(Sermon transcript - February 16, 2003)

II Kings 5:1-14

        Dear People of God, when we face trials and tribulations in life, it seems like we would like God to behave in more, well, "dramatic" kinds of ways. We would like Him to show up personally, if at all possible! Wave His hands with all the flair and flourish of David Copperfield, and take care of every last ailment that comes our way or trauma that afflicts our lives.

        We would sometimes arrogantly think that we’ve made some kind "deal" with God. That since we are His people, since we sometimes think we have "chosen" to be His people, that He is then somehow obligated to show up and take care of every affliction that might come our way.

        First of all, of course, we don’t choose to believe Him, because we don’t want to! Secondly, we are given the gift of faith because He graciously calls us to it and it isn’t at all our doing. And thirdly, He is not obligated to show up and to take care of every trial or trouble or trauma that occurs in our lives. But He has promised that He will use every trial, trouble, and trauma to strengthen our faith.

        Sometimes He even uses those things to touch the lives of unbelievers and call them by His grace to faith. Desperation, it seems, breeds dependence. And when everything else is yanked away from beneath us, all we can have left sometimes, is to depend on God, and He uses it for that great, gracious purpose.

        A couple of things. In this old testament reading, we find a man. An unbeliever who does not know God, but rather someone who was lost in idolatry and idol worship. And we find him to be a great and mighty soldier and a general in the army of King Aram. But he has a problem, and it’s a serious problem. He has a spot of skin, which was clearly identified as leprosy. This was a disease that was grotesquely disfiguring and thought to be terribly contagious, and so isolated people from the rest of society. And he couldn’t handle it.

        As great and as powerful as he was, this little spot of leprosy had him whipped.

        Kind of like us, if you will. When life is sailing along fine and dandy we are content and satisfied, oftentimes, not thinking that we need God, but rather, since we are self-sufficient, we can handle things pretty much on our own. But then comes something in our lives that touches us and hurts, and we suddenly realize that we can’t control everything, can we?

        We are surprised by it. But I can assure you that God is not surprised by it at all.

        I am certain that Naaman was surprised that he had leprosy. He was like you and I. When a disease is diagnosed and said to be our own, we think, "well, that’s something that happens to other people, isn’t it? It should be something that I don’t get!" Surely there are other, lesser folks, he might have thought, being a great general, that should be sick and not him!

        But not so. Disease, it seems, is an equal opportunity destroyer. And so there we are, and there he is.

        We all ask, "Why me?" We all ask, "Why my loved one?" We all ask, "Why my friend?" And so we know, that such questions are not answerable. But we need to remember that, in fact, God in His grace uses all things for the good of those who love Him.

        But of course, Naaman did not understand that yet.

        And we find that indeed, desperation is the mother of dependence. And having been told through the agency of a captive Israelite girl that there was a great prophet down in Samaria by the name of Elisha that could take care of this disease. Well, I guess if traditional medicine doesn’t work, we’ll go for anything that might work, so he went to his king, Aram, and told him about this prophet.

        And so, armed with (get a load of this!) 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold with which to purchase the healing that was offered, off to Samaria he goes. And of course, first he goes to the king, for the king is in charge. And bearing a letter of introduction from his own king to the king of Israel, (and those guys are always at each others heels, I might add), he shows up in King Joram’s court, and presents this letter. And the king is not happy about this. For he is told that he is come to be healed of leprosy. And King Joram immediately assumes that this is his problem. How very human!

        Everything that comes our way, we labor under the misconception that we have to handle it ourselves. And King Joram is under the same kind of illusion. And there comes with it a threat. For this is an enemy state. And it seems that, if he does not heal him, there might be a war, because it would seem as if King Joram had let King Aram down.

        Well, word of this reached the prophet Elisha. And Elisha delivers to King Joram a bit of a scolding. He says, "Did you not consider that I am the prophet of God? If you had sent him to me, I would have taken care of this, so send him over!"

        And so, loaded with his 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, the value of which I don’t know how to calculate. (Maybe you can. I think silver’s about 40 bucks an ounce these days, and I don’t what gold is, 300 bucks anyway, maybe more, an ounce ) And off he goes, and he shows up at Elisha’s house.

        And here is how God works. It conflicts with the expectations of man. For Elisha, the prophet of God, does not even come out to greet the general, not so much as to say hello. He sends a messenger out, and says "Here’s your instructions. Go dip yourself in the Jordan river seven times and your disease will be cured!"

        And Naaman is furious. That’s not how a great prophet of God should conduct himself. He should come out, and summon God down in all His glory and power, and wave his hands over the spot and **whammo** it would be fabulously cured!

        Kind of sounds like us, doesn’t it?

        How many times have we run up against something in life that seems as though we just cannot do anything about it and that it is completely out of our control? And we have it all figured out how God should address this problem, and if He doesn’t do it, He’s in trouble! God, it seems, has to meet our expectations, just as Naaman thought He should meet his expectations.

        Because when things are said, when things happen in life, when financial disaster comes crawling in the door and the portfolio, that which we depended on for our support and comfort in our old age, is suddenly worth a third of what it used to be worth, well, now what?

        When a doctor offers a diagnosis of cancer, what are you going to do about that? When a loved one or a friend passes away, how are you going to control that contingency?

        But we have it all figured out. We know exactly how God should deal with this, and we tell Him so. Which is actually what Naaman was doing here too. Not only that, but Naaman was from someplace else. And he has a little problem with his ethnocentristic qualities. He thinks the place that he comes from is the best place on earth. (People from Colorado don’t have that problem, do they?) "I’m supposed to dip myself in the Jordan River seven times? We have better rivers back home!"

        That’s like going to Kansas, and saying "Go dip yourself in the Arkansas River, when in fact, you can go back to Colorado and dip yourself in a river that is pure and clean and beautiful! I don’t know if any of you have seen pictures of the Jordan River, but it’s not that impressive. It’s sort of like a mobile mudstream that kind of moves downhill. Not that great!

        And so, in a rage, (please notice that word, in a rage), Naaman the mighty general who wants to be in charge and in control of everything says, "The heck with you, I’m going home"

        Well, fortunately, cooler heads prevail in his camp, and his servants come to him and say, "You know what, Naaman, O General, you’ve got nothing to lose here but your leprosy. Why not do it? What’s the problem? If it doesn’t work, then you can go home!" And grumbling and moaning, no doubt, all the way to the Jordan River, off he goes.

        Don’t you love the way God works?

        Notice what He didn’t say. The prophet Elisha said, "You must dip yourself in the river seven times." He didn’t say, "Just go and dip yourself in the Jordan River and you’ll be cured." Seven times! That’s a lot of dipping.

        And what’s more, I have a hunch, (though I can’t prove it from the text), that this is how God worked, because this is how God always works. He requires that we trust Him. That’s called faith. And I’ll bet you anything that for the first six times that he dipped himself, nothing happened. And you can almost hear him, as he’s going into the water, grumbling and moaning, and coming back up out of the water and looking at his spot and saying "This is stupid, it’s still here, it’s not going to work!" And then, finally, probably at the coaxing of his servants, he goes in for the seventh time. And not only is his leprosy cured, but his skin, the scriptures say, is like that of a young boy. All of it, not just the spot!

        God asks us to have faith. He asks us to trust Him, even when things don’t seem to be working out very well. And I don’t know how many times He’s asked you to dip yourself into whatever water is the trial you’ve come up against, but I’m sure it’s been considerable. No one’s life is easy. And no one’s life is without trial and tribulation, and no one’s life is without loss. And no one’s life is completely in control.

        And there ends the Old Testament reading. I don’t know who picks these out, but they messed up this time. They should not have stopped there, and I’m not going to.

        Off he goes back with all of his entourage, now to offer payment for the very healing that he was now totally amazed had occurred. And so he shows up with that 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, and offers it as a gift to the prophet. And there comes to you the words I read to you at the beginning of this message. The prophet answered, "As surely as the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing." And even though Naaman urged him, (and we might add parenthetically, "and urged him and urged him",) (Elisha) refused.

        We have been cleansed from a disease much worse than leprosy. That disease of course, is called sin. It is a greater, more corrupt, more disfiguring disease than leprosy could ever be, because not only does it bring about temporal death, it brings about eternal death. And God has stepped into our life, and through the most common of things, at least from the viewpoint of the world, He has washed us clean of this disease, and cured our terminal illness.

        Indeed, consider how God has done it! Through the life of a man, who was not engaged in royalty or government, but a simple carpenter, a carpenter’s son. And not through seemingly great and miraculous incantations and hand-wavings, but, as we heard the gospel lesson, when the leper comes to Him, He says, "Be cleansed!" Simple words. And he was.

        He came to us through simple water. Through the fount of the sacrament of Holy Baptism. And through that simple water connected to the power of God’s word, sins are washed away! And faith is given, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is our own!

        Just water? Out of the tap in the next room? Or in whatever church you were baptized in, out of the tap?

        Consider that when our Lord offered Himself in sacrifice for our sin, it was not accomplished with some great and miraculous death that could have been spectacular, but through the common cross of a Roman executioner. No glory in that, I assure you. It was awful, plain and simple. And yet that cross stands today as the very symbol of our faith.

        The very mark of the one who was crucified, and who made full and complete payment for our sin, for we, like Naaman, cannot offer anything in return for the grace of God. And the healing that we need.

        Indeed, it was through the simplicity of a borrowed friend’s tomb, that we find our victory over death and sin, and the grave. God can handle anything that life throws at us. But let’s not get out the cookbook and tell Him what the recipe is. Or how He is supposed to deal with it. But rather, let His grace be effective in our lives, the same way it was in the life of Naaman.

        Even after we realize how amazingly clean God has made us, let us remember, that we can’t and will not even attempt to make payment for sin, and for the cleansing we’ve received, because even to consider the offering of it would be an insult to the cross of Jesus Christ and the payment that was made, and the cleansing that He provides.

        In a moment or two, we’ll gather at the altar of the Lord. We will receive simple wine, common bread. And there we will taste and touch and be occupied by Christ Himself. To assure us that our sins are indeed forgiven. They are washed away by that very body and blood.

        And I would just ask, how simple is that?

        And so, dear friends, come and see the God who has made us immaculately clean. In Jesus’s name, Amen.