Sunday's Sermon

It Couldn’t Be That Easy            Rev. Dr. Patricia Ramsden

 

    “No.”  He thought, when he saw the small white patch of flaky skin.  “It can’t be happening to me.  Not now.”  

    All of his hopes and dreams had come true.  He was a respected commander, a leader in the king’s army and the king’s court.  He had just won a great military victory.  His marriage was happy and strong.  Everything was going right.  

    So not this.  

    Not now.  

    But over the days, that small patch of white skin grew, until his wife noticed it.  Until the servants noticed it. 

    Leprosy.  

    The most dreaded disease of its time. 

    It not only could slowly kill you but it separated you as an outcast when you needed the people you loved the most.  And so even the servants began to whisper among themselves until finally a slave girl from Israel went to her master’s wife with the news.  There was a prophet in Israel who could heal him if he would only go to him for help.  

    A slave girl from a country that was too often considered to be an enemy offered his only hope.  So Naaman went to his king and confessed to his illness asking permission to go to Israel to buy the impossible healing.  The king sent him with riches upon riches, for surely such a miracle would be expensive and difficult to achieve.  

    The king of Israel panicked when Naaman showed up with his request.  How could he - how could anyone in his kingdom - heal an incurable disease?  He tore his robes in despair and cried out that it was hopeless when Elisha said he and God together could do it.  

    So Naaman went to this man of God in a mixture of hope and despair, hoping for the drama of a miracle.  But Elisha did not even come out to examine the patient - to offer a physician’s normal care and compassion.  Instead he sent a messenger telling Naaman to simply wash seven times in the River Jordan and he would be healed.  

    Naaman was furious.  Surely the prophet should have at least looked him over and what good would a bath do him?  He had bathed before.  If God was going to act surely he would act in a large, dramatic fashion.  At the very least the prophet should have waved his arms over him and shouted some kind of mumble jumble over the spots of flaky skin so they would disappear like magic, but all he was told to do was to take a bath - not once - not twice - but seven times, keeping faith each time that he would be closer to healing.  

    It took his slaves to convince him to do it.  And when he did, he was healed.  Against all reason, he was healed.  And he realized the power and love of God.

 

    He had grown up in a tragic home - so tragic that he was placed in foster care for his own safety, but foster care was not easy.  He was sent from home to home, never knowing when he got back from school if his bags would be packed and he would be sent to another family with another set of expectations, another set of rules, another opportunity to be rejected.  His clothing was inevitably packed in trash bags because he didn’t own a suitcase and it didn’t take long before he began to feel like trash himself.  

    But he grew into a man determined to succeed and so he did in the eyes of the world, but in his personal life - inside himself - he still felt like trash waiting to be rejected by anyone he loved.  So he would up and leave before the ones he cared for could pack his bags for him.  

    He couldn’t see a different way of being - a way built on trust and faith.  Until he came across someone who would’t give up.  Who would stay there time after time, each time he left, insisting she would be there when he would try again and show back up on her doorstep.  She insisted love would win if he just came home again.  

    Time after time he tested the water, unsure that it would work - that she would still be there waiting for him when he returned to love.  And yet she was.  Seven times he left.  Seven times she stayed, until he could be healed and fully trust again. 

    Nothing dramatic happened.  Nothing but heartbreak each time he left and heart healing whenever he returned.  

    But in the end, both he and Naaman found their healing.  

    

    Sometimes, healing doesn’t come the way we expect it to.  It doesn’t come with drama and bright lights and loud voices accompanied by impossible prayers.  

    Sometimes it comes with quiet attempts to believe in God’s love.  To trust in God’s saying.  “Do this.  This supposedly simple thing that seems so hard.  So impossible.  Bathe in the sacred water of love knowing the healing may not come the first time, or the second, or even the third.  But keep bathing in love time after time in impossible hope until love wins against all the odds. “ 

    That’s one of the messages of Naaman’s story and that is one of the messages for us today.  

    It sounds impossibly easy - too easy we may think - this command to bathe in love.  But, when love seems impossible, when it is the most difficult thing of all - we must trust in love again and again.  We must be willing to dip into it again and again until love does its work and we recognize a power greater than any illness of the body or the heart.   Until we recognize the power of God.