Review of
important points from the story:
·
The king of Aram (Syria) thought Naaman, who was
a commander of his army was blessed by God because he won lots of battles. Syria and Israel were enemies, so this
probably meant Naaman had killed some Israelites.
·
Syrian raiders captured an Israeli girl and made
her a servant to Naaman.
·
Elisha didn’t come out to meet Naaman, and that
made him upset.
·
Naaman was going to just leave because of this,
but his officers convinced him to try the remedy proposed by Elisha.
·
After Naaman was healed, he tried to give money
to Elisha, but he refused to accept payment.
·
Gehazi then followed Naaman and got some money
for himself, which ended up with him being cursed with leprosy.
What can we
learn from this story?
The fact
that Naaman was Syrian, and in fact an enemy of Israel (probably won battles
against them where Israelites died), brings up some interesting evidence that
God saw all of humanity as his children.
It’s interesting to me that there is so much evidence of this in the Old
Testament that I used to just skip over.
I don’t plan to list them all, but Jonah was sent to Nineveh to tell
them about God. God told Abraham he
would bless his descendants and through them the rest of the world. Many of the laws given in Leviticus and
Deuteronomy were about how to treat travelers, strangers and the poor in ways
that were much better than the prevailing custom. I think the Israelites often missed the
message that God was trying to send about how much he loved everyone; it seems
like the Israelites took maybe too much liberty with some of the ways they
treated enemies. I have come to believe
that a lot of the most violent and horrific things in the old testament are a
result of people recording their understanding of what a God would tell them to
do, as well as an intent to justify things after the fact in some cases.
For me, God
is the personification of love, and I understand that to mean that God wants us
to receive that love as it flows out of God toward us. And, just as importantly, God wants us to
then love people as much as we can. I
think it’s a little utopian to think we can do this as well as Jesus does, but
that’s the goal. So when I look at this
story, I see the love of God manifested in several places. First, the Hebrew servant girl, who cares
about her master and wants him to receive the healing she knows is possible
from God. Next is the message from
Elisha: go wash yourself and you will be clean.
God wants him to be healthy and he wants to show not just Naaman, but
his people, that there is a God who loves them, even as they are the enemies of
Israel.
Elisha must
have some of this love of God in him that he is willing to seek out Naaman and
provide him the message from God about healing his skin condition. The king of Israel didn’t even think of sending
for Elisha; Naaman would never have received this healing if it weren’t for
Elisha sending word to the king to send Naaman to him.
When Naaman
reacts with anger about the way Elisha treated him – he was upset that Elisha
did not come in person to shake hands and receive the gifts Naaman brought and
he was also upset that Elisha didn’t wave his hands over the spot and utter
words to God, but instead told him to wash himself 7 times in the Jordan
river. He thought there’s nothing
special about the Jordan river, why would that have any effect on his
leprosy. He might have thought Elisha
was just insulting him instead of providing the cleansing he was looking for.
But his officers showed love for him too by persuading him to go ahead and try
the cure Elisha provided.
And finally,
God chose to heal him and sent him safely on his way.
Elisha
wasn’t willing to come out to meet Naaman in person but Jesus was willing to
touch a leper to heal him. Why? Some commentaries say that since Elisha was a
Jew, he would become unclean if he was touched by a leper. I also read one that said that Elisha was not
impressed by the wealth and power displayed by Naaman and his entourage and
didn’t want to reward him for showing up that way. You don’t buy healing from God, it is
something that God gives and no one deserves it more than anyone else. This was in contrast to the belief of many
that God or the gods show their blessings on those who have power and wealth,
and those who are poor or powerless are not favored by God. Elisha was trying to communicate not just
with Naaman, but with everyone who was there that God isn’t impressed by human
power but by love. When Gehazi went to
extort money from Naaman, he was cursed with leprosy. Again I wonder why. Maybe because he missed the whole point
Elisha was trying to make?
There is an
interesting parallel mention of this story by Jesus in the other reading we had
today. Jesus used the story of Naaman
when he was challenged by the people of Nazareth to do the same miracles he had
done in Capernaum. He was frustrated
that they didn’t believe him when he said he was there to fulfill the promise
of a savior. He reminded them that
neither Elijah nor Elisha ministered to their own people (widows or lepers) but
could only do great things among outsiders because their own people lacked
faith. This can be seen in that the king
of Israel didn’t believe leprosy could be healed and that’s why he was so upset
when he received the letter from the King of Aram asking for healing for Naaman. It didn’t occur to him that Elisha could do
that, because he thought he knew about what was possible. Presumably, the people of Israel were not
seeking out Elisha for cleansing of leprosy because they didn’t believe Elisha
could do it.
Naaman
wanted to pay to be healed. It was
important to him that this process happen in the proscribed manner. When we try to buy favor from God that way,
we enter into a false relationship with God where we are trying to control the
interaction. And it creates an illusion
that we’re controlling God; but we don’t call it controlling God, because we
want to lie to ourselves too and believe that it’s real. Buying favor with God is kind of a metaphor
for all the things we do to get God to do what we want. I think of it like using certain language to
create what we consider a binding contract with God. If I confess my sins and ask Jesus to forgive
me, then God has to let me into heaven, and not ask much more of me. Sometimes people pick a kind of service to
earn favor with God. I don’t mean to say
that serving people because you love God is bad. And I’m not saying we should look around us
at the people serving God and try to figure out if they are just doing it out
of fear or to control God. But what I am saying is that for each of us, it’s
important to examine our hearts regularly to see if we are motivated by love or
if we are trying to exert control. I
believe that whenever we think we are controlling others or God or events in
our lives, it is an illusion. As people,
we only have control over ourselves, and we have less control over ourselves
than we think we do.
While this
might sound depressing, I don’t mean it to be.
I just feel that it’s very important for us to see ourselves realistically. When I first became a Christian, I was very
worried about doing things right. For
myself, as I look back on that time, it wasn’t so much about loving God as it was
about feeling like I owed it to Jesus to do everything right in order to pay
him back for dying on the cross. I did
many things to try and feel like I was being true to how Jesus had purified
me. I cut off friendship with people I
considered bad influences on me, I threw out all my science fiction and horror
books (and I had a lot of books), I went to or hung out with my spiritual
mentors 6 days a week. These things were
not necessarily bad things to do… I learned a lot about God and life from
people in the church who had been Christians their whole lives. But I wasn’t doing any of those things out of
a confidence that I was loved by God.
And I surely was not trying to share any of the love of God with my
community, because I wasn’t really letting myself experience much of that love.
It has taken
me many years to shed the legalistic framework I had of my relationship with
God. I have gone through several phases
of progress, which I won’t bore you with here.
But the important thing is that for me, experiencing God’s love, and
then sharing it with the people I run across in my life is a process that I
have to consciously engage with daily. I
don’t think, for me, that love is the default response. The default response is to bargain. To try to do the right thing, or just the
same things I do every day, and I still sometimes think there is something that
I will make God do if I do these other things right. I don’t really think it’s about God making a
place for me in heaven because I responded to someone with kindness, because I
think being saved or sanctified is about learning and becoming more like God if
God is love. But I do think sometimes
magically like if I pray enough or read the bible enough, that he will protect
me from sickness or maybe he will not expect some big sacrifice for me.
God really
wants to love us. Just like a parent
loves and delights in their child. Just
like you love your spouse, or your sibling.
Although the love we have for friends and family is still not the
perfect kind of love that God has, I think it helps us understand the way that
God loves each person. And all of
creation. Sometimes when I read that God
loves me, it can seem really abstract to me.
That’s why I really have to fight against reducing it to an obligatory
thing. Like I love God because he saved
me from hell, and now he has to love me because I believe in him. But what if God is bigger than that? What if when the bible says God is love, it
really means, that is his essence. That
is the part that sums up every other facet of God’s being. If God really is love, then he doesn’t choose
to love me or you, or an eagle. He is loving us. When I look at everything we humans have
collected about God, I see God through the prism of human nature and
culture. I believe the bible is the
record of people’s interaction with this being, and us trying to understand
what God is. That’s why so many of the
stories in the Old Testament especially seem to reflect God acting much more
like other Gods. He tells people to
conquer others, to kill and steal from people.
He seemingly condones many things that are abhorrent to us now. But there are glimmers within all that
bloodshed and abuse of the true nature of the God we worship.
I also think
that we are on a continuum of learning more and more about this being that we
think of as God. The New Testament
refines the message of God’s love through the stories of Jesus and of the early
church. Jesus doesn’t worry about
uncleanness from people he touches somehow making him unclean. He explains that the ritual laws about purity
were an example of the way God takes care of us, but it’s what in your heart
that makes you clean or unclean. In Mark
7:20-23 he says: “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from
within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft,
murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander,
pride, and foolishness. All these vile
things come from within; they are what defile you.” If you think about it, all these things are
really sins against other people. Which
you could say lustful desires only affect the person thinking them, they really
do lead to things that can hurt others like pornography and sexual
harassment. Jesus is trying to get us to
understand that when he talks about God cleansing our hearts, he means
cleansing us from the kinds of things that are incompatible with loving
someone. Being cleansed by God is a
process that takes a long time; it’s not a one step and done kind of thing.
There are
three points from this story and Jesus’ mention of it that I think are
important. First, God is trying to show
how we are to love our enemy. By the
human way of reckoning, God had no obligation to heal Naaman. In fact, it would have made sense for God to
punish him. God is showing in this story
that he is calling his people to a greater level of love and to a much larger
in-group. Secondly, God is showing that
we don’t control him by adhering to an expectation regarding how God should
reward or punish people. Especially due
to the kind of society we live in, we need to work at learning not to think of
our relationship with God as a contract or some other means of controlling the
interaction. God wants a relationship
and that means both parties are genuine and choose to interact in a reciprocal
manner based in love. And finally, I
think this story combined with the stories of how Jesus interacted with people
can teach us some important things about who God is and what he wants. Clearly, God loves all the people in this
story, and wants them to have a full life with meaning. When I say God loves us, or that God is love,
it means something very special and different.
God shows his love by healing even the enemies of his people, and he is
trying to show that to everyone. He
wants us to respond by demonstrating love toward our enemies. This is contrary to human nature, so we can
really only be successful at this with help from God.