A priest was sitting on a commuter train toward the end of a long, tiring day when a disheveled man
came and sat beside him. He smelled of booze, had smears of lipstick on his face, and had a half-
empty flask of bourbon peeking out of his torn coat pocket.
As the priest averted his gaze out the window the man opened up a newspaper and began to read.
After a few moments he turned to the priest and said, “Father, what causes arthritis?” And dripping
with disapproval the priest replied, “Arthritis? It’s caused by sinful living—drinking too much, hanging
around with cheap women, a total lack of self-respect and general filthiness.”
The man said, “Wow, that is a shocker” and resumed his reading. The priest thought about what he’
d said, and apologized: “I’m sorry, I’ve had a hard day and I came on a little strong. How long have
you had your arthritis?” The man replied, “I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the
Pope does.”
Being truthful in all situations isn’t a bad policy for Christians. Especially clergy. One area in which
this can be a little tricky has to do with what’s involved in following the Lord. That verb ‘following’
should give us the first hint of the problem. It seems that in the 21st century marketplace of
worldviews and religions we’ve become pretty good shoppers. We compare products, then using our
human logic we make decisions. “Want a religion that’s kind to other creatures but requires lifetimes
of spiritual evolution to reach God? Try this one.” Or, “How about one where you can pretty much do
whatever you want, yet it will give you colorful experiences. Go to Aisle 12. Bottom shelf.”
The problems with this consumer approach are at least twofold. First, we often don’t have an
accurate perception not only of the benefits, but also the costs of choosing a particular direction. In
the Christian faith Jesus tried to make this clear to us, stating that we’ll have trouble in this world if
we choose to follow him. We’ll have to follow him into some pretty hairy situations equipped only with
the cross on our back. The benefits still infinitely outweigh the costs, but there are costs
nonetheless.
And second, using human logic to make a spiritual decision with eternal consequences can be pretty
tricky because the scriptures tells us that our whole perspective, our whole decision-making process
is tainted by this thing called human sin. Our selfish desires can get in the way of the very thing that
can bring us what we truly need. Through the prophet God tells us that His ways are so much higher
than ours that we can scarcely even begin to understand them much of the time.
Furthermore, to really begin to understand the Christian faith you pretty much have to take the
plunge and begin living it first. St. Augustine once said, “Seek not to understand that you may
believe, but believe that you may understand.” We step out in faith, then, piece by piece the
puzzle begins taking shape and our faith is strengthened when we gradually realize that the Lord is
indeed there behind it all. This requires a good dose of humility, especially at the outset.
This leads us to today’s Old Testament reading from 2 Kings. We have a man named Naaman, who
seems to have been a VIP. He was an Aramean army commander who may well have attained a
rank equivalent to what we’d call a general. Aram was a kingdom in the region that is now called
Syria. Naaman wasn’t a follower, but a leader, and was held in high esteem by his king.
Now, some kinds of humility are offered voluntarily, and others are more or less forced upon us.
Naaman had the second kind, but had some trouble with the first. The scriptures tell us he had a
skin disease that probably was leprosy. This was a word that brought horror to people’s hearts as
recently as the 20th century. Now it’s called Hansen’s Disease, and medicine has discovered an
effective cure for it. But before this cure, people would literally waste away. They became insensitive
to tactile stimuli, then sores would appear and expand, and eventually their very flesh would
wear away until they were disfigured, and ultimately died. It was terrifying and quite contagious, so
people who had the disease were shunned from society. They usually lived in depressing,
impoverished colonies in places no one else chose to live.
Can you imagine how this affected a man like Naaman? Now, Naaman’s wife had a servant who’d
been captured in a raid on Israel. The servant had compassion on Naaman, and she said, “Wow, I
know this guy in Israel who’s a prophet, and he’d know what to do. Too bad Naaman can’t do a
consult with him.” So Naaman’s wife tells him about this, and he talks with the King of Aram, who then
sends a letter of reference to the King of Israel to arrange a visit.
The Israelite king’s response is almost comical. He smells a rat in a rodent-free zone. I mean, he
must be a nervous wreck. He suspects a setup by the Aramean king, so he tears his clothes and
says, “Oy vey! What am I, God?” He slumps down, slaps his head, and says, “I’m in deep doo-doo.”
But fortunately the prophet Elisha catches wind of all this. He says, “Your majesty, get a grip and
stitch up your robe. I’m happy to meet with this man so that he’ll know there’s a prophet in Israel.”
(You’ve figured out, I trust, that this isn’t a literal translation from the Hebrew.)
And this is where things start getting interesting. Naaman has his horses and chariots prepared and
he’s off to Israel. He arrives in front of Elisha’s house. So does Elisha dash out with arms wide ready
to embrace the great General and invite him in for some good Middle Eastern coffee before the
healing? No, he sends out a messenger to him.
Now, let’s look at this. Naaman, a great military leader who’s been brought low by leprosy, sent by
arrangement of his own king with the king of Israel, travels with his motorcade to Elisha’s house, and
is met by a mere messenger. It’s kind of like that pre-battle scene in Braveheart where William
Wallace goes out on the battlefield to ‘greet’ the English emissary with a series of inflaming taunts,
and afterward is told by one of the Scottish noblemen, “I’d say that’s rather less cordial than he’s
used to.”
As Naaman is standing there with his mouth open the messenger says, “Go, wash in the Jordan
seven times, and your flesh will be restored and you’ll be clean.” Naaman promptly loses it. He says,
“What?? For me this man should at least come out and wave his hand over my leprous sore and
cure it! Who does he think he’s dealing with? And wash in the Jordan? We’ve got much better rivers
in Syria! Does he think I have no pride?”
And of course pride is precisely the problem. It takes someone without the fabricated airs of rank to
bring him back to reason. His own servant comes up and says, “My Father, with all due respect, 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’?”
Paul once wrote: “…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is
weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that
are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
Are you hearing that? “…so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” Please know that this
isn’t because the Lord has an ego problem. It’s because there’s a natural created order, or should I
say, created and uncreated order. It isn’t until we understand this, understand that God’s wisdom
trumps our own wisdom in the backdrop of eternity, and most of all, understand that we can’t reap
the full benefits of God’s love until we accept the fact that God is God, and we are not. Until we get
this, we shoot ourselves in our respective feet with our own finite and flawed self-will.
Is it a little out of the ordinary for two humble servants to speak words that bring a great man to
humility and healing? Is it a bit odd that the agent of God’s healing doesn’t even show up on the
scene, but through a messenger tells a suffering man to dip seven times, not in the Abana or
Pharpar, but in the Jordan? I think that’s a fair thing to say. But in the process, a man who had
trouble bringing himself to choose humility finally does, and the writer of 1 Kings tells us the result:
“So Naaman went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of
the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”
How hard it is for us who are made in God’s image and bent by the Fall, to suspend our own
‘wisdom’ in order for the Lord to put things right. When we’re used to our own hands gripping the
steering wheel, how hard it is to give it over to someone who cheerfully leads us on the ‘scenic
route’, with our preferred destination nowhere in sight. ‘God, are you sure you know what you’re
doing?’ It really does feel a bit like ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride’.
For instance when we offer up a prayer we may have a pretty precise idea of what it is we’re looking
for. We may even try to make sure God ‘gets it’ by giving step-by-step instructions, you know, like
talking to someone who’s just a bit ‘thick’. And then when we don’t receive what we were asking for,
at least in the way we were asking for it, well, we might be tempted to conclude that God has let us
down again. “What good is prayer anyway?” we ask.
Well, the longer I live the more instances I can tell you of being relieved that God didn’t answer my
prayer as I originally wanted it answered. (Wasn’t there a country song a couple years ago that said
something like that?) Our life of following Jesus sometimes takes some pretty strange twists and
turns. (Do I hear an ‘amen’?) There’s plenty of the unexpected to go around. Stepping out and
trusting isn’t always an easy thing to do. But it is the avenue to blessing.
There’s a person who attended the Christian Healing Ministries training this past week that can
attest to this. She had hip pain so bad she could hardly walk. So she stepped out and asked several
others to lay hands on her and pray, and she was healed. The next day I watched her grin from ear
to ear as in a moment of spontaneous joy she danced to praise music with most of the others in the
class. They didn’t even make her take a dip in the Rio Grande.
Our Lord never promised that following him would be stress free. He never said it would be easy. But
he did say, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” To us, like to Naaman, frankly, he
sometimes seems like a crazy driver. But he always gets us to the destination he has for us. And we
can trust, perfectly and completely, that this destination is the very best one for us.
May we learn to receive this truth down to the deepest foundation of our hearts, and then learn to
enjoy the ride. Amen.
came and sat beside him. He smelled of booze, had smears of lipstick on his face, and had a half-
empty flask of bourbon peeking out of his torn coat pocket.
As the priest averted his gaze out the window the man opened up a newspaper and began to read.
After a few moments he turned to the priest and said, “Father, what causes arthritis?” And dripping
with disapproval the priest replied, “Arthritis? It’s caused by sinful living—drinking too much, hanging
around with cheap women, a total lack of self-respect and general filthiness.”
The man said, “Wow, that is a shocker” and resumed his reading. The priest thought about what he’
d said, and apologized: “I’m sorry, I’ve had a hard day and I came on a little strong. How long have
you had your arthritis?” The man replied, “I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the
Pope does.”
Being truthful in all situations isn’t a bad policy for Christians. Especially clergy. One area in which
this can be a little tricky has to do with what’s involved in following the Lord. That verb ‘following’
should give us the first hint of the problem. It seems that in the 21st century marketplace of
worldviews and religions we’ve become pretty good shoppers. We compare products, then using our
human logic we make decisions. “Want a religion that’s kind to other creatures but requires lifetimes
of spiritual evolution to reach God? Try this one.” Or, “How about one where you can pretty much do
whatever you want, yet it will give you colorful experiences. Go to Aisle 12. Bottom shelf.”
The problems with this consumer approach are at least twofold. First, we often don’t have an
accurate perception not only of the benefits, but also the costs of choosing a particular direction. In
the Christian faith Jesus tried to make this clear to us, stating that we’ll have trouble in this world if
we choose to follow him. We’ll have to follow him into some pretty hairy situations equipped only with
the cross on our back. The benefits still infinitely outweigh the costs, but there are costs
nonetheless.
And second, using human logic to make a spiritual decision with eternal consequences can be pretty
tricky because the scriptures tells us that our whole perspective, our whole decision-making process
is tainted by this thing called human sin. Our selfish desires can get in the way of the very thing that
can bring us what we truly need. Through the prophet God tells us that His ways are so much higher
than ours that we can scarcely even begin to understand them much of the time.
Furthermore, to really begin to understand the Christian faith you pretty much have to take the
plunge and begin living it first. St. Augustine once said, “Seek not to understand that you may
believe, but believe that you may understand.” We step out in faith, then, piece by piece the
puzzle begins taking shape and our faith is strengthened when we gradually realize that the Lord is
indeed there behind it all. This requires a good dose of humility, especially at the outset.
This leads us to today’s Old Testament reading from 2 Kings. We have a man named Naaman, who
seems to have been a VIP. He was an Aramean army commander who may well have attained a
rank equivalent to what we’d call a general. Aram was a kingdom in the region that is now called
Syria. Naaman wasn’t a follower, but a leader, and was held in high esteem by his king.
Now, some kinds of humility are offered voluntarily, and others are more or less forced upon us.
Naaman had the second kind, but had some trouble with the first. The scriptures tell us he had a
skin disease that probably was leprosy. This was a word that brought horror to people’s hearts as
recently as the 20th century. Now it’s called Hansen’s Disease, and medicine has discovered an
effective cure for it. But before this cure, people would literally waste away. They became insensitive
to tactile stimuli, then sores would appear and expand, and eventually their very flesh would
wear away until they were disfigured, and ultimately died. It was terrifying and quite contagious, so
people who had the disease were shunned from society. They usually lived in depressing,
impoverished colonies in places no one else chose to live.
Can you imagine how this affected a man like Naaman? Now, Naaman’s wife had a servant who’d
been captured in a raid on Israel. The servant had compassion on Naaman, and she said, “Wow, I
know this guy in Israel who’s a prophet, and he’d know what to do. Too bad Naaman can’t do a
consult with him.” So Naaman’s wife tells him about this, and he talks with the King of Aram, who then
sends a letter of reference to the King of Israel to arrange a visit.
The Israelite king’s response is almost comical. He smells a rat in a rodent-free zone. I mean, he
must be a nervous wreck. He suspects a setup by the Aramean king, so he tears his clothes and
says, “Oy vey! What am I, God?” He slumps down, slaps his head, and says, “I’m in deep doo-doo.”
But fortunately the prophet Elisha catches wind of all this. He says, “Your majesty, get a grip and
stitch up your robe. I’m happy to meet with this man so that he’ll know there’s a prophet in Israel.”
(You’ve figured out, I trust, that this isn’t a literal translation from the Hebrew.)
And this is where things start getting interesting. Naaman has his horses and chariots prepared and
he’s off to Israel. He arrives in front of Elisha’s house. So does Elisha dash out with arms wide ready
to embrace the great General and invite him in for some good Middle Eastern coffee before the
healing? No, he sends out a messenger to him.
Now, let’s look at this. Naaman, a great military leader who’s been brought low by leprosy, sent by
arrangement of his own king with the king of Israel, travels with his motorcade to Elisha’s house, and
is met by a mere messenger. It’s kind of like that pre-battle scene in Braveheart where William
Wallace goes out on the battlefield to ‘greet’ the English emissary with a series of inflaming taunts,
and afterward is told by one of the Scottish noblemen, “I’d say that’s rather less cordial than he’s
used to.”
As Naaman is standing there with his mouth open the messenger says, “Go, wash in the Jordan
seven times, and your flesh will be restored and you’ll be clean.” Naaman promptly loses it. He says,
“What?? For me this man should at least come out and wave his hand over my leprous sore and
cure it! Who does he think he’s dealing with? And wash in the Jordan? We’ve got much better rivers
in Syria! Does he think I have no pride?”
And of course pride is precisely the problem. It takes someone without the fabricated airs of rank to
bring him back to reason. His own servant comes up and says, “My Father, with all due respect, 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’?”
Paul once wrote: “…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is
weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that
are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
Are you hearing that? “…so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” Please know that this
isn’t because the Lord has an ego problem. It’s because there’s a natural created order, or should I
say, created and uncreated order. It isn’t until we understand this, understand that God’s wisdom
trumps our own wisdom in the backdrop of eternity, and most of all, understand that we can’t reap
the full benefits of God’s love until we accept the fact that God is God, and we are not. Until we get
this, we shoot ourselves in our respective feet with our own finite and flawed self-will.
Is it a little out of the ordinary for two humble servants to speak words that bring a great man to
humility and healing? Is it a bit odd that the agent of God’s healing doesn’t even show up on the
scene, but through a messenger tells a suffering man to dip seven times, not in the Abana or
Pharpar, but in the Jordan? I think that’s a fair thing to say. But in the process, a man who had
trouble bringing himself to choose humility finally does, and the writer of 1 Kings tells us the result:
“So Naaman went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of
the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”
How hard it is for us who are made in God’s image and bent by the Fall, to suspend our own
‘wisdom’ in order for the Lord to put things right. When we’re used to our own hands gripping the
steering wheel, how hard it is to give it over to someone who cheerfully leads us on the ‘scenic
route’, with our preferred destination nowhere in sight. ‘God, are you sure you know what you’re
doing?’ It really does feel a bit like ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride’.
For instance when we offer up a prayer we may have a pretty precise idea of what it is we’re looking
for. We may even try to make sure God ‘gets it’ by giving step-by-step instructions, you know, like
talking to someone who’s just a bit ‘thick’. And then when we don’t receive what we were asking for,
at least in the way we were asking for it, well, we might be tempted to conclude that God has let us
down again. “What good is prayer anyway?” we ask.
Well, the longer I live the more instances I can tell you of being relieved that God didn’t answer my
prayer as I originally wanted it answered. (Wasn’t there a country song a couple years ago that said
something like that?) Our life of following Jesus sometimes takes some pretty strange twists and
turns. (Do I hear an ‘amen’?) There’s plenty of the unexpected to go around. Stepping out and
trusting isn’t always an easy thing to do. But it is the avenue to blessing.
There’s a person who attended the Christian Healing Ministries training this past week that can
attest to this. She had hip pain so bad she could hardly walk. So she stepped out and asked several
others to lay hands on her and pray, and she was healed. The next day I watched her grin from ear
to ear as in a moment of spontaneous joy she danced to praise music with most of the others in the
class. They didn’t even make her take a dip in the Rio Grande.
Our Lord never promised that following him would be stress free. He never said it would be easy. But
he did say, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” To us, like to Naaman, frankly, he
sometimes seems like a crazy driver. But he always gets us to the destination he has for us. And we
can trust, perfectly and completely, that this destination is the very best one for us.
May we learn to receive this truth down to the deepest foundation of our hearts, and then learn to
enjoy the ride. Amen.
February 12, 2012
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
Doing It God's Way
(1 Kings 5:1-14)
(1 Kings 5:1-14)
 |
| |
 |