2 Kings 5 July 3, 2016

Today's homily will focus on a story written during the Exile, when Jewish Exiles were living smack dab in the middle of a faith crisis needing urgent answers. They lamented, "How do we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Our way of asking this might be, "How do I understand my faith when my beliefs and hopes have been undermined by experience?"

Today's homily is called "The Prophetic Protocol," a strange title! Protocol is about the conventions needed to get things done. It's the how-to of life, whether it relates to our personal lives, our health, finances, worship, even our computers. Protocol requires a problem, a procedure, and a fix. It's a way of getting our feet out of the fire, a proven strategy. Our way of getting things done will differ, depending on the assumptions we make about the resources we have, and how we use them.

In today's passage, Naaman's puzzle has many parts:

  • a medical ailment — skin disease 
  • a diplomatic conundrum — international power arrangements between Aram and Israel 
  • a social perception — public image and community acceptance a theological challenge — royal or prophetic theology.

At every turn, and with almost every character, false assumptions are made that threaten to scuttle Naaman's healing.

In our lives the puzzle, our leprosy, takes various forms:

  • medically — gimp legs, chronic fatigue, headaches, kidney stones and strange lumps and bumps on our skin 
  • politically — how to sponsor or support refugees, how to open a cafe or bookstore, how to effect social justice in our neighbourhood 
  • public image — how to be authentic, how to clarify misperceptions of ourselves, how not to look like religious wing-nuts 
  • theologically — how to remain genuine disciples, while living in a very post-modern world; how to apply an ancient text without being literalistic or dismissive of its central message; in short, how to be loyal to Jesus and not Empire.

All of these are protocol questions.

The reason I chose the problem of protocol as a theme is because it would be too easy to see the Naaman narrative as a miracle tale only, fit for a flannel- graph children's story, not applicable either to personal or political real world problems, ancient or modern. Secondly, by listening to the prophet's way of doing things, we apply a fit lens that addresses our deepest alienation from ourselves, others and God.

The Paradox of Naaman

Naaman, whose name ironically means fair or pleasant, is presented as a paradoxical man. Honoured on the one hand as a military strategist and a brave warrior; on the other hand, Naaman has a repulsive skin disease. His contemporaries might have wondered, "Do I embrace this man, or stay as far away as possible?" Had Naaman lived in Israel he would be socially rejected, in Syria he likely would be tolerated but suspected that something was profoundly wrong with him. He looked like death warmed over.

Like Naaman, we are walking, talking paradoxes too. We know how hard it is to live in tension with our uncompleted selves. I have certainly experienced this, especially in a visual way. Being obese all my life has come between my authentic self, my body-image and others' perceptions. Even my grandmother once told me, "How do you expect anyone to listen to you when you speak? You are so fat!" I definitely know how Naaman must have felt.

Anyone in Naaman's household could see this and the torment this brought to the very proud man covered with a disfiguring psoriasis that many may have linked to leprosy. Naaman felt himself an outside-insider, honoured and disfigured at the same time. He'd have yearned that the breach between his character and his appearance would be resolved.

Wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be great if people saw your motives, intentions and highest hopes without your intervening personality quirks or appearance getting in between? From the spiritual perspective, wouldn't it be wonderful to be viewed from God's grace and the Spirit's progressive work within us? It is painful when this view is obscured.

Enter the Prophet

The Israelite slave girl, who had every right to hate Naaman, felt compassion for his plight. She had been dragged from her home by this man, yet she graciously offered Naaman's wife a word of medical advice and recommended a practitioner, Elisha - known as a healer in Samaria. You might even say that she broke protocol in prescribing healing for an enemy of her people. It may be best to say that she foretold a higher law, aligned with the prophet and the gracious God of Israel.

Like the slave girl, we are invited to take the prophetic perspective as well. Jesus has called us to love our enemies, pray for them and do all we can to support them. You and I are invited to turn away from the royal protocol, away from the revenge-tinged approach of our culture. We may think that it is hypocritical to express kindness and love to those who oppose us, but it isn't, in fact, it is the mark of the cruciform life Christ lived. The only way we can accomplish this feat of loving enemies is to have God cleanse us of egocentrism and ethnocentrism, classism, jobism or any other 'ism' that separates us from others.

The Royal Protocol

At this point, an alternate way of doing things threatened to interrupt the flow of events toward Naaman's healing. The servant told the wife, the wife told General Naaman, who in turn told the King. Here's where a wrench is thrown into the works. The King of Aram, Ben-Hadad, assumed sovereignty over Israel and its King. Instead of going directly to the prophet in Samaria, he followed international protocol and appealed to Israel's King Jehoahaz.

His assumption was that the powerful and efficient person must be the King rather than the Prophet. The ruler of Aram opted for royal protocol instead of prophetic protocol, therefore, causing an almost comedic misunderstanding, as well as an unintended admission of powerlessness on the part of Israel's king.

When the king of Israel read the letter, he ripped his clothes. He said, "What? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this King writes me, asking me to cure someone of his skin disease! You must realize that he wants to start a fight with me." (2 Kings 5:7 CEB)

The paranoia of politics prevailed as Israel's minor king feared that the superior Syrian king was covertly trying to draw him into a conflict with a pretense to attack. Prone to hysterics, the monarch rips his clothes in anguish. Elisha tells the King, "Let the man come to me. Then he'll know that there's a prophet in Israel." (2 Kings 5:8 CEB). The prophet bypassed the royal presumption of power.

The Choice: Royal or Prophetic Protocol?

Where do you go to solve your problems? Usually, we have some pretty firm ideas about how to proceed. Painting your home? Find a good contractor. Potholes in the road? Phone 311. Wart removal? Go to a pharmacist or a doctor. Criminal behaviour in your area? Go to the police. 2 Kings 5 teaches us that regular channels often are ineffective, especially for the deepest, most intransigent problems.

Like King Ben-Hadad, we may not even consider the out-of-the-box solution of going to an underling of Israel's monarch in Samaria, an odd prophet. We might be required, from the Spirit perspective, to go to an older wise man or woman, an in touch street person, or someone who is far from being a specialist.

Back on track, Naaman proceeds to Elisha's cottage in the hill country. He comes with fanfare, loudly declaring his importance. He comes, as well, with a set of expectations that Elisha would consider Naaman, the master who could demand a healing, for a lavish per diem. Converted to today's buying power, it is estimated that the honorarium would be in the vicinity of three- quarters of a billion dollars.

But wealth and status were of no concern to the prophet. He sent a common servant out to tell Naaman to go and take a dip in the muddy Jordan seven times, for cleansing. At least that is what the outraged Naaman heard. Naaman was positive that he could get cleaner in the mountain-fed rivers of Aram, his own country.

Like Naaman, even when we get oriented and arrive at the designated spiritual source, we often carry with us our protocol bias. We impose our ideal on the way we are to be healed. We like to see ourselves in control, "Masters of our therapy!" We expect our healing to proceed in a certain way. We should be treated as a customer, or at least as a client. At the minimum, we want to be paying customers. We want the specialist with a degree on the wall, a certifying professional accreditation, and a long line of patient recommendations. We believe we need all that in order to listen to the healer's advice. Where is the man or woman with the stethoscope of the doctor, or the dog collar of the pastor?

Naaman's healing was nearly destroyed by his rage. Fortunately, he was brought to rights by his own servants, who like the Israelite slave girl were attuned to the prophet's method. They assured Naaman that he had little to lose. The general's slaves told him that the Prophet was not merely predicting he'd be ritually cleansed, but he would be healed.

His egocentrism and ethnocentrism nearly got the best of him when he refused to simply obey Elisha. He demanded a personal audience with the prophet whom he expected to perform a recognized ritual healing, holding his hands high and with appropriate gestures of the diseased area of Naaman's body. He assumed that the power to heal would come from a powerful specialist, like a shaman, not merely the word of a prophet, with a disembodied message from God.

Naaman needed friends, in his case loyal servants, to discourage him from his arrogance. It's not unlike the paralytic in the gospels; he needed servant-friends to rip the roof off of his own hopelessness and present him to a country healer called Jesus.

You and I also need friends committed to saving us from our arrogance, to call us from our pridefulness to humility. Our self-selected protocol cannot save us, nor can our intellect, our status or our connections.

Healed in the Muddy River

The military man, humbled and feeling like a fool, submitted and bowed to enter the water of Jordan. Seven dips, each time wondering, hoping and partially doubting that he'd be healed. On the last dip, emerging from the water, he detected a soft sensation on his usually scaly skin; the prophet was right! Naaman recognized that Elisha was not his servant but the source of his healing. Naturally, he assumed that he owed him a tremendous debt, and standing before Elisha with cleansed and outstretched arms he offered him the treasure.

Later in the chapter, Elisha met Naaman at the door. No impurity or arrogant assumption of status stood between them. Naaman, however, was in for another surprise. Elisha wouldn't receive the gift offering. God had healed Naaman, and Elisha couldn't and wouldn't take credit for the miracle. The perspective of the prophet took hold of Naaman both because of the miracle and Elisha's witness to the power of God alone. Naaman realized he was there to receive and not to give anything; he was humbled once again.

Shalom

So humbled in fact, and so embraced by grace that he confessed the God of Israel as the only God. Realizing this, he leaned into the loving long-suffering of God with an additional request. He knew he would have to return to his home and participate in duties that required compromise, such as escorting Ben-Hadad to the temple of the storm god Rimmon. Could God forgive this? The hoary prophet's protocol surprised Naaman, and some of his modern readers as well, with the simple phrase, "Shalom."

Part of the prophetic protocol is to acknowledge the lowly, the ordinary and sometimes unexpected sources of spiritual power. We couldn't find anything more essential than water could we? As Jesus-followers coming to be cured of our leprosies, we like Naaman have to submit to a dunking in water as well. It was humbling to lean back, trusting the process not only for the baptizer lifting us from the water, but more significantly believing that the act itself will initiate us into a recreated life. Peter Liethart has stated this precisely:

"How can water do such wonders? Because baptism is not simple water, but water and word, water and promise. God does wonders, but he promises to do wonders through water. To say that water can cleanse leprosy, wash away sins, or renew life is an insult to intelligence. Water is too simple, not to mention too physical and tangible. But that is exactly the point. Baptism is an insult to the wisdom of the world: through the foolishness of water God has chosen to save those who believe."

All who have come through the water are offered the same gracious word. Like Israel in the Exodus, like Naaman in the muddy Jordan, like any and all who humbly submit to the prophet's promise, all will receive the same free, generous grace and the same compassionate word — "Shalom."