February 15, 2009
Year B
God’s Touch, God’s Healing
2 Kings 5:1-27
Mark 1:40-45
Sixth Sunday of Epiphany
The word for today is paradox
A Paradox is a situation where one thing is said or done, but another thing is meant or intended, and even though they may be opposites – they both are things are equally true. This lesson today is about the paradox of life, and more importantly of God.
Jesus as healer
The theme of the epiphany seems to be healing. The book of Mark sets out to prove that Jesus was a healer; he made life better for many people. That healing ministry is still true today.
Comes into the world to being healing
Our paradoxical God sent Jesus into the world to bring healing to his people. He saw that there was a lot of pain and suffering in the world. The world which was created as a place for us to be happy and whole, and he sent someone to help us out – to realize how to rise above our sin and to accept healing.
And yet that is the hardest thing for us to accept. We all say that we want to heal – and yet in reality we do everything that we can to stay away from it. We are all sinners, we all do things that are not quite right, not quite in our best interest, and yet we continue to do them anyway. We want to heal, but it takes so much work on our part – it is just easier to live life the way it is.
Once again, the Hebrew bible gives us a timeless story of human nature in an unlikely place. As we hear the story of Naaman.
He was someone whom God found favor on, and wanted to give him the gift of healing.
Syria – is the country to the north of Israel. When visiting Israel and passing by Syria, our guide told us not to even look that way – don’t appear curious of what it going on
The two countries were enemies, as they were long ago. The relationship was so strained, that they do not even associate with one another.
Naaman was the Commander of Syrian army; he was suffering and told the unthinkable – to go to Israel in search of a cure. His slave girl tells him of a prophet who can help him, and the only one willing to even take on skin diseases.
Causes a scandal when he comes to town, but even more so offended when given a cure – he is told to go and bath in the Jordan river seven times.
Why would he insult him by saying such a thing – when there is a river at home that is just as good, if not better.
That is our response to healing – we want to do things our way, and be in control, rather that listen to the advice of someone else. We want magic instead of medicine. We would rather voice our opinion about what is right then be quiet and do as we are told.
The human condition. Bible says that Naaman has leprosy – a skin condition. Today, Leprosy is called Hanson’s disease. It is a very painful incurable skin condition, where the body become disfigured, and you swell. And eventually you die from the disease. The bible uses that word in the old and new testament, but there is no real proof that that illness existed in that part of the world at that time. Leprosy is mostly found in India. And yet Leviticus spends a lot of time talking about a skin disease called leprosy. It could affect your body, your house, your clothes, even your standing in the community. But Some believe that it was not leprosy that Naaman had, or even a physical condition.
It was disease – a spiritual condition – where things were just not falling into place
Sin is the disease of the spirit. Missing the mark, not complete or whole, needing something to make you feel better.
Sin is the cause of us not wanting to heal – eating the wrong foods, not taking care of ourselves, not being in right relationship, not taking care of our lives, doing things that we know don’t help us – but we don’t want to change to get better.
God always wants us to get better. To heal. To feel whole. That’s what a relationship with God brings, and God is constantly trying to bring us into relationship.
That is the story of the bible – the story of God reaching out to us in unlikely ways – to get us to realize that we are whole. – that we are connected to the divine.
The olden culture was afraid of skin disease because they did not understand it. Were afraid that it made all who came in contact with it impure or polluted.
They Believed that the only way to come in contact with a pure and holy God was to be holy. Disease was a symbol of death.
If you Touched something dead, you were polluted and had to be cleansed. Pure and impure determined your access to God.
The temple was designed so that those who were not cleansed, could not go in to be close to God. We have been designing our societies like that for ages- those who were in and those who were out. Those who were polluted and those who were not. Those we could talk to and those we could not.
That is just the way things were but not the way things should be. Our paradoxical God is available to all people no matter who they are, or what condition they are in. God even loves the Syrians enough to bring them healing. God loves us enough to bring us out of what ever our disease it – to bring us to healing.
Jesus comes in contact with another leper – who is asking to get better. Once again, not the leprosy of modern days – but a social condition, cut off from society, more importantly cut off from yourself. More than like once again the results of our sinfulness. Jesus first reaction is anger –or deep emotion
But eventually he does heal him and sends him back into the world a whole person. Tell no one – he paradox is that he tells everyone. So excited at the gift he has been given.
For us Jesus is a paradox, an unlikely place for healing to occur.
The good news is that Jesus is in the unlikely places of life. Naaman would have never thought in a million years that his healing would have been in Israel. The world never believes that their healing would be in he body of Jesus.
God is always at work in unlikely places and unexpected people. But the only ones who really truly recognize the work of God are those who have been healed by him on some way.
A young monk came to a monastery to study with the grand master – to learn from someone who indeed had that connection to God. On the first day the master told the young monk that his first lesson was to go out into the garden and to stand there with his arms wide open for an hour. The monk stood there vulnerable for an hour- soon it started to rain and not understanding what was going on, he stood there in the rain. After the hour was over with – he went angry to the master – and said I see no point in that exercise – all that it did was make him feel like a fool. The master replied – that was the point – it is an excellent starting point in your relationship with God.
That is what keeps most of us away from a deeper connection with God, from wholeness, from healing. We are not willing to do anything that makes us feel stupid, or like a fool.
The word for today is paradox – The things that we don’t want to feel, are usually the feelings that we most need to deal with in order to heal. The people who we avoid, are the people we need to talk to in order to truly be a whole human being.
The real God – the true God of Israel has never been a god that made any real sense. God is not someone who we can explain or understand, or control, or predict, or even tell what to do.
The God that we worship is a magnificent, mysterious, mischievous God. Our God loves Syrians and Israelites, Our God loves the Steelers and the Cardinals, the Catholics and the Methodist, those who are strong enough to admit their sins, and those who are not even aware that their actions are sinful. God loves us all.
The trick is for us to learn to love us all. Ann Ulanov, a theologian outs it this way.
This task confronts all of us, to deal with what touches us and not avoid it, to collect our missing parts, the neglected and overlooked and banished parts of our inner and outer populations. We are never touched in the abstract, only in the flesh. The marks of our worries, our overweight, our sleepless nights, our neighborhood crime, our neglected land, our polluted air are all a result of our disconnection with God. Our unwillingness to accept our sinfulness. God waits in those parts, waits for us to visit the part left in the prison of repression, waits for us to offer some life-giving water to outcast. All must be gathered in to be one with God. When we are one with our fears, our anger, our frustration and those who cause those emotions, then we are one with God.
What are the things in your life that you need to accept instead of pushing away? Who are the people in your life that you need to tolerate? What are the issues in the back of your mind that you put aside. Become aware of those things, and you will probably also become aware of the sins in your life that you use to deal with those things.
Surrendering those things to God is the first step to being cleansed and being healed and most importantly being whole.
Let us pray…
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