14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 4, 2010
2 Kings 5:1-14God and the Glorious Fourth
It’s not often that the 14th Sunday of Ordinary time falls on the Glorious Fourth. When this has happened in past years, I have usually managed to be out of town, leaving Leo Sandon or Emory Hingst to deal with this challenging coincidence. This year I’ve been caught flat-footed. I considered setting off a string of firecrackers to get the sermon started, but I decided that would be neither decent nor in order.
That’s a shame, really. I love firecrackers. When I was a boy, my cousin Rob Shive, who is one day older that I, used to spend hours blowing things up. That was on a West Texas farm where the nearest neighbors were five miles away and before laws banning the sale of Blackcats, cherry bombs and other absurdly dangerous munitions much cherished by ten-year-old boys.
Cousin Rob and I blew up all sorts of things to mark the Fourth of July: cans, tomatoes, cantaloupes, fire ant beds. It’s a wonder made it to adolescence with all ten fingers. Then there was the time Rob was in my grandmother’s living room fiddling with some firecrackers and a cigarette lighter.
“Bet you can’t light one of those and get out the front door before it goes off.”
“Bet I can.”
“Bet you can’t.”
I think you can guess the outcome of that story.
The Glorious Fourth no doubt evokes different memories for you, memories that do not involve explosions in your grandmother’s living room. Perhaps you think of General George Washington receiving the sword of surrender from the English Lord Cornwallis. (Cornwallis didn’t actually show up at the surrender ceremony, by the way. He was too humiliated.) Perhaps you think of Francis Scott Key watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry, and penning the Star Spangled Banner by the dawn’s early light.
Whatever picture is in your head, it’s not likely to be the one in today’s first reading. We’ve got a general, right enough, but he’s not American. He’s not English. He’s not even a general in the army of ancient Israel, as you might have expected. No, this is General Naaman of the Aramite army, the loyal subject of the King of Aram. He’s been in so many battles and won so many medals, he lists to port when he walks.
General Naaman is a proud man, a man to be reckoned with. He has whipped the King of Israel on more than one occasion, and the King of Israel has good cause to be suspicious when Naaman shows up at court, bearing gifts. Ten talents of sliver, six thousand shekels of gold, ten Armani (or rather, Aramani) suits – these are by no means an insignificant diplomatic gesture.
General Naaman also has a letter from his boss, the King of Aram. “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent you my servant, Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
When the King of Israel reads this letter, he rends his clothes, a sign of deep distress and mourning. He thinks the King of Aram is trying to pick a fight with him, to find some pretext for waging war with Israel. He thinks the Aramite CIA has told the King of Aram that he, the King of Israel, is harboring a weapon of mass construction. He can change lives. He can heal disease. He can even cleanse lepers.
“Am I God?” cries the king. “Am I God, to give life and death? . . . Just look how this other king is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
As the warden in “Cool Hand Luke” famously said, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” This whole scene is a result of cultural misunderstanding.
General Naaman has leprosy, you see. A certain young woman in his household, an Israelite captured in one of the General’s raids into Israel, has informed Naaman’s wife that there is a prophet back home in Israel who can cure people of leprosy. Figuring that this prophet, whoever he is, works for the King of Israel, Naaman naturally starts to pull strings. He goes to Aram’s king, who writes a letter to Israel’s king, and crams his suitcases with goodies to take to court.
How are these Aarmites to know that in Israel it doesn’t work that way? In Israel, it’s God who tells kings what to do, not the other way around. The God of the Bible is nobody’s lackey. In fact, it’s a little misleading to call this God the God of Israel. The way the Hebrews see it, their God is also the God of Aram, the God of Egypt, the God of all the nations. And nobody, not even a prophet, much less a king, tells God what to do.
Well, you can’t blame Naaman, can you? I mean, who knew? How is he supposed to know the rules are different here in Israel? All the national leaders he knows behave as though they can manipulate their deities. Why should Israel’s God be different?
How do you get healed of a dreadful disease like leprosy if you can’t bribe God to heal you? What kind of a God would pay any attention to a general from an enemy nation if that general didn’t show up with some kind of leverage?
Naaman soon discovers he’s not in Kansas anymore. Or Aram. He’s in a strange land where kings are subject to God, and not God to kings. How does a person like Naaman relate to a God like that?
Naaman discovers that you do it by getting off your high horse, by sending your entourage away, by taking off your uniform with its abundance of brass, and by skinny dipping in the Jordan River, which, by Aramite reckoning, is no more than a glorified creek. If you’re looking for grace from the God of Israel, it’s got to be grace you’re looking for, not tit-for-tat, not favors for services rendered.
According to the Bible, the difference between the true God and an idol is that an idol can be manipulated. You can sweet-talk an idol, bribe it with goodies, impress it with your chest full of medals. Not so with God. In the presence of God, there are no kings and no generals. As the psalmist says, “The sacrifice you accept, O God, is a humble spirit.”
Naaman emerges from the Jordan cured of his skin disease. “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy,” says the text. He doesn’t do anything to deserve this. All he does is acknowledge that God is God. It’s not Naaman the general who gets cured in this story. It’s Naaman, the child of God.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland opens with a curious ritual. The Queen, if she is present, kicks off the proceedings by bowing to the Moderator of the General Assembly. Only after the Monarch has bowed to the Moderator does the Moderator bow to Monarch. Most years the Queen sends her representative, known as the Lord High Commissioner, to stand in for her. The last time she herself submitted to this ceremonial indignity was back in 2002, the year of her Silver Jubilee.
It’s not exactly like Naaman bathing in the Jordan, but the idea is much the same. The Queen, you see, is the official head of the Church of England, but when she crosses that northern border, she becomes a member of the Church of Scotland. Theologically speaking, her true identity lies in her baptism, not in her coronation.
Naaman learns a few things about the God of Israel. Not only is this God unimpressed by gifts and titles. This God also dispenses grace upon the most unlikely candidates. This is without doubt God’s most maddening characteristic.
Remember that time Jesus went home to Nazareth and was asked to preach at his hometown synagogue? His fellow Nazarenes were expecting him to shower them with all sorts of favors, including lots of healing miracles. Instead, Jesus recalled this very story about God’s mercy shown to General Naaman, the foreigner, and to the widow of Zarepath, yet another foreigner.
The Nazarenes couldn’t take it. It was like flying the Iranian flag on the Fourth of July. They turned on Jesus and tried to throw him off a cliff.
Jesus’ theology was spot on, but his timing was terrible. That’s not the kind of thing we like to hear when the band is warming up and the parade is about to start. Who wants to be reminded about God’s love for the world when Americans are waging two wars in General Naaman’s old stomping grounds?
On the Fourth of July we expect to sing “God Bless America,” not “Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
But, beloved in Christ, this is the God we serve, the God who claims us in Christ. There is no other God worthy of worship, no Savior other than the one who died out of love for the whole world, no healing for ourselves which is not also offered to the Naamans of the world.
Even on the Fourth of July, God is God. Especially on the Fourth of July, God is God.
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