Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
February 16, 2003

"Letting Go, Getting Free"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark Smutny

Scripture:  Psalm 30;  II Kings 5:1-14

1) I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me. 2) O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. 3) O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit. 4) Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. 5) For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. 6) As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved." 7) By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. 8) To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication: 9) "What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? 10) Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper!" 11) You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

- Psalm 30

(1) Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.  (2) Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.  (3) She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." (4) So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.  (5) And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel."  He went, taking with him10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 sets of garments. (6) He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."  (7)When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."  (8) But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."

(9) So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.  (10) Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."  (11) But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!  (12) Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.

(13) But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, 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'?"  (14) So he 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.

- I Kings 5: 1-14

Where is not one of us who does not long for healing in our lives or in the lives of those we hold dear.  When an injury occurs, a bone breaks, a heart is damaged or a disease is discovered, we all want healing to occur and instantly.  We want to heal quickly then get on with life and be restored to what it used to be when we could leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop speeding bullets. 

However, if we have broken a limb and endured a scratchy cast for eternity only to discover when the blasted thing is finally off that the limb is terribly weak and that it will be weeks  before any strength is restored, then we know that healing doesn't come instantly.  Healing comes in small measured doses and over many months and much hard work.  Healing is hard work and it seems to take forever.  There are no quick fixes.

When a loss occurs, a loved one suffers from a debilitating illness or dies, then the hard work of grieving and healing takes years, not weeks or months. When an injustice ravages a life so that heart and soul are torn apart and there is a daily struggle between despair and hope, then healing can take far longer than anyone would ever want.    We want our picture of the ideal life to happen now.  We tire of waiting.  We want peace now.  We want to wake up tomorrow morning and see life restored in accord with what we know God would have for us.  We want peace now.

When a limb is broken, or a disease radically changes your life, when an injustice renders you decimated, when your spirit is broken, and all you can seem to do is keep breathing and keep walking step by step, then the fantasy that healing will occur instantly, miraculously, is an understandable one, but that's not the way it usually is.  Healing, when it comes, usually comes through hard, laborious work and by trusting that God heals in small measured steps.  Healing, when it comes, often comes in slow messy cures as we embrace our vulnerability and helplessness over the long haul.  Healing rarely happens through instant fixes and dramatic flashes of faith healing.

In today's second lesson, we hear of a man, Naaman, a senior officer in the Syrian army who longs for healing.  The text says that Naaman "was a great man in high favor with his master," the king of Aram, also known as Syria.  He was on the joint chief of staffs of the Syrian empire.  He knew how to strut his stuff.  He had Bradley fighting chariots and Patriot shields and swords, and stealth military strategies up his sleeves.  He commanded at his finger tips a good portion of the gross domestic product of the empire.  He was a mighty man, this man Naaman.   

So one night when he woke up in the middle of the night and discovered that his fingers were numb, his face ashen and his skin broken out in a rash, he was scared.  Despite all his armor, when he found out he was vulnerable and fragile, he did exactly what every panic stricken powerful and mighty man would do under such circumstances.  He looked for his mommy.

His mommy wasn't around, so instead this mighty warrior turned to his wife who turned to a young servant girl.  The girl was a captive from the land of Israel, taken on one Naaman's raids and now a servant of Naaman's wife.  Upon discovering his disease, in a panic, Naaman, the high and mighty, turned to this unnamed female, and asked her what he was to do.  Understand that to have this skin disease rendered him unclean, untouchable, an anathema.  He, the great and powerful general, would be rendered politically and socially marginalized by the disease.  Impotent would be a good word to describe his predicament.

This desperate man, eager for a cure, cast aside decorum and even paid attention to one of his conquests.  She told him there was a prophet in Samaria named Elisha who could cure his leprosy. 

So after getting a special letter from his king, Naaman set out for Samaria looking for a quick cure for his unbearable disease.  He assembles an entourage of fighting chariots, fast horses, silver and gold, and garments from Saks Fifth Avenue in Damascus.  Naaman may have been struggling for his life and reputation, but he was going to go as a great man.  He was no charity case.  He was a man.  So he travels loaded with all the paraphernalia that had protected him all these years: his wealth, his material goods, his macho military prowess, and his armor as thick as his fear. The mighty man sets off for Samaria but he goes not to the house of the prophet Elisha as the servant girl told him to do, but to the throne of the king of Israel.

When Naaman arrives, the king of Israel is a little suspicious.  The king sees a foreign military leader who had won previous battles against Israel arrive on the steps of the palace with a ostentatious display of power and gifts.  You would be suspicious, too.

Naaman swaggers around, stalls and finally manages to spit out that he needs healing.  The King of Israel looks at him like he's crazy.  He thinks he's trying to pick a fight and is enraged and tears his clothes.  "Do you think that I am God?" demands the king. In the ancient near Eastern mind, skin diseases were understood as a judgment from God that only God could lift.  The king could not heal Naaman.  This was God's prerogative and power.

Meanwhile the prophet Elisha hears that the King is pretty upset.  News about kings tearing up their clothes gets around faster than CNN, maybe faster than gossip at Monte Vista Grove.  Elisha tells the king of Israel that he can help Naaman.  The king directs Naaman to go to the prophet's home.

Let me pause a moment to say that this story is filled with ironies and many examples where expectations are reversed.  The mighty becomes vulnerable and seeks help from a nobody, a servant girl.  But Naaman's a big man and so he goes with the appearance of seeming invincibility to a big man.  The big man King sends him to a prophet, a man of God, not equipped with military might, but only the Word of God, and the scene is set.

On the way over to the prophet's house, Naaman's hopes were undeniably high.  His reputation was about to be restored.  He could get on with the business of running his military machine.  He was going to the home of a miracle worker who could mutter a few magical prayers and bring healing to his disease-ravaged body.  I imagine him thinking to himself on the road over to Elisha's house about his imminent conversation with the holy man: "Put in a good word for me preacher, you know, with the man upstairs, do your thing.  Get on with it.  I'm a busy man."  Then he could head back to Syria, head held high, chariot wheels spinning, flashing their chrome, his cleansed face and legs and arms exposed for all to see: strong, powerful and mighty.

What a shock it must have been when he and his parade arrived at Elisha's house and was greeted not by a prophet, but one of the prophet's servants.  This was an insult to be greeted by a mere servant.  What an offense it must have been when Elisha didn't even come out of the house to greet this mighty man, but sent word through his servant, "Go wash in the River Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean." 

"Wash in the river?  That muddy little creek?  We have superior rivers back home that are high and mighty, wide and clean.  Wash in that muddy trickle?"  In a rage he storms off, muttering several expletive-deleteds not suitable for church.  He traveled so far with so much for so little.

Then for the third time in the story, another reversal occurs.  Another servant, one of his own - a person of little power and little prestige, a person with little to lose - is the one who prods the great military leader to summon more courage than he ever used to fight a war or a ravage a country, more intelligence than he ever needed back when he assembled his success, things and power.  This servant prods him to embrace his own weakness and his own humanity.

"Father," his servant said, "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?'" 

It is difficult in life to embrace the simple things that bring us healing.  We may not be like Naaman with his military appliances and lust for power, but there is always something with which we insulate ourselves from the simple steps that God would have us take to bring about our own healing.  We all have our armor.

We prefer something quick, a cure, a miracle, a wave of a magic wand to the hard, tedious, painstaking healing work that comes from doing simple things over and over again to bring about healing like dipping seven times in the muddy Jordan River.

That preference for the quick and easy permeates our culture.  Our systemic, cultural addiction to every thing from material things to the way we make a fetish of power and might, and all the other addictions on the standard list, discloses our fear of embracing our weakness. We are afraid.  How can the most powerful nation on earth be so afraid?  Yet, we are.  I believe this fear pre-dates 9/11. 

Why are we so afraid?  Whether collectively or personally, are we afraid of embracing our humanity and our fragility?  I think we are.  Yet isn't this the way God brings about healing and reconciliation?  We heal not in glamorous or flashy ways, not by strutting our stuff, but by turning over our deepest hurt and vulnerable selves to the God who became hurt and vulnerable even to the point of dying on a cross. 

This is the heart of our faith and the source of our courage.  "I preach Christ crucified," said Paul, "A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Corinthians 1:23-24).

Healing doesn't come in flashes of power, but in slow, messy cures.  Healing doesn't come from quick miracles, but from the miracle of courage that comes from repetitive dips in muddy waters.  Entering these muddy waters takes guts.  God would have us slip into the waters of our own depths, not knowing where all the rocks are, but trusting the fissures and abrasions of our lives to be surrounded by a grace that will hold us up and never lets us go. 

We can enter these waters in many ways.  For some, it is the simple commitment to go to church and worship.  For others, it is the simple commitment to enter therapy.  For others it is the simple step of setting aside a time every day to pray in quiet before any other demand or intrusion is permitted to take over.  For still others, it may come through plunging into the waters of social injustice, of stepping out of our palaces of privilege and stepping into what it is really like to be an immigrant or gay or homeless or hungry or to have olive skin especially in these days. 

It is to swim into the waters of the vulnerable and so to become helpless and vulnerable in the encounter with the world's overwhelming, immense, unimaginable pain and in the face of our own helplessness to come to know how deeply every one of us needs a just and generous God.

We do not go into these waters unequipped.  Daily practices of prayer help us keep our head above water.  The steady hands of friends, faith and the church hold us up when we stumble.  And whether we perceive it or not, God's love is always available to embrace us and rock us in her bosom as the scared and wounded kids we all are, if we dare admit it.

God's healing, letting go and getting free, rarely comes through a prophet's magic wand or an instant, miraculous cure.  God has a way of working through messier, muddier mediums.  Into muddy waters, stripped of our delusions and illusions, our mighty false pretenses and our thick armors of denial, we discover ourselves born up on the shoulders of a loving God and a loving church. 

When we are pulled out of those troubled waters, we discover that our skin is glowing and smooth.  Like new born babes with unwrinkled skin, we can live again, refreshed, healed and free.

Then dripping with the cleansing waters of a gracious God, our eyes are cleared and opened fully  to those around us who are diseased, whose hearts are broken, whose lives have been damaged by injustice or neglect or hatred.  Our eyes are fully opened and our throats cleared so that we can say from our experience, "I know where you can be healed.  Come here. Come here to church and the good news of God's love in Jesus Christ." 

Equipped only with our humanity, our broken yet healed hands and hearts, and the power of the gospel, we work on God's behalf for all that brings about healing and wholeness, justice and peace. 

As with Naaman, so may it be with you, in the power of the crucified and risen Lord, the healer of us all, to whom we give honor and praise, forever.  Amen.

(c) Copyright 2003 by Mark K. Smutny.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.