Broadway Christian Church
Columbia , Missouri
Morning Worship
August 8, 2004

Prayer of the Day

Lord, we confess that we tend to look for all kinds of things in many of the wrong places.  Enable us, prepare us, to meet you where, how, and when you choose.  Amen.

Scripture -  2 Kings 5:1-14

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Syria.  He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Syria.  He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now bands from Syriahad gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife.  She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria!  He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israelhad said.  “By all means, go,” the king of Syriareplied.  “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”  So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of clothing.  The letter that he took to the king of Israelread: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

As soon as the king of Israelread the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God?  Can I kill and bring back to life?  Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy?  See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israelhad torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes?  Have the man come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”  So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.  Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Are not the rivers back in Syriamuch better than the rivers of Israel?  Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed!”  So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “Master, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?  How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Washand be cleansed’!”  So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordanseven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Message
Healed by the Wrong Person
Rick Frost

This is a wonderful story, a great story.  We’ve loved this story for centuries.  We’ve told this story in church, and Sunday School, and Vacation Bible School for three or four thousand years now.  The story of Naaman – big, powerful, Syrian general, Naaman – and right next to Naaman is this little servant girl, a slave from Israel.  Let’s see if we have this story down, because it’s a powerful one.  Big, powerful Naaman, the guy at the top of his game, a guy who seems to have it all, but also seems to find at this place in his life that he has a huge problem.  The huge problem is that he’s sick.  He has a dreaded, incurable disease, and he can’t seem to find any relief for it wherever he goes.

Then the story all of a sudden moves to a little slave girl.  We don’t even know her name.  All that we know is that she came from a particular country, and the name of that country – that little, tiny country – in the Middle East is called Israel.  It is a country that routinely throughout history got smacked around by its Mid-East and Mediterranean neighbors.  In this particular time frame, it was Syria who did the smacking.  As was often the case and the practice of the day, those that were the victors took the young and strong back home to serve as slaves.

Eventually this little slave girl, working in the general’s home, observed the general’s problem and, evidently, suggested to her mistress that he might want to go see Elijah, a prophet of God who lived in this little country called Israel.  If he were willing to go and see this one, he might be cured of his disease.

Well… It doesn’t tell us why, but for some reason Naaman listens to her.  Perhaps he was desperate.  Maybe nothing else was working.  You know, when you’re really sick, you’re willing to do almost anything to seek relief.  So, rich, big, strong, powerful, mighty Naaman packs his camels with lots of shekels, heads out to the little captive, Podunk, out-of-the-way place called Israel. 

Do you see now?  Are you beginning to see why we have loved this story for centuries?  We, particularly in our culture, love stories where somebody high and mighty, very smart and very powerful, seemingly having it all together, has to find themselves moving sometimes toward that which is lowly and that which is poor.  We like it when they have to move toward the folks who sometimes find themselves on the bottom.

Well… Naaman arrives at Elijah the prophet’s little house, probably expecting to be met by an exotic guru, ushered into the private entrance of the clinic, and given the usual VIP amenities, and most importantly, to be given relief.  Elijah doesn’t even come to the door.  Instead, he sends his little servant outside to greet this great man and offers this prescription, “Go, wash seven times in the Jordan River, and you will be healed.”

Do you see what’s going on in this wonderful story?  It would be like you or me going to the doctor and saying, “Doc, I just feel awful.  I’m really sick, and I was wondering if you could schedule a CT scan and an MRI for me this afternoon?”
And the doctor would say, “No, I can’t do that.”
“Why can’t you, Doc?”
“Well, it’s because you have a cold.”
“A cold?  Well, you can give me something for it, Doc.  Maybe a shot or maybe some medication?  I just feel awful.”
“No,” says the doctor, “there’s no cure for the common cold.  What I want you to do is go home, and rest, and drink lots of fluids.”
“Home and rest?  That’s something my mother would tell me.”
“Your mother was right,” said the doctor.
So you walk out of the doctor’s office, and you’re holding this little prescription for two aspirin, and you’re determined you’re never going back there again.

That is sort of Naaman in this story.  He’s insulted.  He’s come all this way, and the doctor won’t even take a look at him.  He won’t even examine him.  He’s upset.  He turns on his heels.  He heads back home in a huge huff.  He’s angry.  But once again, when he gets there, the little servant girl at his house dares to confront the great general.  She says, in essence, “Sir, if that Jewish prophet back in Israel had asked you to do something really hard, if he had asked you to do something really expensive, if he had asked you to do something really difficult and demanding for your health, wouldn’t you have done it?”

And he said, “OK, OK, OK!”  And so, he goes down to the Jordan River, and he submits to the indignity.  Probably at night, he slithers into the mud hole called the Jordan River, and he washes.  And then, according to the story, viola, when he gets out, his skin “is like that of a little child.”

We love this story.  We’ve been telling this story for centuries.  Do you see why we love it?  My question today is this: “Where do you see yourself in this story?  If you had to pick one of the characters, which one would you be?  Would you be that little slave girl?  Would you be that powerful prophet of Israel?  Would you be that Syrian general?  Which one of those persons, if those were the three choices, which one would you be today?  I think – I don’t know, but I think – most of us in this room, if we were honest, know we are the Naamans of the world.

I know and you know very well to do, powerful people who seem to have everything, but they also find themselves with some problems.  Sometimes they are huge problems.  For years, some of them have been able to hide it.  Some of them have been able to cover it up.  Some of them have found the resources to go to a very high-end treatment center.  However, nothing – absolutely nothing – works.  At the end of their rope, they find themselves wandering into a church basement, maybe like Broadway, maybe on a Monday night, into a room full of sort of forlorn, generally poorly dressed folks.  The first words that come out of the mouth of one of the older members are, “So, how long have you been a drunk?”  It’s humiliating.  Absolutely humiliating, but that is when the healing begins.

I’ve accompanied some very well to do and very powerful people to their hospital rooms.  I’ve even been a patient myself a time or two, as you know.  I’ll tell you what… it’s a powerful experience to be reduced to complete dependency on a bunch of strangers – nurses, orderlies, technicians, doctors, surgeons, maids, and janitors.  They are people you don’t know.  Yet, these are the people who are calling the shots.  These are the people who are going to give the orders.  These are the people who are going to hold your life in their hands.  What I have found in such moments is that we actually experience – not just mentally – but we actually experience what the Bible calls “faith.”

That’s what “faith” is.  It is the ability to trust, to literally let go of the tight grip we all hold on ourselves – particularly when we’re hurting – and yield to the care of others.  Suddenly, we’re not so big anymore.  Suddenly, we’re not so self-sufficient, and we experience the truth that there is a lot more going on in this life than what you and I can do for ourselves.  Our healing comes when we’re not digging down deep and pulling ourselves up by our boot straps, but rather when we’re reaching out and putting our hand in another’s hand, and we are literally being pulled up by someone else.

Some of you have heard and maybe even have done some reading in some writings by a lady named Ann Lamont.  She wrote a wonderful little book called Tender Mercies.  I highly recommend it.  It’s in paperback, and it offers, I think, the most moving testimonial to Christian conversion I’ve ever encountered.

Ann Lamont was raised on the West Coast, in a big city, in a very well educated, relatively well affluent, secular family.  She writes these words:  “I was raised by parents to believe that you had a moral obligation in this life to help save the world, and that’s what we did.  But God forbid that someone should ever think that a Lamont might need help, that a Lamont might need to be saved.  Lamonts do not need help.”

Does that sound like something anyone here can relate to?

However, Ann, bless her heart, growing up discovered that she, in fact, needed lots of help – real help.  Beginning in her teen years, she gradually sunk into complete dependency on drugs and alcohol.  Slowly but surely, her life literally came unglued.  Although she had never ever in her entire life set foot inside a church, she said she was rather appalled (that’s her word “appalled”) to find herself drawn to Christianity.

Listen to this.  She says, “I thought about my life, and I thought about my brilliant, hilarious, progressive friends, and I thought about what they would think of me if I actually became a Christian, and it seemed so impossible to me that I simply couldn’t allow it to happen.  I remember one day turning to the wall and saying out loud, ‘I’d rather die than become a Christian!’  One week later when I went back to church, I was so hung over I couldn’t stand up to sing the songs, but this time I stayed, actually for the sermon which I thought was so ridiculous, because there was someone up there trying to convince me into what I thought was the existence of extraterrestrials.  But, the last song the people sang in that church was so deep, so raw, so pure, I could not escape.  It was as if the people who were singing were singing between the notes, and there was that feeling that they were weeping and yet joyful all at the same time.  It felt like the voices of the people were something that was rocking me in its bosom and holding me like a scared child.  I opened up to the feeling, and it washed over me.”

It washed over her.  The power of music.  The music, the Spirit washed over her.  Like that muddy old Jordan River, you know.  Here’s the smart, gifted, bright, sick young woman washed, clean, restored, healed.

I don’t know why God tends to work this way.  All I know is that the biblical witness says that’s the way it often works.  So, if you’re one of those in our midst who has it all going and everything is going great for you, God bless you.  We are genuinely happy for you.  If you happen to be one in our midst who’s really struggling, or maybe somewhere in between those two, and you have this habit, or you have this tendency, or you have this mess that’s going on in your life or in the life of someone you love and life’s just not working, I want you to hear the Word of the Lord today that says, “Know that your healing, just like Naaman’s healing, may well come from places you least expect it.  Like maybe here, or in the power of a song, or the advice of some little servant person whose name you don’t even know, or maybe a word that’s read.  Seemingly small, lowly kinds of things, because many years ago there was one who came from a very dusty little no-name place and stood among us and offered life – new life – to anyone and everyone who would receive it.”

But the world said, “We’d rather die than be saved by a Jew from Nazareth.”

There are millions, maybe even billions who are doing just that.  But they were wrong, because there have been millions and billions since who have literally opened their hearts, who have been washed, who have been restored, who have been healed, and many of those persons are right here in this room today.  I am among them. 

The Spirit of the Living Christ, folks, is for real, and what we invite you to do on any given day is simply to allow that Spirit to wash over you, to hold you, to rock you.  You can actually feel it.  Just be willing to open yourself to it.

“Come,” says the Scripture. “Come to the waters and receive life.”  That invitation has been around for thousands of years, and it’s here this very day.

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Healer, it is you who sends us in and calls us out to touch, heal, and be healed by those among us.  It is your mercy that we are drawn to, even in the hands of strangers.  Let us live so that our welcome and regard can overpower our fear and disdain that we might meet you in the heart of a stranger.  Amen.