anything but calculating or bitter. She doesn’t see the enemy in Naaman, she neither sees the famous hero in him. What she sees is simply a vulnerable, suffering and desperate man.
Naamans journey begins when he starts to put his trust in what the young Israelite told his wife. He goes and talks to his king. And the king – a perfect model of a caring employer – allows him not only to go, but provides him with a letter of recommendation for the king of Israel. Naaman himself prepares for his trip. He has to cross a border – the border to a country that he doesn’t know very well, and – maybe worse – where people don’t know him. He has to leave behind his fame that gives him strength and his king, who protects him. He cannot enter into Israel as a victorious hero. He is a sick man, weak in his dependence. It is obvious that he, with the signs of his sickness on him, is begging for help, but he doesn’t’ want to appear as a beggar. And so he exerts all of his riches to protect his pride and to hide his weakness and neediness under a huge amount of money and presents. He takes with him silver and gold, fancy garments, his horses and his best chariots. He doesn’t ask for alms, he is a first class private patient, who is willing to pay every price for first class private treatment.
We know it didn’t work like that for Naaman. Instead of helping the stranger, the king of Israel tore his cloth. “Am I God, to give death or life?” he said. At first glance this reaction seems to show the modesty and his honest fear of God. But I doubt that that is really the king’s attitude. To me he seems rather to be driven by his fears and by his pride. To him Naaman is an enemy, an intruder, a spy maybe. And maybe the king sees Naamans weakness in all his prosperity and is aware of his own advantage. I see the king of Israel as a man who under the outer appearance of anger and outrage rejoices inwardly over the dependence and powerlessness of the stranger. It is the secret malicious pleasure over the fate of someone who has always been lucky and successful and whose luck suddenly breaks down.
The Prophet Elisha criticises the king for this hypocrisy. “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” Give him the chance to learn more; don’t send him away with empty hands.
For Naaman all this back and forth between hope and despair must be hell – a hell indeed, that probably many people with severe sicknesses experience every day. Israel, this strange country, for Naaman must have been like a badly organized hospital, where people are constantly misled.
With new hope he climbs onto his chariot and sets out to Elishas house. But again he is disappointed. Naaman has his own ideas how the healing by a prophet should proceed. But he doesn’t get the treatment he expects. Elisha doesn’t even come out of his house. He isn’t impressed by Naamans fancy chariot or the number of horses he brought with him. Elisha doesn’t even speak directly to Naaman, but sends a messenger, who tells him that he should wash in the Jordan seven times and that that would cure his leprosy. Now Naaman gets really angry. He had expected something special. Some magic words spoken over his sick skin by a special person. But instead he gets the advice to go bathing in a river. Something so simple and banal he could have done at home. It seems as if nobody really wants to help him. So he turns away from Elisha and is determined to leave the country. But again there are his servants who manage to persuade him to do the necessary step. “If the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was “Wash, and be clean.” Maybe it is that simple, maybe it doesn’t have to cost all your money, maybe you could just try it.
And Naaman tries is. I guess, that probably he was still doubting when he got into the water. Maybe he thought that he had already made such a fool of himself that swimming naked in the Jordan couldn’t make it much worse. But in fact that simple bath in the Jordan changed Naamans life. When he came out of the river his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy. He got healed and became a believer. His way to the Jordan was his way to God. He was able to confess that there is no other God than the God of Israel. At the end Naaman came to knowledge of god and to true self-knowledge at the same time. All his pride he could leave behind. His struggle for recognition and compensation for his weaknesses had come to an end.
What can we today learn from this story that took place in Israel about 2800 years ago? A lot I think, because it tells us something about how people deal with their hope, fear, weakness, power, sympathy, despair, anger, pride etc. on their way to God. I personally would like to stress three aspects:
1. God has a heart for strangers. It is not only Naaman who desperately wants to be healed, but also God, who is determined to heal Naaman. At the key points God lets there be people, servants, to help Naaman to find the right way. At the end God demands not much of him, not even a confession before he heals him.
2. We should try to be aware how we lead or mislead people on their way to faith. Pride can make a persons way to Gods grace difficult, not only the pride of the person who is on the way, but also the pride of those who think that they have already arrived. We should rather try to give each other hints and advice, than tear our clothes when we meet someone looking for God.
3. Our ways to Gods grace and healing are not always straight and direct – sometimes our way is rather a zigzag. Hope and despair, fear and anger can be experienced on this way. But we can be sure: In the end it is Gods will that we come up again out of the valleys of darkness. God wants to clean us with his grace, heal us with his love and restore us with his peace.
Amen.