[Above: Elisha Refusing the Gifts of Naaman, 1637, Pieter Fransz de Grebber]
Year B, 6 Epiphany, 2 Kings 5:1-14
February 12, 2012
UNEDITED
We live in a world of spiritual seeking. Even those that we might consider to be the most secular of individuals will turn to spirituality in order to find the answers to their deepest questions or a remedy for their deepest hurts.
Lauren and I have some friends who, like many of our generation, don’t get married, they just move in with one another. And when they hit a rough patch in their relationship, they decided that the answer was to attend a weekend retreat where they would become certified yoga instructors. This, they thought, would fix their problems. And why not?
And yet, it would have cost them a lot less money and they would have saved a lot of time had they opened up a Bible to 2 Kings chapter 5. What they would find is that spiritual truth is not found in far away and exotic places and that it is not hidden in a hard to find spot. In fact, spiritual truth finds the seeker. It is not difficult and it is not complicated, but in fact is very simple.
This is hard for us to see as human beings.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love spent weeks atop the bestseller lists and she, like many others, felt the need to go ‘away’ to find oneself. ‘She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life (“Eat”). She spent three months in India, finding her spirituality (“Pray”) She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for “balance” of the two and found love (“Love”) in the form of a dashing Brazilian factory owner’ (Wikipedia.org).
A lot of people connected with Gilbert’s book and that is my point. But let me tell you here and now that you don’t have to travel to Italy, India, or Bali to find the answers to life’s questions. They are as accessible as can be.
Naaman is a worldly man. Naaman is a great man of valor. He is accomplished, successful, popular, loved; the kind of person all of would like to be except that he has leprosy. And in his mind, and the minds of others, if not for his ‘condition,’ he would be the perfect man. From our own point of view, if not for his leprosy, Naaman is the kind of person we would all like to be.
Naaman knew he was somebody. And he hears that in another land there is one who can help him, so he and his entourage head to Israel with a letter of introduction from the King of Syria and around $100,000.
Elisha the prophet tells the king to send Naaman to him and so, Naaman and his huge and glourious entourage of horses and chariots come rolling up to a meager dwelling place—it is not impressive. And before Naaman can dwell too long on this disappointment, a messenger comes out and says to Naaman, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”
Namaan is mad. I am important and Elisha himself should have come out and gave me the message. But even worse, this message that has been given is ridiculous. What?! If that’s all there is to it, I could have stayed at home. We have rivers there and they’re a lot nicer than the Jordan!
But as they are pulling out of Elisha’s driveway, his servant says to him, ‘My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?’
In the world that we live in today, full of spiritual seekers, many are turning away from the Gospel in rage because it is too simple. What is the Gospel? If you want a concise scriptural definition, 2 Cor. 5:21: ‘For our sake, God made him [Jesus] who knew no sin, to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That is, Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, if you believe in him, God will forgive you and accept you out of grace. That’s it.
‘That’s it?” people will ask. “Surely there is more to it.” Where do they have to go? What do they have to read? What program do they have to sign up for? What regimen do they need to begin? What is their role to play in being made clean? The answer is, “Believe in Jesus Christ and live.”
Do you realize that this is the answer to your problem, any problem? This is the way to overcome any obstacle, any problem. If you think this is overblown, you are like Naaman in his chariot racing away from the very thing that he longed for. But you think, ‘it couldn’t be so simple.’
Unbelievers are not the only ones who think this message is too simple. Christians can fall into this trap just as easily. When I first became a believer I reveled in the Gospel message. It brought me such delight and I would find myself overwhelmed with emotion when I thought on what God did for me through the cross. But as I grew older and ‘deeper’ in my faith I began to think, ‘Okay, I get the Gospel, but now it’s time to really plumb the depths of faith. I need to begin to focus on more substantial matters of faith.
I began to read books, go on retreats, and constantly sought the next spiritual high or mountaintop experience. And after awhile, I became immune even to them. What’s next? I thought. I had lost sight of the Gospel. I had lost sight of the fact that ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners’ was not just a starting point, but it was the point. It was not just the beginning, but the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega. I was a well-intentioned Naaman who sought spiritual truth, but thought it must be found in the complex and in the intellectual.
While going through this stage of faith, I happened to stumble upon, or rather God threw me upon, one of Spurgeon’s sermons on this very text:
“I am somewhat myself in the position of [Elisha], when Naaman, the Syrian, came dashing up with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of the prophet. There are before me in this house, I fear, many who are spiritually diseased. Your motive for coming up to this assembly should be to hear the gospel, and to discover the remedy by which your spiritual disease may be removed. But what, let me ask, are really the thoughts that occupy your minds? I can suppose that you are looking for different things from me. One, perhaps, imagines that something will be said odd and strange that shall provoke a smile: another imagines that I shall labor to make some display of elocution and speak tender words softly, like flakes of feathered snow melting as they fall, and so draw forth the silent, graceful tear. When both of these are alike disappointed, you will probably say to yourselves, “Well, it is only the old story we used to hear when we went to the Sunday-school; it is just what we have listened to Sunday after Sunday, till we turn away [overstuffed] with it. It is, believe in Jesus Christ and live; there is nothing fresh or new to stimulate our intellect; nothing original to whet our curiosity. In whatever shape the preacher puts it, whatever illustrations he uses to enforce it, it comes to just what we have always heard — ’believe and live.’“
Naaman believed and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Before you go to bed tonight, open up your Bible and read verses 15-19 of 2 Kings chapter 5. See the changed in Naaman’s life. He has not just been healed of leprosy he has been made clean by grace and now understands that what he once thought was too simple was not only his salvation, but contained a message so deep that it is hard to comprehend; it ought to overwhelm you-God’s great love for those in need of rescue. God sees through the exterior of our lives and looks at our hearts and says, that is what I want. That is what I am going to make right. That is what I am going to save. You can keep your horses and chariots, your money, your title, your pride, your ego – I want you.
Whether you are the unbeliever who finds the message too simple and therefore turns to find an answer more stimulating or you are the Christian who has lost sight of the power of this life-changing message, know this: ‘There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.’
A simple message, the Gospel, but the only thing that has power to transform and cleanse.
AMEN
