January 27, 2013
Text: 2nd Kings 5: 1-14
Does anyone here desire restoration, newness, healing and wholeness in one or more areas of your life? What about your relationships with family, friends, work colleagues and others? What about your work life, professional life, volunteer work or mission? What about your physical or emotional health? What about your call, your spiritual journey?
Namaan was a man in search of restoration, newness and healing. What does his story have to say to us about where and how we might find these? Pay close attention to the vivid characters in the story. At the end two questions will be posed which may help us in our own quests.
We have in Namaan a very impressive and important man, a person of great personal courage and great accomplishments in military warfare. He was highly valued by the king of Syria for the battles he has won but Namaan was a leper.
And we have a" little maid", as she is called in most of the translations. This young girl was in the lowest social position one could imagine in the culture in which she found herself. Not only was she a young female in a patriarchical society but she was a servant who was not even a citizen. She had been captured from Israel. Yet this little maid has something no one else in the scene had, not Namaan or the King or Namaan's wife. She had valuable information. She knew where Namaan could find healing. And so she spoke up, "Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria for he would heal him of his leprosy".
Namaan told the king what the maid had said and so the king sent him off with a letter from himself to the king of Israel. Namaan also carried large amounts of money and clothing as gifts for the one who would effect his healing.
And then we have a rather comical scene. Have you noticed how people in high positions can easily balox up important details? Well when the King of Israel read the letter from the King of Syria requesting him to heal Namaan he reacted in an all too human way. He knew he could not heal anyone and he was embarassed that he was asked. He concluded that the King of Syria was trying to pick a fight with him and so he got very upset and tore his robes as a sign of his distress. Fortunately for Namaan and the King of Israel, the man of God, Elisha, stepped forward and said, probably with a big sigh, "Send Namaan to me and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel."
So Namaan and his entourage of horses and chariots arrived at Elisha's door. Probably Namaan had remembered what the little maid had said about the prophet. He's probably quite excited. After a false start his healing is about to be accomplished. And then.............what happens?
No prophet appears. Instead a messenger appears with a word from Elisha to "Go and wash in the river Jordan 7 times and you will be restored, you will be clean".
At this Namaan became very angry and went away. He said, "I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on his god and wave his hand over the place and heal the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" So he went away in a rage.
Well, what do you think? Did someone say ego? Did someone say a sense of entitlement? Did someone say rigid expectations? Clearly Namaan expected to be treatedin a manner befitting his status. He did not expect to be met by a messenger. And he had a particular expectation of the way things would unfold. It certainly did not include washing in a river of a foreign country. So in his anger he insulted the river. Namaan's dream of securing healing is seemingly at an end, and why? His ego, sense of entitlement and rigid expectations led to his refusal to follow the prophet's instructions. Have you ever missed out on life's goodness, God's gifts, because you were not open to alternative ways of seeing things but maintained a "my way or the highway" stance?
Fortunately for Namaan the calvary shows up at just the right time. His community appears in the form of his servants, and here we have the lovliest part of the story. There were several ways in which the servants could have appealed to Namaan. The appeal to reason might have gone something like this: "You know Master, this prophet has a big reputation for accomplishing great things. Might it not be a good idea to at least listen to him?" But no, they appealed to him on the basis of their relationship which seems to have been a close one and on the basis of Namaan's well known accomplishments. They said, "My Father, if the prophet had bid you do some great thing you would have done it. Why not then, this small thing?"
We do not know why the servants called Namaan, my Father. Perhaps he was an especially kind master. Perhaps the servants felt a great deal of sympathy and pity for him because they knew how much his leprosy bothered this great man. Well something in their appeal got through Namaan's anger. Scripture does not record him making any verbal response. Rather he went down to the Jordan, dipped himself 7 times, and his flesh was restored like that of a little child. Namaan was healed.
Recalling the characters of the story, especially the little maid, Namaan and his servants, I want to pose two questions which I hope will help us enlarge our understanding of how and where we might find healing, newness, restoration and wholeness:
1. What surprise or unusual channels has God used to lead you to restoration, healing and newness? For instance, one of the least of these as our society rates people or other channels?
2. When has your community (mission group, family member or friend) pointed you in a better direction which led to newness, restoration or healing?