(2 Kings 5.1-27) (Pentecost 4)
7 July 2019 © Neil Millar
This morning I want to begin a little mid-winter series; to explore a theme I hope might encourage us through the cold weeks of July. I’m calling it ‘Bread for the Journey’. ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, we pray in the Lord’s prayer – ‘our rations for the journey’. It’s a prayer for physical supply, but it’s not just physical bread that sustains us in life, we need spiritual bread as well. It’s spiritual ‘bread’ I’ll speak about in these coming weeks, virtues that nourish us as followers of Jesus, practices that are essential if we are to grow in faith and faithfulness to God. I’ve called this week’s sermon, the bread of humility, and to explore this theme we’re going to dwell with this reading from Kings – the story of Naaman the Aramean.
Now, I’ve called it the story of Naaman, but in fact, there are a few characters we’ll focus on today, and the first is Naaman’s wife’s slave girl. We don’t know a great deal about this girl except that she was young and had been taken captive in one of the Aramean raids on Israelite territory. Now, ever since I first heard this story, I’ve been impressed with this slave-girl. Her life has not been easy, it would seem; snatched from her home and people, taken into slavery to an enemy people; this must have been incredibly difficult. And yet, she seems to have made the best of her life, serving her mistress with diligence and compassion. I say this, because when she realises that Naaman has leprosy, she doesn’t rub her hands with glee and wait for his shameful demise, she proffers a way forward, a possibility: ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy’ (4). This is the only thing she says in the story, the only thing we ever hear from her, but what a difference her suggestion makes to that household. A humble act of witness by a person, who in the scheme of important people was well down the list. It really is quite astonishing and moving – her care, her courage, her faith, her faithfulness.
I imagine that many of us feel a degree of marginalization in our lives and circumstances – our age, gender, health, home or social circumstances may all put us down the list of powerful people, but as this story attests, never underestimate the power of a humble word or action in season. It can make a world of difference to someone else’s life, indeed, as we see here, it can be a key factor in the fulfilment of God’s purposes. Do we dare believe that, eat the bread of humility?
Well, humility, as necessary as it is on the spiritual journey, is not easy to practise, as Naaman discovers. For the slave girl, it’s involved accepting where she is and trusting she has something to offer anyway. For Naaman, it involves swallowing his pride, letting go of his status and the behavior that typically goes with it. For both, it involves a kind of personal risk.
In this regard, Naaman starts well, for some reason (desperation perhaps), he does listen to his slave-girl. He takes her word to his lord, the King, and with the king’s consent, heads off to see the King of Israel. Now, this would’ve required degree of humility – listening to a slave’s suggestion (a foreigner, a girl, a child no less) and then approaching an enemy king in need. We don’t see that every day, do we… a powerful national leader going with cap in hand to the leader of an enemy nation? Imagine Trump doing that?? It would be to admit weakness, vulnerability. No way! So, Naaman starts well, he humbles himself and goes, albeit with an impressive caravan of chariots stashed with money and finery and no doubt wearing his many medals and armed to the hilt!! Interestingly, he goes to the king of Israel and not the prophet as the slave-girl had suggested. This causes some consternation for king, as we heard, but in the end Naaman is sent to the person he needed, the prophet Elisha.
At this point, things get decidedly testy. Naaman arrives at the prophet’s gate but Elisha does not go out to greet him. Instead, he sends a messenger with instructions – ‘Go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean’ (10). I wonder about Elisha’s refusal to come out to the great commander. Was it to make the point that God is not impressed or manipulated by the outward trappings that so beguile most human beings? That it wasn’t because he was rich and powerful that Naaman would receive anything from God. Elisha says nothing to Naaman, but this silence is a powerful testimony – grace is a gift, it’s not earned or bought, only received.
Naaman’s willingness to receive, to eat the bread of humility is severely tested at this point. He’s offended that Elisha won’t come out and see him, and further offended to be instructed to go and wash in an Israelite stream. ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters in Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them’, he murmurs as he rides off in a rage. And this moment, it seems, is the real crisis point of the story. If I was making a TV series on this, I’d end the episode there, leave it hanging, with the question… Will pride and offence, short-circuit the possibility of grace or will Naaman have a change of heart, get off his high horse and take the risk? And, of course, it’s not just Naaman’s life that’s threatened by stubbornness, pride and offense-taking, many of ours are too. For a way forward, be sure to be watching, same time next week…
Episode 2, the finale.
One of the things that’s striking in this story is that Naaman has great servants (and maybe that says something about him and his character). We’ve spoken about the slave-girl from Israel, but now the servants travelling with him offer wisdom and genuine care for their master. ‘Father,’ they say, if the prophet had asked you to do something hard, you’d have done it, why not give it a go, what’ve you got to lose? Now again, this would’ve required courage on the part of these servants – it’s not always a good idea to challenge an angry master. But these servants did, they took the risk. And to his credit, Naaman listened and… well, the word we’d use for it is repented; he changed his mind (got down off his high horse, humbled himself) and went and did what Elisha suggested…And, surprise, surprise, he was cleansed, healed!!
It looks like a happy ending – and the point about the necessity for humility neatly emphasized and embraced by the major characters. But there’s a twist in the tale. If humility involves a certain kind of letting go, a non-grasping approach to life – being with ourselves and our circumstances, being with and for others, letting ourselves receive gifts that are proffered and willing to give and be merciful in our turn, then the coda to this story illustrates what happens when the bread of humility is refused. It concerns yet another servant, Elisha’s servant Gehazi. Unlike Naaman’s servants who act with such respect and compassion, Gehazi seems to be in it for what he can get.
We heard that after his healing, Naaman returned to Elisha pledging allegiance to God and offering gifts of gratitude. Elisha has refused these gifts. I assume, for the same reason as mentioned earlier, because he wants it to be absolutely clear that access to God’s grace has nothing to do with wealth and social standing, with how powerful and cashed up we happen to be, but with humility – the simple willingness to receive. Naaman gets it, but Gehazi is upset that Elisha has let a golden opportunity pass him by. He takes matters into his own hands, running after Naaman, catching him along the way, and spinning a convincing lie about his master (Elisha) needing help to support two prophets who have arrived from the hill country. Naaman responds generously, and Gehazi returns with his deceptively gained spoils, which he duly hides.
The moment of reckoning is swift and decisive. Elisha sees straight through his pride and deception and, in the end, it rebounds on Gehazi. He ends up with the very disease that had afflicted Naaman.
There you have it, a story stressing the necessity for humility in the spiritual life – humility, not in the sense of false modesty, of putting ourselves down or denying that we have gifts to offer; but humility in the sense of being on the ground floor of our own lives, attentive to what’s really going on, willing to risk ourselves in giving and receiving. Humility enables us to be with one another and ourselves, with and for the truth of things.
Humility is ‘bread’ for the journey, and, like all bread, it has to be baked daily. As a regular practice, it sustains and keeps us on the way. To the ego, to the part of us that wants to be in control and to hide our vulnerability, to use or grasp at resources to disguise our need, this bread can be chewy and hard to swallow. But as the story of Naaman, Elisha and the various servants reveals, eating it keeps us in the way of the grace and gifts of God. Jesus said something very like it, and in many fewer words: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt 5.3).
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