February 15, 2009

Denise Kelsall

Epiphany 6     II Kings 5:1-14     Mark 1:40-45

We live in a world where we can just about buy a ticket to the moon, where we can climb the world’s highest mountain if we so choose, where we can potentially access any desire via the internet, where we destroy countless species daily through human proliferation and perhaps cosmic forces that we can only darkly glimpse or imagine…..and we also live in a personal bubble where we think we have some sort of control or security in our lives.

I was made acutely aware of this over the last week when I tuned in to the gut-wrenching horror that happened and continues to reverberate over the ditch (Australia to the uninitiated).

There they are – people just like us, having taken all the necessary precautions, being so very aware of all the potential hazards of living in a scorching climate. I keep thinking of a family incinerated in a car trying to escape the explosive g-force nature of the fiery onslaught that comes faster than the wind to consume them.

O God, O God is my verbal response. I shudder. I wilt. I surrender.

Control becomes a notion – a notion that is real, yet is also so very open and vulnerable to being utterly shattered. Nothing it seems is absolute, nothing is complete, nothing stays the same, nothing is reliable except unreliability maybe. At best control is a sort of domestic quality that all living things need and desire to flourish. Positively it brings safety and security. We know where we are going, where we are headed, what our income will be, when we will pay the mortgage off if we are lucky, when we will have that fab holiday we have dreamed of for so long, when we can afford steak. ‘It’s under control’ is a positive phrase.

But intrinsically we know that any control is tenuous and limited. We cannot control the wind, we cannot control markets, we cannot control the ageing that makes our bodies weak and makes us appear invisible to young guns who command fat salaries and live shamelessly upon the broken backs of others – others who are faceless, others who are commodities, others who do not have the heart or opportunity to claw their way into a more equal and humane life.

Our reading today from the second book of Kings tells us the story of Naaman who hails from from Aram which is situated in modern day Syria. Naaman is a great and powerful man, a mighty warrior, a victorious general, a friend of kings. His personal bubble is punctured by suffering incurably from a sordid skin affliction named here as leprosy.[1] A servant girl, acquired in one of his military raids on Israel, tells him of a prophet back home in Israel who can cure his condition. After some argy-bargy with a couple of Kings he arrives with chariots horses and in great style outside the house of the prophet Elisha, which I imagine was a very humble dwelling in the poor part of town. Elisha doesn’t even bother to come out and greet this great man but just sends a message. Infuriated by this treatment and the content of the message Naaman roars, “wash seven times in the pathetic piddling muddy little Jordan river when we have two unsurpassable magnificent rivers back home that I can get clean in? Get a life! Where’s all the usual magic stuff like waving hands and incantations?” He’s narked big time and goes off in a major huff.

But this Naaman must be an OK sort of guy because once again his servants – who call him Father you notice - they persuade him to come back and do this humble and small thing, to bathe in the river Jordan seven times just like Elisha asked.  Hey presto – he is cured of his skin condition and even more – his flesh is given the rejuvenation treatment – lucky guy! He is restored and is just like a young man again – he is clean.

Running through the story is the powerful juxtaposition of pride and the demand for humbleness. This proud and great man is made humble by leprosy, a disease of the ultimate outsider. Lepers were unclean as any physical affliction was superstitiously and religiously seen as punishment for sin and offending God, so only God can heal him.  Naaman is desperate and reduced to humbly taking the advice of a servant girl. Proudly, with a large retinue and gold and gifts, Naaman arrives at Elisha’s house to be personally ignored. His pride is deeply offended and he rages furiously. Again it is his lowly servants who advise him to act on the message of the prophet. It is a humble and vulnerable action, bathing in the river exposing leprous sores. And he is healed.

Pride and control are deeply linked. Naaman, in order to be healed, has to relinquish both. He has to bend, to listen, to surrender, and be finally healed through those who serve him. People without names, with no standing, servants - powerless conquered people. In reality it is they, the very least, who effect the healing of their great and mighty master. Naaman is given new life, throwing off the weight and the self-image that pride and control demand of him. He is reduced to his essence - a human being struggling with his own existential pain.

It is not a miraculous holy zap from on high that heals him but a yielding, a listening and a regarding of the lowest of people. In opening his mind to the other, the different, the dominated and conquered servants whose lives he owns Naaman is healed and given new life.

There are strong spiritual messages or metaphors here. Of course the classical or obvious Biblical one is to show that God’s love and healing is inclusive and for all people, not just the Jews. But it has a much wider and universal application in that it applies to all people, all life.

It tells us that we must listen to the other, those who are seemingly different, those whom we think have nothing to offer us in our silent pride, and those whom society paints as having and being nothing. In our NZ prayer book liturgy we pray for the prisoner, the refugee, the oppressed, the sick, the dying …and so on. We must ensure that they do not insidiously become merely words, sentiments or wishes and we must act on what we are called to be. In opening our minds and hearts we become more truly and wonderfully human.

When we can surrender to the humanness of the other and see him or her as ourselves we are made more whole – we drop the separateness, the personal bubble we inhabit from day to day swells and becomes more permeable and we make the world a more hopeful and life-giving place. It is not about control so much as acknowledging the deep connectedness of all life.

Being alone and in pain is a terrible place and we need each other. Just like Naaman.

On a totally different note I cannot let today go by without acknowledging the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on the 12th February.  Darwin was a naturalist whose claim to fame is the ‘theory of evolution’- a theory accepted by the majority of people as self evident as in the ability of life to adapt itself to situations and thereby evolving through necessity or ‘natural selection’ over billions of years. Darwin went to Cambridge looking to become a clergyman - Anglican theology was the only acceptable sort at the time so we could have had venerable forbears like him. He pondered all his life upon the origins of life and could not accept a deity or any type of creationism and he became a sort of agnostic. His personal bubble was shattered with the death of his first daughter at the age of 5. He was, nevertheless, a lifelong member of his local church and was a pluralist in that he saw the validity of all religions within their particular context. He had a renowned respect for all forms of life and was a humble and decent human being. Now that doesn’t sound such a bad rap does it!

Endnote

[1]Leprosy, in the Bible, covers many skin diseases. It is more likely that  Naaman  had something like psoriasis.