Proper 23C / Ordinary 28C / Pentecost +21
This is a sermon I preached at the Lutheran Theological Seminary this fall. It is always a daunting experience to have to preach before your peers and professors and yet God is faithful and I always seem to survive :)
As another year of Seminary is off to a racing start I am left with nothing but thanks. Thanks for my ability to be here in this place, to learn and grown, and be supported by an amazing group of peers, faculty, and staff. There will always be hardships, but even in the midst of the darkness there is light, good, and hope. I am blessed to be here and I know the adventure isn't over yet!
Thanks for the support and the love friends!
Skakes
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
As any good child of the 1980’s I was raised by the thrilling world of adventure George Lucas created on the big screen. Through the sound of light sabers clashing, Ewok's scampering, and the trademark crack of a whip I learned about heroes who would fuel the fire of many a back yard adventure at my home. Armed with an old brown fedora my father let me permanently borrow, and a length of unraveling yellow twine, I became Indiana Jones, saving the neighborhood from evildoers, while preserving precious artifacts from reaching the wrong hands.
In my nine year old mind Jones was the ultimate real life hero, armed with no power other then his brute force and intellect, he was somehow able to go anywhere, do anything, and managed to look so utterly cool while he was doing it. Well unless there was a snake, and in that case I would have to agree with his very rational fear as well.
But beyond all of this, Jones stood for something far more then just another name in lights for me, for in his own way he was not just a hero, or another action junkie leaping across the silver screen, he was the good crusader. Bending the arms of the enemy to the forfeit what they had taken from the everyday people. Overturning the powers of evil with good. And while he may have always seemed to take the longest and most complicated road to save the day, at the end of it all, covered by the marks and scars of his journey, he was still the good crusader, who in the midst of his lack of faith always seeming to have God on his side.
And as I was reading the text from Second Kings this past week I couldn't help but think how much Naaman reminded me the good crusader from my childhood. Naaman was a man above men, a victorious general held in a great esteem by his master, and yet more impressively, he as an Aramean, a sworn political enemy of Israel, had even achieved a degree of favor with the Lord. However, unlike other biblical heroes like Samson, Naaman had not been prescribed any special physical powers from on high. In fact in Naaman’s case the exact opposite seemed to be true, while his mind was poised for any battle, his body suffered from a war raging within the very surface of his skin, tearing him apart, and leaving him a man marked by the deep pain and shame this disease left upon him for all to see.
As Naaman was a man of great power and prestige, he had likely tried every treatment within his grasp to cure his worsening condition, and by all accounts none of them had even shown promise. Like anyone facing a seemingly incurable disease, Naaman began to get desperate. So desperate that he listened to a story his wife’s Israelite maid had shared. A story that told of a prophet in Samaria who could in fact cure him. For Naaman to even entertain this idea, was for him to be utterly vulnerable in the midst of his control. Listening to, and acting on his wife's maid’s advice was admitting that a servant, the lowest of the low, a foreign girl who by only the spoils of war had come into his presence, knew better then he. And this was to admit the ultimate defeat. For the powerful had stooped to the utter powerless for help.
So on this advice, armed with a letter from his king, and an entourage Harrison Ford would be jealous of, Naaman took off for Samaria with the will to finally find the healing he had so deeply desired. Little did he know he would be finding it in the least likely of places.
On his arrival Naaman presented the King of Israel with an impressive cargo of gifts and riches that his entourage had been carrying along with the letter asking for the generals healing. While Naaman was expecting to receive a warm welcome and healing in receipt for this transaction, he was not expecting to get the run around he was about to experience. Before he knew it, the King of Israel had torn his clothing, called the Aramaean’s out for attempting to start a war, and sent Naaman and his entire entourage of horses, gifts, and soldiers out from his presence, and to the house of the Prophet so he could deal with this situation. And just when Naaman though his holy moment of healing was about to occur in all its splendor, the servant of Elisha appeared from the house, rather then the prophet himself, telling Naaman to go wash in the Jordan seven times to be fully healed.
At this moment I am sure you could have heard a pin drop as the shock of what had just happened washed over Naaman.
Did the prophet not take me seriously?
Did he not realize the severity of my case?
Who does this Elisha think he is to send his servant down to deal with a man of my position?
I thought he would surely come down here and lay his hands upon me himself.
Does he not think I have tried to wash myself clean before?
Isn't there something else I can do?
How could a simple washing cure such a disease?
What’s so great about your water anyway?!
I would like to admit that I have never had a moment like this before. That questions similar to these have never crossed my mind. Thats what I would like to be able to say. But both you and I know that this isn't the true.
Life happens, our bodies become heavy with the weight of our own struggles against the world in which we live. Against the cancer that just wont go away in our loved ones flesh, flashing the mirror of our own mortality before our very eyes. Against the words of others that settle in our hearts, telling us that we are not good enough, or strong enough, to do what is required of us. Day in and day out stealing pieces of our soul as we sink into a depression. Against the battles we wage against one another in relationships. Creating brokenness where there should be new life.
Sadly, when faced with struggles like these I would rather dig out my fathers old worn-out brown fedora, find a whip, and go drudging through the jungles of my own crisis, attempting to find and wrangle down the golden miracle of my own salvation. And I doubt I am alone in this. As followers of Christ I think we can all become fascinated with the working out of our journey. With finding those experiences that take our breath away and bring the immediate proof of our healing before our eyes, while ignoring the everyday miracles that pass us by. Or perhaps we have come to like the feeling of climbing up the mountain to God rather then letting God come down to us. Choosing to think that we can somehow tuck Jesus in our back pocket for when we need him most and then continuing on with the rest of our day working out our own salvation. Or maybe its more simply then that, maybe we don’t actually want to get involved at all.
I think in this way we can be like that story of the old woman who gets caught in a flood. As the waters came she escaped up onto her roof, where she prayed for God to save her from the perils of the storm. Person after person passed by her in a rowboat, offering to take her to safety. No, thanks, she said. I know God’s going to save me. Inevitably the waters rose and over came the woman and her house, and she died. When she reached heaven, she complained to God, I prayed and prayed, but you didn’t save me! And God answered, I sent four rowboats and you didn’t get into a single one!
We want to believe that we are different and special. And maybe at some level we want to believe as followers of Christ we deserve more then the rest of creation. That just like Naaman, we may believe our suffering should be absolved in a grand and affirming moment of faith, or earned by some method greater then simply hopping in a life boat or washing ourselves in the river. But the hard matter of truth is, that it isn't about us or about what we can do. And at the very heart of it all is that water is all we truly need.
Because it is through these very waters that we are named and claimed as children of God. In our weakest and most vulnerable state, God choose us, as we are. Continually wrapping and enveloping us in the waters of baptism, calling us to die to our sin, and be born again in Christ. In this way it is not about us, nor about what we can do to reach up to God, as through the waters God continually reaches down to us, washing us clean and sealing us with the mark of Christ that can never be removed. A mark that reminds us that it is Christ that chooses to justify us in grace, not by anything we can do or accomplish. And when we have forgotten this the Spirit draws us back the the waters to lovingly remind us that we have been washed and made clean, breathing new life within us once again, and sending us back out into the world to walk wet.
May this be so among us. Amen.
