This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa on July 7, 2019. It’s based on 2 Kings 5:1-14. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson/.
2 Kings 5:1-14
1Naaman, 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. 2Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. 5And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. 6He 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.” 7When 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.”
8But 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.” 9So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 10Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” 11But 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! 12Are 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. 13But 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’?” 14So 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.
Stephen King once wrote, I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.1
The Healing of Naaman is a character-driven story that invites its listeners to ask provocative questions, not just about the named characters, but about the nameless ones as well.
The story hinges on a nameless young girl from the land of Israel, taken captive by the Arameans on one of their raids and now serving Naaman’s wife. This is a child who has been ripped from her home and from her family, forced into service, enslaved in a land not her own. We might expect that she would have no voice in this story, no influence, no power. And yet, it is her speech that sets the story’s events in motion. She says to her mistress, If only my lord were with the prophet in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.
Naaman is described as a great man and a mighty warrior, in high favor with his master. When he sets out on his quest for healing he takes with him a fortune, 900 pounds of silver and gold. He is a person of great wealth and strength and rank and privilege. But he isn’t well; he suffers from leprosy. And it takes his prisoner to show him the way to health and well-being and true freedom.
The enslaved child has knowledge Naaman and his wife do not have; she has knowledge, we learn as the story goes on, that neither the king of Aram nor the king of Israel have. The one who has been taken captive is the first in this story to exercise freedom. Somehow, she’s free to speak to her mistress about her lord, about Naaman. Somehow, she’s free to express her faith in Elisha—the prophet in Samaria—and in the God through whom Elisha receives his healing powers. Somehow, it seems, she’s free to care about the well-being of her captor.
This raises so many questions in my mind. I want to know more about this young girl. I want to get inside her head and understand what compels her to help her captor. But the story doesn’t develop her character beyond this initial dialogue. And that in itself, perhaps, is an invitation to us. Who are the nameless ones in our midst? Whose side of the story doesn’t get developed? Doesn’t get heard? Doesn’t get recorded for future audiences? Do we perpetuate the idea that some names aren’t worth knowing? Aren’t worth speaking aloud in our rush to tackle the issue? Solve the problem?
Who are the nameless ones in our midst? Who do we unintentionally overlook? Who do we intentionally ignore? Who are the ones who make us uncomfortable because they challenge the way we’ve always seen the world and our place in it? Who are the ones who, if we would only listen, could point us in the direction of true freedom?
On July 4, Kaitlin Curtice sent this message to her followers on Twitter: It would mean a lot if today you looked up the original peoples of your land, and if you actually took the time to learn and pay attention to the history surrounding the place where you live. She went on, I live on the traditional lands of the Muskogee Creek and Cherokee peoples.2 Do we know the names of the indigenous people on whose land we live? What would it mean for us to know these names, to know this history, well? What might we learn? What might we appreciate?
What would it mean for us, and for our world, if we knew the names and listened to the stories of victims of mass shootings?
What would it mean for us, and for our world, if we knew the names and listened to the stories of the children who’ve died in the custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection?
Are these names worth knowing? Worth listening to?
Remarkably, Naaman does listen to the word of this nameless young girl. Is he just that desperate to be well? Does a crisis in our lives make us receptive to voices we would otherwise ignore? Does God work through surprising people and in surprising ways to lead us to health and well-being? To free us from all that binds us?
It’s not just surprising to Naaman that when he does finally reach Elisha he’s told by a messenger to go, wash in the Jordan seven times. It infuriates him and compels him to leave! 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! 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.
Can you empathize with Naaman’s frustration here? He’s taken a great risk in listening to the word of his wife’s servant girl. I can imagine how he struggled within himself to even set out on this journey, what it took for him to go to his king with the word of a young girl, to risk his reputation and his standing in the community. I can imagine how frightening it would have been to dare to believe, to dare to hope, to risk disappointment, to risk being turned away, rejected, by this foreign prophet and his foreign god.
So when Naaman is greeted not by Elisha himself, but by his servant…and when he’s given such an absurd command…of course he’s angry and hurt and scared. His worst fears are being confirmed.
Maybe so much of our anger is actually fear.
Naaman perceives that he’s being dismissed, brushed off, not taken seriously, and he is furious, because he’s so afraid that he will never be healed, never be well, never be free. He has great wealth and strength and rank and privilege, but he can’t take charge of this situation and cure himself of this hideous disease.
He can only trust the word of a captive girl. And what has it gotten him? A command to wash in the filthy, foreign Jordan River. He won’t do it. He can at least preserve some semblance of dignity. He turns from this dream that he was so foolish to believe could ever become reality…and he leaves in a rage.
And that would be the end of the story were it not for more nameless ones—Naaman’s servants—bereft of power and influence in their world, but incredibly powerful and influential in this story. They dare to approach their enraged master. From a position of powerlessness, they find not only courage but compassion.
Again, I want to hear this story told from their perspective. What prompted them to speak, to challenge Naaman? Did they fear for their lives in doing so? Were they risking everything for the sake of Naaman’s healing? And how did they come to believe that Elisha was trustworthy? That the God of Israel was trustworthy? Where did their faith come from? And how might we dare to let our faith shape our voices in the world?
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?” The servants know the mind of their master. They know he prides himself on his ability to do difficult things. They know he feels compelled to somehow prove himself worthy of this healing.
They know, even though he is the one with the power and the privilege, he is powerless in this situation. He needs them. He needs their challenge, their insight, their wisdom.
And again, remarkably, Naaman listens. The commander becomes the commanded. He washes in the Jordan, plunging seven times into that river he disdains, and he emerges clean, healed, changed, free.
Naaman is a character transformed—not just by his washing in the Jordan, but by his interactions with seemingly powerless ones who dare to speak truth to him. He is a character transformed by God, who works through captives and kings and prophets and rivers to bring healing and wholeness and freedom from all that binds.
This same God is at work in our lives, bringing healing through the simplest of commands: Take and eat; this is my body. Take and drink; this is my blood. We leave from the table characters transformed—receptive to the voices of those some stories prefer to remain nameless, willing to let faith shape our voices in the world, aware of both our power and our powerlessness, healed, whole, free. Amen.
1 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
2 https://twitter.com/KaitlinCurtice/status/1146771250389368837
Look up the original peoples of your land at https://native-land.ca/.