Healing in Weakness, The Reverend David R. Williams, Epiphany VI--Year B--February 12, 2006

The word “heal” or the verb “to heal” offers consolation to us and, at the same time, an element of mystery. 
 
We do not fully understand how all healing occurs.  When I have a scratch on my hand from working in the yard, I am aware of the pain; at first I see the wound, but after a few days, I do not even think about it.  Then, one day, my hand is like new.
 
“To make sound or whole.  To restore,” the dictionary says about healing. “To cause an undesirable condition to be overcome.”
 
Mystery!  Consolation!  Eventually, maybe even complacency. 
 
Four hundred years before the time of Jesus, a philosopher wrote, “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes a matter of opportunity.”
 
The story of Naaman, a story of the First Lesson from the Second Book of Kings, is about healing.  This healing story is more a matter of opportunity than a matter of time.
 
The story of Naaman is like a great opera, a stage drama, a well-produced sit-com.  We can find ourselves right up there, on the stage.
 
We join this great warrior Naaman on stage for a few minutes.  Naaman has a most incredible resume.  His list of accomplishments--battles won--fill an entire page.  He has lost none and had vanquished all.  Naaman’s outstanding performance has raised to great heights his famous name, his image, his stature in the land of Aram. The King of Aram (the land we call Syria today) holds up Naaman as his finest commander.
 
If we translate Naaman’s record to our own culture we might say that he is as the best, most aggressive, most accomplished salesman in the business--whatever the business--car sales, textiles, Labcorp, gourmet food entrepreneurship. Identity, notoriety and media image are directly linked to performance. 
 
Once we are there at great height, once the image is established, then any faltering in achievement can be critical—for Naaman, for the enterprising business person, the top sales person, the social worker keeping up a huge caseload or the teacher responsible for maintaining the test scores of  students. The pressure to continue and increase stature can become ever more intense. We see this pressure in many of our Olympic athletes and other celebrities, in our parenting of overachieving children, in the business world of downsizing and increased accountability among remaining employees or in the pressure to keep up those As, especially because you did so well last semester!
 
Great performance leads to higher expectation and pressure.
 
I know a Special Education teacher, self-assured young woman committed to the lives ofgrade school children, particularly those struggling with intense learning and emotional problems. She is a most conscientious and dedicated teacher, recognized for her good work and loved by her little ones. When the pressure builds, however, our young lady breaks out into severe hives. The stress, the worry and  the concern about failing one of the children are made known on the surface of her skin. 
 
The great warrior Naaman has leprosy, so goes the story. This warrior of all warriors, this macho man of all macho men, is utterly embarrassed by the sudden appearance of a vile skin disease. 
 
This life drama told in Second Kings then takes a turn. We witness an entirely new set on the stage-- far different from that warrior image in the beginning of the drama.  We enter the boudoir of Namaan’s home.  Naaman’s wife feels sorry for Naaman. Her slave girl feels sorry for Naaman.  The King of Aram feels sorry for him.  Pity and sorrow now become predominant themes for the play—not those initial images of victory, war and success. “The prophet in Israel could cure him of his leprosy,” the sympathetic slave girl says. 
 
Healing. To cause an undesirable condition to be overcome. Healing. Sometimes a matter of opportunity.      
 
The quiet response of the slave girl, the underling of all underlings, becomes the voice of hope and of repair.
 
Naaman has spent his life developing his career, his identity, his image.  He has become somewhat arrogant and self-centered.  The leprosy arises from the depths of his being and reminds Naaman of his humanity.  The reminder: the leprosy, the scratch on the hand, the worried mind, the headaches, the high blood pressure, the weight gain, the hives are felt as humbling weakness.
 
The slave girl plants the seed for healing.  As the idea from the slave girl passes up the chain of command all the way to the King, Naaman decides to deal with the possibility of his healing: King versus King, mano a mano. He surely is not telling anyone that a slave girl gave him the idea.  Finding the right contacts (a King will do) and throwing a lot of money at that contact is the manly way to do business. The King of Aram sends the letter to the King of Israel along with a lot of money.  The letter demands that Naaman be healed.     
 
This letter, sent by the King of Aram would be like today’s President of Syria writing to Ariel Sharon of Israel (before he became sick, of course) and suggesting that Sharon heal the President of Syria’s most favorite, most powerful Syrian war commander.
 
“ARE YOU KIDDING?” might respond Israel’s “King.”
 
The skeptical and bewildered King of Israel figures this is a plot to pick a fight.  He goes into an emotional tirade, tearing his clothes off, yelling and screaming:  “Am I a God, to give life or death?”
 
Change of scene: enter Elisha, the prophet. Not a king, not a warrior , but one speaking for the heart and soul of a people as well as for the nature and power of a God who heals.
 
Healing. To make sound or whole. To cause an undesirable condition to be overcome. 
 
Elisha does not pander to Naaman’s haughtiness.  The prophet Elisha refuses to welcome Naaman in person. Not only does the prophet not meet with the great warrior Naaman, Elisha tells Naaman through a messenger to go jump in the River Jordan.   Feeling humiliated and ridiculed, Naaman starts to leave in a rage.  Another slave voice then breaks through Naaman’s arrogance, touching Naaman’s human heart, guiding him on the journey to healing.
 
“So, Naaman went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; Naaman’s flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” An undesirable condition overcome…. a matter of opportunity. 
 
How many of our physical symptoms even today are reminders of our humanity?  We must admit the arrogance, the self-centeredness of Naaman is not that foreign. We can be as stubborn as Naaman. 
 
Still, we are blessed with that inner voice sometimes not taken seriously, the underling voice of the slave, the voice of the prophet, the inner quiet voice of God reaching through our defenses, gently guiding us to a place of humility, a place of cleansing, renewing, healing waters. These waters, a reminder of the waters of Baptism.
 
The Gospel brings another leper to our attention at another time, hundreds of years later. Lepers are pariahs, shunned from all culture and society, not unlike having the Asian Bird Flu or AIDS or any other isolating, feared disease today. But the leper in our story feels an opening to approach Jesus.  This is astounding.    
 
Jesus is the voice of the slave girl, the voice of Elisha, the quiet healing voice of God.  Is our spirituality such that it allows others to approach?  Can we be as Jesus to those people painfully shy, to the embarrassed, to friends worried sick with stress, to those sad and those who mourn, to people very different from ourselves? 
 
Healing. The overcoming of an undesirable condition. A matter of opportunity.
 
“O God,” we pray in today’s Collect, “the strength of all who put their trust in You: mercifully accept our prayer; and because in our weakness-- our leprosy, our worrying, our asthma, our human frailty, our inflated sense of self--we can do nothing good without You, give us the help of Your grace, give us an opportunity for healing, give us relief from undesirable conditions in our frail lives, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed.” 
 
Amen.