In the weekly exercise of looking ahead at the Sunday lectionary,
it seemed to me that this time the ancient Hebrew story of Naaman[1] wins
hands down over the Epistle and the Gospel. It’s such a good story. Naaman in Hebrew means pleasant. We might imagine that this Commander-in-Chief
of the army of Aram, today’s Syria, was a popular chap, a role model, handsome
in a military way.
But Naaman had leprosy.
Goodness knows what he actually had – leprosy is a more precise
diagnosis these days than in the 9th century BC. At any rate, he had an affliction which
rendered him socially and religiously unclean… it was a catastrophe. Naaman would become an outcast. That was the first blow to Naaman’s ego.
The second was that Naaman’s wife’s servant girl, a Hebrew
slave, a trophy of war, suggests to Naaman’s wife that there is a prophet in
Israel who might be able to help. As
though that were not humiliating enough, Naaman’s boss, the King of Syria, therefore
peremptorily orders Naaman to go to Israel and ask for this help.[2] The king sends a gift for the King of Israel
- ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. Next humiliation: The King of Israel stages a melt-down: 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. None of this carry-on is conspicuously
therapeutic.
Next humiliation… Naaman
rolls up, chariots and all, at the home of Elisha the prophet. Elisha however declines to appear – he simply
sends a message out: Go and wash in the Jordan seven times… This is the point in an American movie where
the big irascible bloke flings his hat to the ground… Right! that does it! Or
words to that effect. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Syria,
better than all the waters of Israel?
May I not wash in them and be clean…? The Hebrew makes it clear that Naaman is in a
ferocious temper. Final humiliation… His
servants point out the obvious – it’s a simple enough requirement, they say,
why not give it a try… Naaman does, and
behold, it works.
The rest is a trifle embarrassing. Naaman henceforth will worship only Israel’s
God – and for that purpose he needs a load of Israeli soil to cart back to
Syria, since you can’t worship Israel’s God on Syrian soil. We always assumed that converting to Israel’s
God would be an improvement. I’m not so
sure…[3]
It seems to me that the wisdom in this story surfaces in
what Naaman’s servants say to him: Master, if the prophet had demanded
something great from you, you would have done it – but he has asked something
simple… Naaman’s healing is more
than the healing of his disease. He has
to stop and listen and learn. He has to
come out from behind his towering ego, and risk being naked and vulnerable. He has to accept powerlessness and
dependence. He has to be open to newness
and change. So do we. It is the point of our prayer of silence and
stillness and simplicity.
[1] II
Kings 5:1-17
[2] As
though someone advised Donald J Trump to seek psychiatric help in North Korea.
[3]
This is the 9th century BC, and Israel’s God is a tribal deity. We are still a long way from the insights of
the 6th century prophet Isaiah, for instance in Isaiah 42.
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