WHEN THE TABLES ARE TURNED

SCRIPTURE READING: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Everybody loves a good story. The story of Naaman in our text for today is a great story. Everybody loves a story where the powerful are humbled by the humble and powerless. Everybody likes to see the tables turned. It seems as though God is constantly teaching us this in scripture if we only tune our sensitivities to God’s subtleties. Jesus is a case in point. This man of no stature in his society, this powerless man, was rejected by the powerful religious leaders of his own faith, and then turned over to the most powerful people of all, the Roman occupiers of his land who humiliated him on the way to the cross where they put him to death. We only remember the names of Caiaphas or Pilate as they relate to the death of Jesus. These powerful figures in their own time are relegated to a footnote in history. Their only importance has to do with an association with Jesus’ death. Jesus stands out in history, but they only in relation to him. They are dead, but Jesus lives on in us and in the worldwide connection of the church.

The humble and powerless keep popping up in the story of Naaman also. We are told that Naaman was a great commander of the army of the king of Aram and was in high favor with the king because he had given him victory. Naaman, however, suffered from leprosy. A serving girl who was an Israelite captured in battle served Naaman’s wife. She told her mistress that if Naaman went to see the prophet Elisha who lived in Samaria he would be cured of his leprosy. This little slave girl planted the seed for a cure for this powerful man and he went to his king and told him what the slave girl told his wife about Elisha. The king agreed that Naaman should go, and he would send a letter to the king of Israel and gifts indicating that the king of Israel should cure Naaman. When the king of Israel read the letter from the king of Aram he reacted violently, and I might add, with great insecurity. The proud and powerful are always insecure for they have much to lose. This king was no different. He tore his clothes and thought that the king of Aram was picking a fight with him, as he said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

Elisha heard about the king’s distress and so he sent a message to him and told him to send Naaman to him. Here again a humble person, a prophet saved the skin of the rich and powerful. So Naaman came roaring with his horses and chariots up to Elisha’s house. Elisha didn’t come out of his house to greet this distinguished visitor. Instead he sent a messenger to him to tell him to, “wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” Naaman was incensed and walked away. He was sure that Elisha would come out and do some incantations and wave his hands over his sores and pronounce him healed, but instead he stayed in his house and told him to wash in this muddy stream. He was sure that the rivers of Syria were better than the Jordan anyway. His remarks were the equivalent of being a Viking or Bears fan living in Green Bay. Well, again, someone of low estate, this time his servants, confronted the powerful Naaman and convinced him that the prophet had not asked him to do something difficult, but something quite easy like washing in this strange river in a strange land. So thinking it over he went and washed in the Jordan and we are told, “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”

There you have it – a great story of pride and prejudice; a story of finding healing in unexpected places through the auspices of unexpected people of modest standing.

The Biblical story matches the stories of lives of people that have been changed through modest circumstances. I think of the miracle of members of my own family who belong to Alcoholics Anonymous who were reluctant to go to a place where they could be helped. The tables were turned for they were the ones who were used to helping others, but now they are meeting in church basements in places they wouldn’t be caught dead in with people with whom they wouldn’t normally associate. Yet, there they are keeping spiritually alive through the efforts of people like them who were desperate for help with their disease to the great relief of the rest of the family.

God turns the tables on us when we least expect them. No story is as dramatic as the story of the conversion to the Christian faith of Anne Lamott. She tells her story in her little book, Traveling Mercies. Her life had come apart; she was addicted to drugs and alcohol. She found her way to a predominately African American church. She tells her story this way:

“I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends. I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, ‘I would rather die.’…One week later, when I went back to church, I was so hung over that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to the feeling – and it washed over me.”

Spiritual hunger can trump long-held prejudices and can open us up to the resources of God. Anne Lamott thought she, “would rather die” than face her friends as a Christian, and yet the grace of God welled up in her unbidden and overcame any intellectual resistance she had. One is reminded of Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” chasing us down “the labyrinthine ways” to claim us for God’s own self. The church to which Ann Lamott attached herself, this church which had no status and contained no powerful figures, was the site of her salvation. This is another of God’s great reversals; table turning events.

This past month as we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the United Church of Christ reminded me of the fact that as the population of the United States grows the percentage of the population that is the United Church of Christ shrinks. We have been in decline for some time, yet we have had an enormous impact on the country as a whole. Think, if you will, about the stir caused by the Still Speaking campaign. Think back to those first commercials which depicted us as a church that invites all to partake of our fellowship because “If you accept Christ, you accept everyone.” This insignificant church which at best represents one-half of one percent of the population of the United States says boldly to the nation and the world that the love of Jesus Christ places no limits on who belongs here, in a time when there is so much fencing off of who may have access to Jesus Christ. We have been heard through our unconventional, off beat advertising. Again the servant speaks to power in love.

God is still speaking through God’s weakest servants. The Naaman’s of the world need to hear of God’s saving and redeeming power, and we need to keep telling that story to the world through our words and our deeds.

Sermon preached by Reverend Jake Close at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on July 8, 2007.