"Compass: Finding Direction" - February 26, 2012

Text: John 14:1-7

This is the first in a series of sermons for Lent, "Travel Essentials for the Spiritual Journey."  Themes are suggested by Paul Gooder's book, Lentwise.

Like many of you, I like to travel.  I have always liked to travel.  When I was a kid, for a time I wanted to be a travel agent – maybe because my family never traveled very much.  I would send off for travel brochures and I can remember some of those brochures in my collection – brochures for Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, Big Bend National Park in Texas, Olympic National Park in Washington.  I collected road maps, including some really old Cities Service gas station road maps that were my grandma’s.  I don’t think my grandma ever drove a car, but she had some road maps at her house.

As it turns out, I did not become a travel agent, but I still have that interest and sensibility.  When we went to Europe a few summers ago, I had a field day getting ready for the trip – researching air flights and rail passes and car rental and hotels and coming up with an itinerary.  We read about the things you should take on such a trip and we were prepared; I even had a small screwdriver with some duct tape wrapped around the handle, just in case.

Right now, we are working on plans for our spring break mission trip to Tennessee.  Again, there is a lot of planning involved.  What route will we take, what vehicles, where will we stay, what about food?  Not to mention thinking about how we might keep from getting on each other’s nerves on a long trip.  And then there is packing.  We are hoping to fit everything into one rental van, but it’s going to be tight.  I told the group that we don’t need to duplicate items – we don’t need to bring 8 hair dryers.  In fact, Buck and I have sacrificially volunteered to go without a hair dryer altogether for the trip.

We all have those items that we like to bring with us when we travel.  I have my Swiss Army knife on my keychain and the scissors and knife and other gadgets can really come in handy – but of course you can’t carry something like that with you when you fly.  What about you?   What are your travel essentials?  What can you not travel without?  Your iPod?  A camera?  A book?  A crossword puzzle?  A favorite stuffed animal or a versatile, dependable sweatshirt?  Or maybe a thermos of hot coffee or a cooler filled with Diet Coke or Mt. Dew?

We often speak of our faith as a journey.  We are traveling through life, making our way through this world.  Just as there are those travel essentials we take with us on vacation or on a business trip, there are essentials for our spiritual journey.

Each Sunday in this season of Lent, we will be looking at passages from the Gospel of John that point us to some of those travel essentials that are crucial for our journey of faith.  Today we have read from the 14th chapter of John.  It is a widely known passage, a widely loved passage.  It can also be a problematic passage.

Jesus has been telling his disciples that he will soon be leaving them.  He says this in a variety of ways but they don’t quite understand.  They don’t quite get it.  Jesus says, “I am with you only a little longer,” and Peter says, “Lord, where are you going?”  Jesus says, “Where I am going you cannot follow me,” and Peter replies with “Why not?  I’ll lay down my life for you.”  And Jesus tells Peter, before the cock crows there times, you will deny me.  You probably know how that went.

Then we get to the passage that we read a few moments ago.  Jesus says, don’t worry, don’t be filled with anxiety, trust in me.  Believe in me.  In my Father’s house are many dwelling places, and I am going to prepare a place for you.  I’m going ahead of you and you will join me later.  You can feel the exasperation in Thomas’ voice when he says, “We don’t even know where you are going.  How can we possibly know the way?”

Jesus says to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.”

I remember this verse from my childhood; in the youth choir at church, we sang a song – I think it was from a 1970’s youth musical – based on this verse.  Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth, Jesus is the life.  It’s a beautiful verse.  But over the years this verse has been used to prove that Christianity is the only true religion and everyone else is in deep, deep trouble.

This doesn’t seem Jesus’ style – to make some grand pronouncement about other world religions.  And in John chapter 10, he says “I have other sheep who are not of this fold.”  But before we get too worked up about this, we need to look more closely at this passage and see what it really is saying.

First of all, to whom is Jesus speaking?  He is speaking to a few of his closest followers, and in fact this statement is made to Thomas.  Not to all people everywhere, but to Thomas.  At the time, there are but a handful of people on earth who are followers of Jesus.  Not even known as Christians yet, they are a tiny minority.  Jesus is not speaking of the relative merits of Christian faith as compared to Buddhism or Hinduism or Judaism or Islam.

What Jesus is doing is answering Thomas’ question.  Thomas did not ask him, “Where does Christianity stand among the panoply of world religions.”  Thomas asks, “How do we go where you are going?  How can we know the way?”

It is a very personal and intimate conversation.  The disciples are worried, they are scared, they are troubled.  Jesus tells them he will not be with them much longer, and there is separation anxiety.  How can they go where Jesus is going?

Jesus says to Thomas, “I am going to the Father, and if you want to know the way, I am the way.  I am the way and the truth and the life.”  He speaks to Thomas and to the other disciples and says, “No one, none of you, comes to the Father but through me.”  What Jesus is saying to his disciples is not exclusive – leaving others out - so much as it is very particular.  For these followers of Jesus - and for us, Jesus is the way.  If you want to know where Jesus is going, Jesus himself is the way.  In a sense, Jesus is both the destination and the way to get there.

To be with Jesus’ Father, the way is Jesus.  Jesus and the Father are one, we read in John, and in a sense Jesus is both the way and the destination.

This verse does not address the issue of other faiths, but we can be so focused on that question – a question that Jesus is not answering – that we miss the power and the beauty and the comfort that Jesus gives.  Do not be troubled.  Do not be anxious.  Have trust in God.  Have trust in me.  I am going ahead of you, I am preparing a place for you, and if you want to know the way, I am the way.

All of us are searching for direction.  At some level, we all are wondering what kind of choices to make, which path to follow.  We have choices to make every day, all kinds of choices.  In fact, we have more choices before us than any generation that has ever lived.  

A coffee executive was asked how many beverage choices were available from the menu at his chain of coffee shops.  He replied, “82,000, give or take.”  I have a hard time going to Starbucks, because I just want a cup of coffee and I’m not sure how to order it.  There are so many choices.

Diana Butler Bass wrote,

Americans, even those of modest means, exercise more choices in a single day than some of our ancestors did in a month or perhaps even a year.  From the moment we awaken, we are bombarded with choices – from caffeinated to decaffeinated, to flipping on any one of a hundred television stations as we ready the children for school, to getting news in print, online, or via a mobile device, to what sort of spinach to buy to go with dinner (local, organic, fresh, frozen, chopped, whole leaf, bagged, or bunched).

It is not just the mundane choices.  We have choices about our lives, all kinds of choices about vocation and where to live and where to go to school and choices about the commitments we make and the involvements we want to take on.  Choices about how to spend our money, how to use our resources, how to use our time.  We have choices about civic involvement and political affiliations and actions.  And we have choices about church, choices about worship, choices about the spiritual path we will follow.

When it comes to our spiritual journey, we need direction.  And the thing is, we don’t get a GPS.  We don’t get a detailed map.  The life of faith is not that precise.  A GPS wouldn’t be that helpful.  As we grow in faith, as we grow in understanding, as we grow in maturity, as we change and as the world changes around us and needs change around us, the place we are moving toward doesn’t stay completely still.  
If we think of our faith as a journey, it is not like one of those pre-packaged trips – it is not like a group tour organized by the credit union or a package tour offered by AAA.  In that kind of travel, all you do is buy the ticket and everything is decided – where you go, how you go, where you eat, where you will stay, what you will do.

Some people look at faith in that way – you just join the pre-packaged group tour – but for me, there is a lot more to a vital, authentic faith than that.  There is a lot more freedom and a lot more commitment and a lot more imagination and creativity and a lot more asked of us, and there is a lot more joy than just following a path decided on by somebody else.  And the journey of faith is not always smooth sailing, to use a nautical metaphor.  There are storms and there are powerful waves.  Conditions can change quickly, like an Iowa snowstorm sweeping in.  There is no way to be completely prepared for what might be coming.  Someone said, “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”  

So to me, a GPS or a detailed map is not the best symbol of the direction we need.  Life is more like an expedition.  It’s a lot more like Lewis and Clark exploring the west than it is a Trafalgar European tour of 9 countries in 10 days.  We aren’t given all the details, and there are all kinds of choices we have to make.   We sometimes have to shift course based on changing conditions and new information.  There was a book written many years ago about the life of faith with the title “Marching Off the Map.”  That can describe our spiritual journey; we often find ourselves in unknown territory.  We don’t always get a map, but what we get is a sense of direction.  What we do get is something like a compass.

Jesus is our compass.  We orient our lives by looking to Jesus.  Jesus himself is the way.  For those who follow him, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

The question, maybe, is what does this mean?  What does it mean to say that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life?”

To say that Jesus is the Way means that we follow the Jesus Way.  We live a life of self-giving love.  We practice sacrificial giving.  We don’t just live for ourselves.  We offer grace.  We work for hope and healing for all people.  We see needs around us.  We listen.  We are attentive.  We respond in love.  

This is not easy.  It would be a heck of a lot easier to just take the Trafalgar tour.  William Willimon says that following Jesus means going where Jesus went and among the people he went among.  As it turns out, these are not always people that we are interested in or places we are really comfortable following Jesus to.

To say that Jesus is the truth means that we are living by a different kind of truth.  It is not an e=mc2 kind of truth, not a “Helena is the capital of Montana” kind of truth.  It is not an Apostles Creed or Westminster Catechism or even “We Are American Baptists” statement kind of truth.  These things may all be true, but to say that “Jesus is the truth” is to say that truth is relational.  It is a different kind of truth altogether.

This means that truth is found in commitment and relationship, and that the truth of Christian faith is not just words we assent to but something that we experience.  We discover truth in relationship, as we are related to God and to one another.  For us, more than in creeds and statements and dogma and doctrine, Jesus himself – his way and his example and his love and his grace – this is truth.

And then, Jesus is the life.  Jesus said, “I have come so that you may have life, and life abundant.”  The kind of life Jesus gives is real life.

The theology class has started a new study, using a curriculum called Living the Questions.  Last week in the video we used, Tex Sample was talking about our approach to the Bible.  Some of you may know Tex; he was at our church many years ago.  Tex recalled a time when some friends got him to go hear a certain evangelist at a revival.  The evangelist was preaching about the Bible.  The preacher said, “I believe every word in the Bible.  I believe it backwards and forwards.  If I found that there was even one error, even one mistake, even one contradiction in the Bible, it would be worthless to me because I couldn’t trust it; I couldn’t believe it.  And if I didn’t believe the Bible, you better believe I wouldn’t be here.  I would be out somewhere having fun.”

For this preacher, the scriptures, and the Christian faith, were there to get in our way.  If not for our commitment to Jesus, we would be out there having fun.

What a pitiful understanding of Christian faith.  Faith in Jesus does not make our world smaller; it makes our vision more expansive.  Following Jesus is not confining; it is freeing.  We are called to abundant life, joyful life, meaningful life.  We are called to really live, to really be with people in their pain and hurt, as Jesus was, and also to really experience joy and celebration, as Jesus did.

Jesus is both the destination and the way we get there.  Saint Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to Heaven is Heaven, because Jesus said, 'I am the Way.'”

As we travel through this journey of life, this journey of faith, we need direction.  Jesus is our compass.  Jesus himself is our way.  Amen.

Naaman, Part 2: “Healing and the Way of Grace” - February 19, 2012

Texts: 2 Kings 5:15-27, Luke 4:16-30

Last week we looked at the story of Naaman.  It is quite a story.  Naaman was the very successful commander of the Syrian army.  But Naaman had a terrible skin disease.  His wife’s servant, a Hebrew slave girl, tells Naaman that there is a prophet in Israel who can heal his disease.  Naaman winds up at the prophet Elisha’s home; Elisha sends out a servant who tells him to dip seven times in the Jordan River and he will be made well.

Naaman refuses, thinking that this is beneath him.  But his servants talk sense into him, he immerses himself seven times in the muddy waters of the Jordan, and he is healed.

This is where we usually end the story.  The lectionary, with suggested readings for each Sunday, ends the reading here.  But the next part, “the rest of the story,” is very interesting.  After being healed, Naaman goes back to Elisha.  In fact, this is apparently the first face-to face encounter that Naaman has with Elisha - he has only spoken to Elisha’s servant before.  Naaman proclaims his faith in the God of Israel.  “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel,” he says.

Naaman offers Elisha a gift.  This does not come across as paying the doctor bill but more in the way of expressing his thankfulness and gratitude.  The king of Aram had sent him with all of this stuff, valuable things, and he wants to express his appreciation.

But Elisha will have none of it.  He will not even consider accepting a gift from Naaman.   As far as Elisha is concerned, this is what he did.  The healing was God’s work, God’s doing, and he was not going to profit from it.

Naaman then has a request of Elisha.  He wants to bring home as much dirt as he can carry (sorry, all of you soil scientists – he wants to bring home as much soil as he can carry!) so that when he returns home he can worship.  He assumes the God of Israel can only be worshiped on Israelite soil.  This sounds very simplistic and literal-minded, but in that time deity was very much tied to place and nation.  This shows that Naaman was serious about his desire to worship the God is Israel.

But Naaman also understands that his position as right hand man of the king of Aram came with certain expectations.  He would have to accompany the king to worship the patron God of the Arameans, Rimmon.  For what he anticipated would be future compromises of his allegiance to the Lord, he asks for forgiveness in advance.  He is basically saying to Elisha, I know I am going to have to be involved from time to time in the worship of Rimmon and I hope you can give me a pass on that, because my heart and my loyalty is really with the God of Israel.

Naaman really seems a bit embarrassed by the request, but again, if he weren’t taking the God of Israel seriously he wouldn’t have brought this up at all.  In response, Elisha is quite gracious.  “Go in peace,” he says.

Through it all, Naaman was slow to figure it out.  He was slow to listen.  His theology is imperfect; his ideas of how and where God can be worshiped seem primitive to us.  Some might want to fault him for bad theology and for not risking everything for God.  But Elisha does not condemn him.  He gives the ancient benediction, “Go in peace.”  Elisha is gracious toward Naaman, the foreign enemy of Israel turned worshiper of God.

Naaman heads toward home.  But it is not the end of the story.

Gehazi is a servant of Elisha.  And Gehazi is not at all pleased with the way that Elisha was so easy on Naaman.  “My master was way too easy on this Aramean,” he says, and the tone of Israelite exclusivism comes through loud and clear.  Elisha was way too accommodating, way too gracious toward this foreigner, says Gehazi.  Elisha should have made it clear just how undeserving and just how lucky this guy was to be healed, and just how indebted he should feel.  It just ain’t right, he says, and Gehazi vows to do something about it.

So Gehazi chases after Naaman.  Naaman sees Gehazi running toward him and wonders if everything is OK.  Everything is all right,” Gehazi says.  Elisha sent me to you to say that two young men from the company of prophets have just turned up, and we could use some of the gift you offered after all.  Please give them a talent of silver and two sets of clothing.

It is a relatively modest request, especially compared with all that Naaman had brought with him.  This makes the lie all the more believable.  Naaman is happy to help.  “By all means, please take two talents,” he says, giving even more than is asked.  Naaman gives Gehazi two bags, each containing a talent of silver (and incidentally, a talent was 75 pounds, so this wasn’t chump change), and two sets of clothing.  Gehazi’s servants carry the loot back, and Gehazi stashes it for safekeeping before returning to Elisha.

Elisha immediately knows something is up.  “Where have you been, Gehazi?” asks Elisha.  “Nowhere,” says Gehazi.  “I haven’t been anywhere.”  But Elisha knows.  And he curses Gehazi, who winds up with leprosy – the leprosy of Naaman.

It’s a strange ending to the story.  It’s not a big surprise that the incident with Gehazi is not included in the lectionary.  But there is something to learn here.  First, this has something to say about using God, using the Holy, for our own purposes.  Gehazi tries to cash in on the healing of Naaman.  He tries to make a profit from the work of God – he sees it as an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Well, Gehazi is not the first or the last to try and cash in on God.  The tradition is alive and well in our time.

Back when I was in seminary, I had a couple of friends – maybe I should put quotation marks around the word “friends” – who sent my name and address in to a flamboyant TV evangelist who was popular at the time, if popular is the right word.  (Notorious would also work.)  At any rate, I received a few mailings from this televangelist.  Then I received a letter that was right to the point.  It said that the ministry team had been praying for me, that I would be healthy and my life would be blessed.  But the problem was, their staff was only so big and there were only so many hours in the day to pray for people.  If I did not make a contribution to their ministry, they would unfortunately have to remove me from their prayer list.  Now, they had been praying for me for several months now, and there was no telling what difficulties, what evil I had avoided because of their prayers.  Essentially, they were saying that if I did not send in a contribution they were not responsible for what might happen because their prayers for me had been discontinued.

Gehazi would have been proud.

Our own Senator Charles Grassley launched an investigation a few years back into televangelists who were fabulously wealthy and living extravagant lifestyles.  It’s not that people can’t live as they see fit, the issue was whether charitable and religious non-profits could provide people with such lavish compensation and keep their tax exempt status.  It turned out that in many cases, extravagant homes and luxury vehicles and airplanes were owned by the ministry, not the individual, and so they were able to skirt charges of excessive compensation.  Again, Gehazi would have been proud.

In the last year I have been contacted by several presidential contenders touting their Christian faith and values and asking for my support as a pastor – and if I could bring my church along, that would be nice too.  Now maybe it’s just me, but I kind of get the feeling that some of these folks are using faith for personal benefit.  Gehazi would be proud.

Well, it’s very easy to find examples of folks using religion for personal gain.  But I wonder: do we ever do this?  We just might – perhaps not in such a bold-faced way as Gehazi, but it can happen.  We can use faith to burnish our reputation, to look good, to come across as more acceptable.  I have no doubt that there are companies who would have trouble staying in business on the basis of the quality of their work or their integrity or their affordable prices who put an ad in a Christian business directory or put a fish symbol on their sign and hope for the best.  Don’t hear me wrong; I am not indicting Christian business directories in general, but I am simply saying that it is possible to use the trappings of faith for personal gain.  There are people who make Gehazi proud every day. 

We can also learn something in this story from the differing responses of Elisha and Gehazi toward Naaman. 

The Old Testament is a deeply nationalistic book.  But even set in Israelite culture, even in scripture written by and for Israel, even in a time of intense nationalism, a time when a foreigner was seen not just a foreigner but as a worshiper of foreign gods, there are many glimpses of openness to the other, to the outsider.  The story of Naaman is one of those times when it becomes clear that God’s grace is extended to those seen as being on the outside, but this is by no means the only instance.  In Isaiah 49, the Lord says to Israel, “I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”  God tells Abraham that “in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  The promise made to Abraham and by extension to Israel was that they would have a land, they would be a great people, and they would be a blessing to the nations.

Often Israel seemed to forget that last part, but at their best, in things like the healing and grace offered to Naaman, Israel was a blessing to the nations.

Jesus makes reference to Naaman, and we read this as our New Testament scripture.  Jesus has just given his inaugural sermon in his hometown synagogue.  People are mostly impressed, but some start to say, “Hey, isn’t that Joseph’s boy?”  It all starts to take a negative turn and it’s hard to see just why things got so out of hand so quickly. 

Underlying it all is the fact that Jesus had performed many healings in Capernaum – a place with a large non-Jewish population – but apparently could not heal many in his hometown; Mark and Matthew make it clear that familiarity with Jesus bred a lack of faith in him.  “Isn’t this just the carpenter’s boy?” people asked.

Jesus didn’t have the kind of ministry in his hometown of Nazareth that he had in Capernaum.  Why did he go to a place like Capernaum in the first place – a town where there were a lot of Gentiles?  Of course the people would have a problem with Jesus healing Gentiles, but they also would have questioned why Jesus would bother with Jews who chose to live in such a place, who lived and consorted with Gentiles.

Jesus responds to the implicit criticism of his ministry by pointing back to Israelite history.  In a time of terrible drought, who did the prophet Elijah help?  Not an Israelite widow, but the poor widow of Zarephath, in Sidon, part of Lebanon.  And there were plenty of lepers around in the time of the prophet Elisha, but who did Elisha heal?  It was our friend Naaman, the Syrian.  

You can imagine how this went over.  Well, you don’t have to imagine.  We read the scripture; they wanted to drive Jesus off a cliff. 

The story of Naaman is a wonderful, multi-faceted story.  It has to do with healing and with humility and with integrity and with honoring the work of God.  But it also has to do with the broad reach of God’s mercy and grace.  Here is Naaman: a foreigner – strike one.  An enemy – strike two.  And a leper – strike three.  And yet, according to God’s rules, three strikes and you are in.

As we look around, who are the people who have strikes against them?  Who are those who are seen as outsiders?  Who are the people we see as unlikely? 

There is a great story that has come out of the National Basketball Association in the last week or so that has captured the imagination even of people who could care less about sports.

Jeremy Lin was born in California of Taiwanese parents.  He led his high school basketball team to a state championship but had no scholarship offers from Division I schools, so he went to Harvard.  He played well at Harvard, led the team in scoring his senior year, but went undrafted.  Lin sat on the Golden State Warriors’ bench most of last season as a rookie, he was cut by the Houston Rockets in training camp before this season, and he played in the NBA’s Developmental League for teams like Reno and Erie, playing against teams like the Iowa Energy. 

Finally, just before Christmas, the New York Knicks signed him to a short term contract.  He wasn’t expected to play, but the Knicks has do many injuries they just needed a warm body.  He expected to get cut when the injured players returned and so rather than find an apartment, he slept on his brother’s couch.  But then there were even more injuries and out of desperation, the coach put Lin in the game.  He scored 25 points.  The coach very wisely decided to let him start the next game and he scored 28.  In his first 6 games as a starter, he has scored more points than any player in the last 35 years.  And the Knicks, who had been floundering and whose two All-Stars were out with injuries, won all six games with Lin leading the way.  

Lin is the first Asian-American to play in the NBA.  He went to Harvard, not exactly a pro basketball factory.  He wasn’t even drafted.  In NBA terms, he was as unlikely a prospect as you would ever find.  Some have argued that he fell through the cracks because it was hard for those who evaluate talent to really see an Asian-American from Harvard as an NBA player.  I doubt if God is really a basketball fan, but I think this story has to make God smile. 

Who are the people around us who would seem to have a strike or two against them?  Who are the outsiders?  The unlikely people?  Immigrants?  People in the criminal justice system?  Poor people?  People who don’t look like us or dress like us?  People who don’t have much education?  Gay and lesbian folks?  Those who have different political ideas than we do?

It can offend the Gehazis of this world, but God’s grace extends to everyone.  Every single person.  With God, three strikes and you are in.  Amen.     

"Healing and Humility" - February 12, 2012

Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14

The story of Naaman has a lot of things going for it: servants telling masters what to do, political intrigue, a prophet who is completely unimpressed by powerful people.  A powerful general is humbled, a Syrian disses Israelite waterways, and there is a miraculous healing in a dirty river.  Plus, there is an unexpected plot twist and surprise ending that even those who know the story may not be familiar with.  What’s not to like?  It’s really one of the great stories of the Old Testament.  We will look at the more familiar first half of the story this week; next Sunday we will look at, as Paul Harvey says, “the rest of the story.”  

Naaman was the commander of the powerful army of Aram, an ancient country that is today part of Syria.  Naaman was a military hero, a powerful man.  Next to the king, Naaman was the most powerful person in all of the country.

But there was a problem.  Naaman had a secret.  He had a terrible skin disease.  Presumably, he had gone from doctor to doctor seeking help for his affliction.  Unless one was born into the royal family, a person could not rise any higher than Naaman.  But his power and status did not protect him from illness.

Just how bad was this for Naaman?  During a successful military campaign, an Israelite girl was taken captive, and she was now Naaman’s wife’s servant.  And inexplicably, this servant girl cares about Naaman.  It’s hard to imagine why; perhaps because this slave girl had suffered, she had compassion for the suffering of Naaman and his family.  For whatever reason, she has compassion.  And so she tells Naaman’s wife that there is a great prophet in her home country, back in Israel, who might be able to cure him.

Although this servant is unnamed and seems a relatively minor character in the story, there would be no story without her.  It is her suggestion that makes everything possible.  And while she has compassion for Naaman’s plight, she has a certain spunk.  Walter Brueggeman points out that the fact she says “there is a prophet” is a sort of slap at the religious leaders of Aram.  While she has been taken from her country and people, she is still a Hebrew, and back in her home country, there is a real prophet.

It says something about the depth of Naaman’s desperation that he listened to the advice of this slave girl.  It would be humiliating for this great man to go to Israel, of all places, on bended knee.  But the leprosy threaten to take everything from him, and so he willing to try almost anything, even willing to listen to a Hebrew slave girl. 

Naaman mentions this servants’ suggestion to the king, and to his surprise, the king thinks it’s a great idea.  Of course, there were political implications to consider.  Naaman’s visit would create quite a stir.  The king sends along gifts: silver and gold and ten new suits, the latest in Aramean fashion.  And rather than sending Naaman to the prophet, he sends him to the king of Israel. 

The letter sent to king says, “I have sent Naaman to you so that you may cure him of leprosy.”  And the king of Israel was scared to death.  “What, you think I can just cure leprosy?” he asks.  He was obviously being set up.  When he failed to provide the cure, Aram would have an excuse, a pretense, to beat up on Israel again.  It was a potentially dangerous situation, and the king tears his clothes as a sign of his despair.  But word of Naaman’s visit reached Elisha the prophet, who sent a message to the king of Israel.  “Send this guy on over to me,” Elisha says.

It’s interesting that this slave girl, a captive in a foreign land, has heard of the prophet Elisha and believes he can heal Naaman – but the king seems clueless about this.

Naaman and his whole entourage, with horses and chariots and servants, goes to the house of Elisha.  As commander of the Aramean army, he expects to be treated with dignity and respect. 

Naaman and his traveling group pulled up at Elisha’s place.  And they waited.  He was surprised that Elisha did not rush out to receive him.  But instead of being received with honor by Elisha, this Israelite prophet just sends out a servant.  Imagine that!  Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, arrives at the home of an Israelite prophet, and the prophet doesn’t even bother to see him!  A scrawny messenger boy tells Naaman to go dip in the Jordan River seven times, and you will be clean.

It was a slap in the face is what it was.  Elisha’s prescription was no better than his bedside manner.  The Jordan River was really not much more than a muddy creek.  It was shallow and at times rather foul-smelling.  If you dipped seven times in the Jordan River, you were likely to get a skin disease.

Naaman is infuriated.  He has come all this way, gone to all this trouble, brought expensive gifts, just to have the servant of an Israelite prophet tell him to go dip in a godforsaken mudhole.  If he were going to wash in a river, they had way better rivers back home.  Of all the nerve!

Naaman said, “I thought the prophet would come out, and wave his hands and call on his God, and say magic, mysterious words to cure the leprosy.  I thought there would be drama.  I thought there would be spectacle.  I thought it would be a big production!”  And Naaman stormed off in a rage.

And for the second time, it is not the mighty and powerful people, but a lowly servant who saves the day and points Naaman towards healing.  His servants approached him and said, “Look, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it?  So why not at least do this simple thing that he asks of you?”

Naaman can’t argue with the logic of that, so he does it.  He goes to the muddy waters of the Jordan, and he immersed himself seven times in the water.

Naaman’s problem was, as they say, more than skin-deep.  He has a problem with pride.  The story is told of a man who went to his doctor complaining about terrible neck pains, throbbing headaches, shortness of breath, visual blurring, and recurring dizzy spells. The doctor examined him and said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. You only have six months left to live.”

After the initial shock wore off, after the anger and denial, the doomed man decided he would spend his remaining time on earth enjoying himself.  He quit his job, bought a sports car, and a closet full of new hand tailored suits.  And since he'd never owned any tailored shirts before, he decided to get himself a dozen hand-made tailored shirts.  He went to the finest shirt shop he could find.  The tailor measured him and wrote down “Neck: size l6.”

“Wait a minute,” the man said.  “I’ve always worn a size l4 ½ neck, and that’s what I want.”  The tailor said, “But sir, the measurement calls for a size 16 neck.”  The man was absolutely adamant and said, “I don't care what your tape measure says.  I wear a size 14 ½ neck.”

In total frustration, the tailor replied: “OK! OK! I'll do it for you.  But don't come back complaining to me when you start having terrible neck pains, throbbing headaches, shortness of breath, visual blurring, and recurring dizzy spells.”

Naaman had to set aside his pride and humble himself.  The text says, “He went down,” and he really did have to go down.  He had to stoop to taking advice from an Israelite slave girl, then he went down to Jerusalem, and then even further down to the prophet in Samaria, he had to lower himself to be set straight by his own servants, and finally he went down into the muddy Jordan, washing with the very common people of an enemy nation, before he found healing.

Humility is not particularly valued in our culture, and it often has a negative image.  For some, humility amounts to realizing what a worm we are, what a miserable wretch of a person we really are.  That is not humility.  Humility does not mean putting ourselves down, it means seeing ourselves as we really are, seeing ourselves in proper relationship with others and with God.

Naaman had a hard time seeing himself as he really was.  He was insensitive to his spiritual condition.  For healing to take place, Naaman needed to learn humility.  It wasn’t his money or power or strength that brought Naaman healing.  It was simple faith.  He almost blew it, but every step of the way it was a simple, humble faith that led him to healing.  Naaman, Commander of the Army, had to admit that he had no control over this disease.  In the end, it was only the power of the God of Israel that made him well.

“The Doctor” was a movie starring William Hurt as a physician who is diagnosed with throat cancer.  As a teacher in the med school, he is used to people following his commands.  He is in control and in charge, and he is not used to being a patient.

As a patient, he finds that he has to do a lot of waiting.  He is treated like anybody else and has to go by other people’s schedules, not his own.  He is not used to feeling unimportant; he is not used to all the indignities of being a patient.  In the course of his treatment, he becomes friends with a fellow patient who teaches him a great deal about living and about dying.  He makes a full recovery, while she does not.  When he returns to his teaching position, one of the first class projects is to assign a bed to each student and to attach a hypothetical disease to each of them.  Each make-believe patient has to undergo all of the tests associated with that disease.  The nurses, much more familiar than doctors with the day-to-day care of patients, seem pleased.

This doctor was not only cured, he was healed.  He experienced a conversion of sorts, and returns to his profession, both a changed man and a much better doctor.

It may have been that way for Naaman.  He was cured of his illness, and we have to hope that in the process, he was healed as well, that he learned humility, learned to listen to others, and was a changed man after the experience.

Naaman’s story is our story.  We all have a vulnerable place in our lives.  We all long for wholeness and healing.  And to really find healing, we have to humble ourselves—not to think less of ourselves, but to see ourselves as we really are.  We may think we can handle everything all by ourselves, but we can’t.  We have tried and it doesn’t work.  When cancer comes, we don’t know how we will make it.  When unemployment, or marital problems, or struggles with our children, or failing health of parents, or any of those crises of life come our way, we realize that it takes more than we have.  It takes giving up control and listening to others and allowing others to be there for us and with us and it takes placing our faith in God.

Crises in life may bring us down, but we may find healing in unexpected places.  When we go down, God lifts us up to new life.

Bible passages such as this, that focus on healing, are always problematic because we know of cases where people are not healed and we ask why was this person over here made well and this person not made well.  And I don’t have an answer for that.  But the fact is that no one in the Bible and no one in human history has been cured in a final sense on this earth, in this life.  Even Lazarus, who was raised from the dead by Jesus, didn’t live forever.  There is a lot we do not know about healing, but I do know that there is more than one kind of healing, and in many cases where there was no physical cure there has without a doubt been healing.  Naaman was fortunate to experience both physical and spiritual healing, but who is to say which is the greater?

We all have places where we need to be healed.  Healing has to do with relationships and wholeness and being honest about who we are.  The road to healing is not always straightforward; it certainly wasn’t for Naaman.  As you think about your life, where are you vulnerable?  In what part of your life do you need to admit that you cannot do it all by yourself?  In what way do you need to trust God?

"Sweet Hour of Prayer?" - February 5, 2012

Text: Mark 1:29-39


A couple of weeks ago, Susan and I went to Orlando, Florida for a pastors conference.  Now, I didn’t want to go.  I hated the thought of sunshine and palm trees and 80 degree weather.  It just felt wrong to be wearing shorts in January.  We reluctantly went to the ocean on our free afternoon because there was nothing better to do.  Unfortunately, they didn’t ask me where to schedule the conference, and I had to suffer for Jesus in Florida.

While we were gone, our dog Rudy went to stay with his friend Sadie McCarley – Bob and Jenna’s dog.  He and Sadie get along pretty well and from what we hear, he was a good house guest.

What was interesting was that as soon as he was home, he went directly into his usual routine.  He sat in the same places at the same times, he annoyed our cat in the same way, he went about his business as if nothing had happened.  He fell right into his regular daily routine.

Rudy is like a lot of us; we have a routine.  Oh, it might involve travel, it might involve some variety that is built in, but it is usually fairly predictable.  I never know what kind of phone call I am going to get or who is going to walk in the door or what kind of crisis is going to pop up; I have various meetings to attend and visits to make and there are ballgames to go to, but it all falls into a general pattern.

I wonder: was it that way for Jesus?  Our scripture today includes a day in the life of Jesus.  And reading the gospel of Mark, this seems to be a pretty typical day.  It doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.  Mark is a gospel of action, and Jesus has a full calendar.  In this case, Jesus went to the synagogue, where he wowed everyone with his teaching and healing.  Following this, it was off to Simon and Andrew’s house, where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever.  Jesus took her by the hand, and she was made well.  It wasn’t long before crowds came out to where he was staying, and he healed the sick and cast out demons.  Jesus was on a roll.  He was becoming a celebrity, he had a following, he was in demand.  He was on the cover of all the magazines and being recruited for all the talk shows.

All of this was quite tiring.  It had been a long day, but really not out of the ordinary – this day seems like a lot of Jesus’ days.  But one has to wonder how Jesus kept up this hectic pace.  One commentator noted, “Like a mystery novel, Scripture sometimes gives a clue as to how Jesus is able to do the things he does.”  In this passage, stuck in there between the healings at Simon’s house and a preaching tour which followed, we have verse 35: “While it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  It was through prayer that Jesus gained the strength he needed.  It was through prayer that he gained vision and direction.  He got up early in the morning, while it was still dark, to go off by himself to pray.  But there is an interesting message packed into this short verse that we may not catch.

The NRSV, which we read, says that Jesus went to a “deserted place.”  Interestingly, this is the very same word that was translated as “wilderness” earlier in the same chapter, when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan.  The word has connotations of an abandoned, desolate, and empty place, a lonely place, a place where there is danger. 

You might think of the story of the Good Samaritan.  In going from Jerusalem to Jericho, one traveled a winding, steep road through a rocky, sparsely populated area.  There were plenty of places for robbers to hide, and the road was known to be dangerous.  The word translated as “wilderness” or “deserted place” would fit this kind of geography.

And this same word is used to describe the place Jesus went to pray.  By describing this place in the same way he described the place where Jesus was tempted by Satan, Mark is trying to tell us something.  Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.  And soon after, he went off to pray in the wilderness.  Mark is saying something about Jesus and the struggle he was facing, but this verse also tells us something about the nature of prayer.

Some of our thinking about prayer comes from our hymns.  This morning we sang “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”  We sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus/ all our sins and griefs to bear/ what a privilege to carry/ everything to God in prayer.”  These hymns are very true.  We can experience a “sweet hour of prayer,” and it is “a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”  We need to sing those hymns.  But there are also those times, if we are honest, when prayer is not so sweet.  There are times when rather than sweet, it may seem more like a “Bitter Hour of Prayer” or “Grueling Hour of Prayer,” or at least a “Relatively Difficult Hour of Prayer.”

This is because real prayer, deep prayer, causes us to examine our own hearts.  It isn’t just reciting our laundry list of needs before God; prayer involves listening and waiting.  Prayer can be a time of wrestling with hard choices.  If we think of prayer only in terms of “sweet hour of prayer,” then perhaps we haven’t prayed enough.

A quick perusal of some of Jesus’ prayers should set us straight on this.  Jesus agonizes in the Garden, “Let this cup pass from me.”  There is great passion and even angst as Jesus prays.

The Psalms likewise contain much more than nice, non-threatening prayers.  Hear a portion of Psalm 55:

Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.  Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint.  I am distraught by the noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked.  For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger they cherish enmity against me.  My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.  Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.  And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.”

It is not a calm, quiet, peaceful prayer.  The wilderness may have been the perfect place for Jesus to pray because it mirrored what was going on within him.  He was in a place of danger, a place of emptiness.  He was facing temptation. 

Now, this might sound strange – what was the temptation?  Jesus’ movement was growing, and it seems like he should have been on top of the world.  Well, there lies the temptation.  Jesus has to confront the demons of fame.  When the disciples find him, they say, “Hey Jesus, where have you been all this time?  Everybody is looking for you.  The crowds want to know when your next gig is going to be.  And by the way, Oprah called.”

Don’t kid yourself: this was a temptation for Jesus, just as those 40 days in the wilderness had been a time of temptation.  Fame is very tempting.  He easily could have stayed put in Capernaum and have everybody coming to him.  He didn’t need to go to every god-forsaken village – they could come to him.  He could have used his fame for God’s purposes.  But in the end, after this time of prayer, his mind was set on God’s call.  He walked away from the crowds and went to villages where most had never heard of him.  “That is what I came out to do,” he said.

It is through prayer that Jesus found the strength to do what he was called to do – the strength to be who he really was.  Describing this incident, Tom Ehrich writes

Jesus went on retreat because he had just been idolized by a throng. If he listened too avidly to the crowd’s applause, he would lose himself.  He needed to step away from that danger and put himself in a position to listen to God.  For in the end, his life – like all of our lives – was to be about servanthood, not mastery; self-denial, not self-promotion; healing, not ruling. 

Making those kinds of choices – for servanthood, for self-denial, for healing rather than ruling – are not easy.  What is very easy is to rationalize our actions.  Think of the good Jesus could accomplish with his fame.  Think of the good a person could do with runaway success and with public adulation.

It’s not just true of individuals.  Think of the good that would come if First Baptist Church was as well-known as Hy-Vee or Wal-Mart.  What could be wrong with that? 

Think about Jesus’ choice.  How many of us, starting out with a congregation of 12 people and no church building would turn our backs on such an opportunity? Who wouldn’t want to enjoy the success of growing a handful of followers into hundreds, if not thousands overnight?

But Jesus knows that making healings the highlight of his ministry is the short cut to popularity.  If it had been his objective, he could have easily built a big following.  But he also knows that if he does that, his message will be lost in the process, and he will become just another peddler of instant gratification.    As Nathan Nettleton puts it, “If he wants success and popularity it would be a great strategy.  But if he wants to call people to a life that is absurd by the standards of this world, he’d be wasting his breath.”

Away at prayer, the disciples finally find Jesus.  They arrive with the schedule for the day in hand: a parade at 9:30, lunch with the town dignitaries, followed by a sermon at 1:30, healings at 2:45, a press conference at 5:30 followed by a gala dinner and a showstopping evening performance.  But Jesus said, “No, this is not what I am called to do.  Let’s pack up and head for another town.”

His disciples thought he had lost it, but this was simply a matter of attentive prayer.  Prayer can be dangerous, because in prayer we not only come face to face with God, but face to faith with ourselves and face to face with the demons within.

We can think of prayer as a rather innocuous activity.  What could be tamer than prayer?  What could be safer than prayer?  But if we pay attention to the prayers we find in the Bible, and those who are praying them, we would realize that prayer might not be all that safe after all.  In prayer, we risk being changed.  William Willimon says that one of his theories as to why some people don’t worship on Sundays is that they know at some level that to worship is to have your cherished prejudices challenged and your beloved idols disrupted through meeting with the God you did not expect.
 
I remember that some time ago, one of our members told me that out of habit, she sat down in the pew and reached for her seat belt.  It was pretty funny, but maybe she was on to something, because worship can be dangerous.  Prayer can be a dangerous activity.  It can force us to look at things we don’t want to look at. 

Mindy sang for us a beautiful hymn this morning, “In The Quiet Curve Of Evening.”  The words by Julie Howard speak to our common experience of life: there is darkness, there is sadness, there are gaps in our understanding, there is mystery and silence and grieving.  It is in these times of life that we turn to God in prayer, and the answers do not come quickly or easily.  Life, and prayer, can be filled with struggle.  But the refrain of Good News is sung again and again: even in the midst of all of this, God, You are there, You are there, You are there.

Our world is filled with worry and struggle.  Lots of people are out of work.  Lots of people are longing for community, for a place to belong.  Lots of people are worried about their families.  There are worries over safety and security, and a lot of people are living on the brink.  We continue to see violence and war on the news every evening.  We continue to see such polarized and mean-spirited public discourse.  And so many struggle with personal issues of health and well-being. 

In such times, the old hymn has it right: it is a “privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”  And so, we bring our struggles and our hurts, our pain and our loss and all our uncertainty.  This is a privilege.  And often, in such times, we come away renewed, refreshed, energized, empowered.  God meets us in prayer and we are comforted and encouraged.

But there are other times when we may come to prayer feeling comfortable, feeling successful, feeling certain, and through prayer we may in fact discover our struggles and our pain; we may be moved away from our certainty.  It is no coincidence that often, it is following a success that Jesus gets away to pray.  Success, adulation, and power have a way of messing with our minds and altering our values and priorities.

The purpose of the gospel is sometimes described as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.  This can happen in prayer.  This can happen in worship.  Sometimes we come feeling afflicted and we find comfort.  But sometimes we come feeling comfortable in worship blindness is lifted and temptations are exposed and we see ourselves as we really are.  We can open ourselves to new directions as we listen to God, as we really listen to our lives.  Prayer can move us to a new place.

In the midst of a busy day, smack in the middle of success and adulation and high hopes, Jesus goes away to a deserted place, a wilderness place, to pray – to reconnect with God, to remember who he is, to listen to the Spirit, to listen to his life.  And he leaves that place with a clear sense of purpose and direction.  He turns his back on the road to fame and chooses the road to servanthood. 

And that, too, is a sweet hour of prayer.  Amen.