St Luke’s, Havelock North – OT 6, Feb 15^th 2009 – ‘If You Choose’

Readings: 2 Kings 5: 1-14, Mark 1: 40-45

“If you choose, you can make me clean.”

Over the years I’ve preached on all of today’s readings many times and leaving 1 Corinthians to one side for a moment, I’ve particularly focused on the first and last of them, and usually I’ve focused on what they have to say about being on the inside or the outside. But I want to take a slightly different approach today because I started a train of thought a couple of weeks ago and it’s still rolling.

In the story of Naaman in 2^nd Kings we’re given the impression that this isn’t a man who’s used to having to ask for things twice, or even ask for things at all. Naaman is a powerful man – the head of his nation’s armed forces – someone who is used to being considered important and being treated as such. For all his power, though, Naaman has one blemish.

Quite probably one of the reasons why I find this story so interesting is because Naaman is described as a leper. In the Old Testament lexicon leprosy is a cover-all term to describe a whole range of skin afflictions, most notably, all the experts believe, psoriasis. So as a psoriasis sufferer myself I’m somewhat drawn to this story of a fellow-leper, especially as his leprosy doesn’t seem to have stopped him becoming a very important person indeed in his own context, where obviously having a skin disease wasn’t as career-limiting as it was for the Israelites.

Indeed, it’s not entirely clear that his affliction was that much of a concern at all to Naaman, as it isn’t he who longs for a cure at the start of our reading, but from personal experience I think can assure us all that Naaman would still quite like to have been rid of this problem, thus we find him in Israel, demanding some results.

“He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.” Naaman knew that anything worthwhile costs a lot, and he wasn’t interested in any shonky cheap cure. He also knew that important people get important results, so he took a personal letter of representation from the king, and he knew that if you want the very best you have to go to the very top, so he skips all the would-be healers and physicians and goes straight to the Israelite king, demanding special treatment. The king, for his part, knows only too well what happens when you can’t give important people the special treatment they want, so having no idea whatsoever how to cure leprosy he tears his clothes, shouts ‘woe is me’ and prepares to have his kingdom conquered by the soldiers of an angry Aramite. That’s when Elisha the prophet steps in and tells the king to get a grip and send Naaman to him. “So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house” and ¹⁰Elisha sent out a messenger.

Here’s the commanding general of one of the strongest nation’s in the region, and Elisha send a messenger. He doesn’t even bother to see him personally. This is an important man from an important family with an important job, and he’s attended to by a junior clerk - a junior clerk who tells him to go down to the local river and wash seven times.

I’ve got to tell you, I’ve had psoriasis for a long time and I know how hard it is to treat and I know there is no cure and I’ve been coated and fried and lathered and scraped, and I’ve had any number of weird and wonderful and usually expensive remedies recommended, so if someone said all it would take to fix it would be seven dips in the local river, I’d be skeptical. I’d think this all sounds far too simple and unlikely and not nearly extravagant or expensive enough, and I’d doubt that it would have any effect at all, and I might even ignore the whole idea in disgust, which is exactly what Naaman does, until he’s persuaded to give it a go and lo and behold it works.

What’s the moral of Naaman’s story? We could probably find several, but for me at least one answer is found in two almost invisible but absolutely crucial parts of the passage. First, at the start we’re told that the concern for his condition comes from an unnamed slave girl who works for his wife and tells her of a prophet in Samaria. And at the end, as Naaman rides away angry, turning his back on this whole ridiculous idea, we’re told that he’s stopped by his servants, again unnamed, and persuaded to give it a try after all.

Sometimes, maybe more often than we realise, it’s not who we talk to that matters, but to whom we listen.

The leper in our gospel story today is a very different man than Naaman, although just as determined to get his own way. “A leper^* came to him begging him, and kneeling^* he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’” It all sounds like a typical gospel healing story, but let’s remember that lepers weren’t allowed to approach people, and especially to stop right in front of them, but the leper in this story does both. In a very real and abrupt way he breaks all sorts of rules and marks himself as arrogant, rude and potentially quite dangerous.

Then we’re told that Jesus, moved with pity, stretched out his hand and touched him. Well he may have done anyway. There’s a lot that could be unpacked here about Jesus’ actions and the implications of actually touching a leper, most of which weren’t as bad as some people will have you believe. The point here really isn’t, I believe, that Jesus risked his own cleanliness, it’s that he did anything at all.

I’m a bit of cynic when it comes to hard luck stories I have to admit. After some years of working in inner cities, and hearing every line under the sun, I know that there are rip-off merchants lurking behind most lampposts, but one thing that I am a bit of a soft-touch for is a beggar. If I’m walking down the street in Wellington or Auckland, or wherever it might be, and someone comes up and asks me if I’ve got any spare change I’ll usually give them a couple of bucks. Yes, I know they’ll probably drink it or sniff it, yes I know I’m encouraging them to keep on begging, but I just don’t want to say no, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes I give them money because I feel sorry for them, sometimes I give them money because I feel like it’s my priestly duty to do so, sometimes I give them money just to make them go away. The common denominator in all that is I give them money.

The version of the story we’ve heard this morning sounds like the Jesus we’re familiar with. He’s kind and caring, and moved with pity for this unfortunate man who confronts him. In some other ancient translations though we get quite a different take on this story. In those translations, Jesus isn’t moved with pity but rather shifted by anger. He’s unhappy this rude leper is accosting him, he doesn’t appreciate the implications of what’s going on, so in anger he reaches out and heals the man – ‘there, you’re done, now go away and say nothing and leave me alone’ – another simply instruction this annoying leper couldn’t follow.

Moved by pity, moved by anger. It’s not what moves that matters, but the moving itself.

Naaman and Elisha, Jesus and the leper – two very different stories, four very different characters, all moved by something into action, all affected in different ways by that movement.

Two important questions for us from these readings: First, what are we doing to get healed? Most of us, all of us I suspect, are wanting something, needing something, to make us more than we currently are, wholer than we have been – so what are we doing to find it? Are we listening to the right people? Are we really listening at all?

Here’s the more important question though - and this is the train I started a couple of weeks back and can’t seem to stop – what are we doing to bring healing? When we read these stories and listen to these words, we might want to automatically see ourselves in the person of the leper or the servants. But when we take these stories in the light of the gospel, when we remember that we are those who have been baptised into the body of Christ and called to be Christ in our world, then we start to recognise that we are not called to be simply those who are healed, but also – more importantly – those who heal.

‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ We are those who are called to choose, and I believe the lesson of these stories is that it doesn’t much matter why we make that choice as long as its made. Who are we making more whole? Whose life are we changing? Who are we choosing to make clean?

It’s a calling we can ignore or forget or argue with as much as we like, but still it remains our calling. We are the Christ – the baby in whom Simeon and Anna found hope, the friend in whom Peter and his mother found help, the healer in whom the leper found wholeness – we are he, if only we choose to be.