Can you imagine how desperate General Naaman must have been? Aram and Israel were enemies, for goodness’ sake. They were raiding across each other's borders, looting and taking slaves and generally making nuisances of themselves, keeping in practice for the next full-scale hostilities to break out. And merely at the suggestion of an Israelite slave girl, who as far as we can tell has absolutely no reason to wish him well, Naaman goes to his master the king of Aram and asks permission to beg a favor from a Samarian! It’s sort of like having the head of the KGB, back in the bad old Cold War days, asking to be admitted to the Mayo Clinic. Or maybe like having the Ayatollah Khomeini seek an audience from the Pope, for a laying on of hands.
And how could a leper be a general of the King’s armies, anyway? Didn’t they have to be kept away from people? Weren’t they feared and shunned and isolated? You wouldn’t catch lepers wandering around loose in Judah, much less commanding armies.
And what was the King of Aram up to, anyway, sending a letter that doesn’t even mention Elisha and almost gets Naaman into trouble right off the bat?
As you can see, this is not an easy passage to make sense of, except in a very broad-brush sort of way. Elisha was a prophet and prophets perform miracles and healing leprosy is a miracle and didn’t Jesus heal lepers and so what else is new and what does it have to do with us, anyway?
Well, first of all, right off the bat what this story tells us is that YHWH God is the God of all nations, not just Israel. And we knew that, of course. What is different here is that Naaman seemed to know it. Or, at least, that he was desperate enough to try anything. And that happens even now. When people are in despair, at the breaking point, they’ll try anything - even somebody else’s God. But someone has to tell them about it, first. “How can they believe, if they have not heard?” says Paul in his letter to the Romans. “And how can they hear, without someone to proclaim? And how are they to proclaim him if they have not been sent?”
Who sent the slave girl? Was it not YHWH God?
Where have you been sent? To whom has God called you to speak the good news?
The second thing to note is that the King of Aram assumed that anyone with enough power to cure leprosy would naturally be in the court of the King of Israel, and that the king would know all about it. So he doesn’t go into a lot of explanatory detail in his letter. There wasn’t any separation of church and state in Aram, the priests served the crown as much as they served the gods, if not occasionally more so. Spiritual power and political power ran in harness back then. And so naturally they assumed that there would be some kind of fee. Probably a pretty big one. And maybe some political or military favors as well. Naaman brought with him enough ready cash to buy the palace itself. He shows up at court and gets an audience with King Jehoram of Israel, presents the letter of introduction, and what happens?
King Jehoram nearly falls apart. He tears his clothes, which is as you recall a gesture of mourning in the ancient world, and cries out, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!” Hasn’t King Jehoram heard of Elisha?
How difficult it is for powerful people to acknowledge that there are centers of power that they do not control. Jehoram had had three choices about how to deal with the prophets of YHWH when he ascended the throne: He could continue trying to destroy them, as his parents Ahab and Jezebel had done, he could repent and worship, or he could just sweep the whole conflict under the rug and pretend it was no longer an issue. That was the choice that took the least commitment, and that’s what Jehoram did. But he could only get away with it by remaining in denial - in denial both about the past and about the present. It is my opinion - my opinion only - that Jehoram did know about Elisha, but stubbornly told himself that the stories of his power were only rumors, nothing to be taken seriously.
How many of us say we believe in the sovereignty and power of God, but when crisis times come behave as if the only resources we have are our own?
Then Elisha hears about what has happened at the palace, and sends for Naaman. And Naaman sets out with his whole entourage, horses and chariots and gold and silver and all, and expects immediate personal attention. Scripture tells us how disappointed and angry he was. “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.” But before Naaman even gets there Elisha’s servant shows up and tells him to go wash in the river. What an insult! Doesn’t Elisha know who he is? Doesn’t he deserve a little more respect? And what’s this “Go wash in the river?” He can get a ritual cleansing back home, in fact has probably tried that any number of times. And at this point Naaman almost blows it completely. But he’s still desperate enough to listen to his servants. “My father,” they plead with him, “if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”
Sometimes it’s easier to do something large and dramatic, isn’t it, than to obediently carry out a small, insignificant task. It’s easier to see spiritual power in large, flamboyant gestures, too, than in the small acts that often go unnoticed. “How can that matter?” We ask ourselves, as we disobey in a small way or ignore a small opportunity to be of service.
That’s one of the lessons that this passage points out. But the other lesson, the more important one, is that the healing isn’t Elisha’s. You see, Naaman had looked to Elisha for a cure, not to Elisha’s God. And what he found was that Elisha wasn’t just someone who had an unusual, quasi-magical healing ability, but someone who was in actual conversation with a power, a person, who was not only real, but independent from Elijah. And so he rightly transferred his awe from the human person who had pointed him in the right direction to the real source of his healing.
How often do we look to people to provide what can only come from the hand of God? And how often do we confuse the means of grace with the source of grace? I wonder if people who heard of this miraculous cure thought that they could go dip in the Jordan seven times, like Naaman did, and get cured of their diseases. I somehow don’t believe that Naaman thought he could come back and take a swim whenever he was feeling a bit punk. And he didn’t take a flask of holy water home with him, either. He figured it out. He realized that it was God who had healed him, not the waters of the Jordan. Not that I am categorically ruling out miracles at places like Lourdes - but it’s God’s mercy which is at work there, not some special property of the water.
Being human, we tend to transfer our attention from the invisible God to the visible, tangible times and places and ways through which his grace has touched us. Being merciful, God graciously deals with us by giving us things we can taste and touch and smell and see to remind us that he is real. He gives us people to love and work to do. He calls us to transmit his love and faithfulness to one another on his behalf. He gives us this sanctuary, these symbols of cross and table, this day, to focus on him, to draw us away from all the other things that compete for our attention, to refill us with his love. But let us never forget that God’s power does not depend on these things, or reside in these things, and must not be confused with these things. It is God in Christ who calls, and when we come to him, it is God in Christ who heals.
