The Rev. Ann R. Lougee
July 8, 2007
Healing and Humility
2 Kings 5:1-14

Last week's scripture told how Elisha took up the mantle of the prophet Elijah at his death, taking his place as the one to confront and critique those in charge of things when their power and wealth corrupted them and made them greedy -- becoming that prophetic voice that speaks truth to power. Now this week, we have a man of power coming to seek Elijah's help.

Naaman is the star general, a celebrity, if you will, even if he does have an excruciatingly painful flaw. For this mighty warrior, favored by the king of Aram, has a skin disease which probably causes embarrassment as well as physical discomfort. The biblical term leprosy can mean any kind of skin ailment like eczema or psoriasis or acne, and doesn't imply a fatal illness.

Yet, for such a mighty man to come seeking the help of a Man of God, especially to come to a foreign place seeking that help, he must have been pretty desperate. It would be very hard for him to humble himself to ask for help.

And actually, it isn't he who asks but the king whom he serves, who wants his chief military officer cured of what ails him. Naaman's impressiveness is obviously diminished when faced with the awkward discomfort of someone who might not want to shake his hand or who might stare too long at his disfigurement. Even this humiliation, though, doesn't prevent him from having a certain sense of his own place, above ordinary people and ordinary rivers.

He walks and talks with kings, after all, and heads an army, and has the wherewithal to assemble a great reward for a cure he thinks he can buy. Everything can be bought, after all, when you live on top of the world.

That's how the king of Aram approaches it. He, too, considers himself to be above dealing with a foreign prophet (probably dusty and uneducated) even to get what he wants for his favorite general. So he does what comes naturally: he talks to his "own kind," power speaking to power, and sends a message to the king of Israel.

Kings at the time were assumed to have divine powers, but obviously the king of Israel does not consider the power to heal to be his. The king of Israel immediately thinks that Aram's king is trying to find a reason to attack him. He rips his royal robes in lamentation.
So far, there seems to be a whole lot of powerlessness on the part of such powerful men, don't you think? Of course, Naaman wouldn't even be standing before the king of Israel if an unnamed little girl hadn't ventured to suggest that he consult "the prophet who is in Samaria."

The little girl is a slave, captured from Israel, one of the countless victims of countless wars between Israel and Aram, which bordered Israel to the north where modern Syria now is. She must have memory of what Elisha can do and the God he represents. People without power have to work between the lines and behind the scenes, and so this little girl gets things started with her remarks to her mistress.

When Naaman finally makes his way to the prophet he gets "stood up," or at least left standing outside, waiting. He immediately takes offense at not being received more respectfully by the prophet, not met with impressive, dramatic ritual gestures. Being told, essentially, to go jump in the river is just not what he expected or is prepared to accept as being worthy of his status.

Fortunately, his servants have more sense of the possibility of the moment. These nameless folk coax Naaman into forgetting his self-importance, humbling himself to plunge into the muddy river.

Like so many stories in the Bible, the story of Naaman is about power. But it's also about "little" people. It's the nameless people in this story who make it move, make things happen, so, in an interesting way, those who are supposed to have no power actually do have power. Or, if they don't have the power, they at least don't stand in its way, as Naaman and the kings seem to do.

(I'm going to digress a bit here, to talk about yesterday's "Live Earth" concerts.)

Today's story is really one of "unexpected prophets" who live their lives in the shadow of the king's power and magnificence. God works through these unexpected prophets, the little ones, the unnamed, while the mighty are humbled and healed.

So the little girl from the beginning of the story is the causative agent for the great general being given a new skin, the skin of a young boy. Naaman is healed of being "a big deal," renewed by being opened to the power of the One True God.

The assumed movers and shakers in this story, Naaman the great general, two kings, and one prophet, are all men with names. They are big men in the eyes of the world; even Elisha, who mostly just sends messages in this story, is proclaimed a renowned Man of God. But the whole dramatic story of healing wouldn't happen if the "little people," the unnamed ones, didn't move things along.

We might even draw a comparison between Naaman and our nation, so powerful, so mighty, and yet so in need of health. Maybe the next time we are saying our prayers for this great, shaky nation of ours, we will remember that great man Naaman, whose wealth and power turned out to be useless to him in his search for health.

The cure that made him truly free came to him by the grace of God when he was willing to swallow his false pride and humble himself to do the simple and lowly thing he was persuaded to do by those who had no worldly power at all. Perhaps we too might consider how to listen more to the "little ones" in the midst of our own society, in order to be restored to health and wholeness.

Amen.