No Short Cuts or Quick Fixes

A Sermon based upon  2 Kings 5: 1-15  

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany,  Feb. 12^th, 2012

Once I had a deacon come to me with a special request he brought from another church member.    It is important to note that it was a member I had never seen in church.  

The deacon said, “Pastor, a friend of mind, would like for you to come and tell his son that he’s a sinner and he’s going to hell if he doesn’t get right with God.  Would you be willing to go and tell this son he needs to get his life straight?"  

I thought for a moment.  I grieved for the difficult “family” situation and  I prayed for God to give me the right words to say.   Then I responded,  “Go and give this message to your friend.  Tell him I am very sorry for all he’s going through.  Tell him that if he is willing to come and talk with me about his own sins first, then I will be willing go and talk with his son.” That father never came.           

LIFE CAN GET COMPLICATED

Most everyone wants a God of the quick fix.   We want God to heal, exactly the way we want to be healed.   We want God to answer our prayers on our own conditions.   We want the "My WAY" God to always be the right way.  But there is one problem:  The true God we worship, or should I say that we should worship, is not a God of short cuts, the God of an easy way, nor the God that can be shaped by our way of thinking.  No, it is God's way that often makes people angry, as it did Naaman, Simon Peter, and as it does you and me.  It's that the true God is the God of the long way, the God of a very difficult way, the God of the narrow way - the way of the cross which is the only way that leads to healing and life.   

Our Old Testament text for today is a case and point.    In this story we are told about a powerful Syrian commander-general by the name of Naaman who was in big trouble.   He was a powerful and proud man, but he was in a situation that he couldn’t fix.  He needed healing.  He had leprosy.   It was a dreaded disease of the primitive world that slowly and painfully ate away the hands, feet, then the arms and legs, crippling its victim, until finally infections brought about an agonizing death.  To get leprosy was even worse than a death sentence.   It not only brought you great pain, it caused so much fear in others that they would often abandon you.   In Israel, if you had leprosy, you were made an outcast were ostracized as “unclean”.    

But in the story we see that the general’s servant girl knew of a “prophet” in Israel who had powers to heal.  That prophet lived in Samaria, in the hill country.   Again here comes the complication.  Israel and Syria were seldom on good terms with each other.   As many ancient lands in those days, they were constantly in competition for control.    However, this did not deter Naaman.  Like most people who discover they have an incurable disease, Naaman was willing to go anywhere, try anything, and trust himself to anyone for help.  He was desperate and would resort to any means, right?   Well, not so fast.   It still gets complicated.

Before Naaman could go into enemy territory, he had to get the King’s permission.   The King of Aram (or Syria) not only gives Naaman his personal permission, but sends a large sum of money as a gift to the King of Israel, requesting, if not demanding that Israel “cure him of his leprosy.”   When the King of Israel reads the request, he does not see it as humanitarian, but as a possible “declaration of war”.   The King of Israel responds: “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” (7).   The King of Israel must have felt like I did, when that deacon requested that I “change” or cure that man’s son.  Did he want me to play God and “fix” his problem, or was he seeking my prayers and support?   If I let him “use” me, what happens, when I’m no longer of use to him?  The King of Israel must have wondered that too. 

As the king faces his fears, we read how the prophet Elisha sends a message.  He informs the worried King of Israel that he can send Naaman on to him, “so that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel”  (v8).    Elisha views this situation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity.  It’s an opportunity for witness, for learning, and for the advancement of God’s kingdom.  

So, with Elisha’s blessing, Naaman came riding into the hill country.   He came in full military splendor as the general of a national army, “with his horses and chariots” (v9) and then he stopped at this preacher’s house.   What comedy and irony?  Do you see it?  Now that would be similar to the President, who came through our area a while back having sent over Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton to get a little advice from a  local preacher.   Now that’s funny but the story once again gets complicated.

The drama gets more intense when the general pulls up in his nice, fancy chariot, because we read that the preacher Elisha does not go out to welcome or meet him.   Instead, Elisha sends “a messenger to him”, (v10) with some specific instructions.   How insulting was this to this general who is used to having people wait on him?   Why doesn’t this “preacher” have time for him?   Naaman, like most of us, believe in a God who will heal us as we want.  But Naaman is being introduced to a God who only heals on God’s terms, not on ours.  We can’t get the healing and help we need from God until we give God what he commands from us?  Healing, help and salvation follow faith and obedience.   God does not wait on us, we must wait on God.   Now, that doesn’t sound like a very nice God, does it?   And when the preacher represents a God who does not serve you, but requires that you must serve him first, that can make you pretty mad too.

But the complicated part of this story is not only that that the prophet won’t give Naaman exactly what he wants, but Elisha tells Naaman there is a very “humbling” condition for true healing.  The instruction is clear and precise: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be made clean”(10).  Sound’s easy, but to Naaman, who insists on being the commanding general of his own life, this is not  simple at all, it’s gets very complicated.  Namaan is furious and walks away from the prophet’s house and away from his personal healing too.  It seems Naaman would rather die of this illness, than do what the preacher has instructed.   He digs in his heels, makes up excuses, blames someome else and emands to be healed on his own terms.    

We can even read what was on Namaan’s mind, when got angry at the preacher’s instructions.  In verse eleven he says: “I thought he would surely come out, stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure me” (11)!   Naaman wants what a lot of people want.  They want’s the “holy man” to wave his arms, say “Shazam!” and to make everything better.    They want the preacher or the doctor to fix everything, without taking any responsibility themselves.   So Naaman walks away.   He keeps thinking to himself that his way is better: “Are not the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?   Could I not wash in them, and be clean” (12)?   He’s thinking:” Why can’t I get healed, saved, clean and cured the way I want to be?   Who does this prophet think he is?  

What we need to understand from this story, that there’s much  more to this story than just the sickness of Naaman in Israel of the 9^th century B.C.   There is something of the “sickness” of sin in all of us that appears in this very graphic story.  There is something of the complicated situation we find ourselves in, when we need God's healing, but only want healing on our own terms.    We too can desire the God of the instant miracle and the God of the self-prescribed cure.  Instead of the true God who says, you can be healed, but it will also require something from you, we want to quick fix and the short cut.  

When Reynolds’s Price, the writer and professor of English at Duke was stricken with cancer that was eating up his spine, he wrote, in his book, “Man in the Fire” that he had a dream where he was floating in the ocean and Jesus appeared to him.   As Jesus came close to him, he announced: “Your sins are forgiven”.   Hearing this Price asked, “Hey, what about my healing?”  Then, Jesus answered in an almost non-interested way: “O.K. then, that too.”   When Price came through that ordeal, his life was spared, his cancer was cured, but it left him paralyzed, in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but also with a new life in Christ and faith.   Humbled,  and unwilling participant in his own healing, but now humbled and also healed.

A GOD WHO DOES NOT IMPRESS

Getting healed and becoming clean will not only be more complicated,  your healing and mine, will require us to do the very “unimpressive”, the most humbling thing we would like to avoid.

 

On the news the other day, there was a shocking report.  It said basically this in the most direct fashion: experts are saying that it’s not school lunches that are making kids struggle with childhood obesity (just like it’s not the teachers making kids dumb).   The responsibility for what the child eats falls upon the parents, not the schools and their lunches.   Of course, there will certainly be some debate about this, but one thing for sure is that the hardest place most of have to look for the solution to any problem is right where we are.   

In another report this week, it showed how parents in France could get their children to behave in public situations.  They were not overly strict, but they drew boundaries, lines, the children could not cross and they made sure, consistently and firmly, that the children did not cross them.   Inside the lines the children were given great freedom, so when the child learned the boundaries, then they were manageable, instead of the child managing the parent.    The reports added, America parents need to take a look what the French are doing to see what we are not doing.  

In our world, from many angles, the same point keeps coming at us, people who are proud and think we are better than everybody else.  Do you see what that message is?   In order to find healing, we must submit to a reality that makes us just like everyone else.  In order to find help we must surrender to authority beyond ourselves.  Again, what Naaman must do for his own healing is simple, but it’s not simplistic.  It’s not simplistic because it’s also humiliating.  He’s the general of Syria where large city of Damascus lies.  Damasus  has its own beautiful, superior rivers, the Abana and Pharpar, which are much more impressive, much to be preferred than the pitiful, often dingy creek called the Jordan.  Why would a God who can “heal” make him repeat a washing “ritual” in a dinky little flow of water like that?  God's healing water means nothing to him.

Would we submit to God's healing waters?  Many people would like to see their life or their church do well, to have this growth, or that program or that ministry that develops into something that makes an impact in the community.  But the one thing most of us don’t want to do is the simple thing that can get very complicated   and can be very unimpressive: we must participate with God in making God’s healing  happen in our lives.  

Some time ago there was some pressure on me to become the “pied piper” preacher of a church, who would do some “magic” or “miracle” and make everything happen that the church needed.   Which church was it?   It’s happens just about everywhere.  It is part of the plot of human nature.   There are always those who want someone else to make their church the way they envision it, or make their world as they think it should be.    Theologians call this, “Leaving it to the snake”, dodging our own responsibility to God like Adam and Eve did, putting the blame on each other, and never taking responsibility for obeying God ourselves.    And you can even use religion or a particular religious viewpoint or experience, to see the splinter in someone else’s eye, but fail to see the log in our own.   We can desire a certain way of faith that “impresses us” and perhaps “impresses” others, but at the same time we still take no responsibility to do the “unimpressive”, repetitive little things we know we should do; like praying for each other, supporting each other, caring for each other and helping where we know we should help.   Dr. Bruce Metzger, whose video is helping us in our study of revelation, gave this warning from the seven churches of the Revelation: “The presence of Christ departs when well-intentioned people, zealous to find the “right” way, depart from the ultimate way, which is “love.” (From Breaking the Code, Understanding the Book of Revelation by Dr. Bruce Metzger, p. 32 ).  We need and want something good, but we miss what we need to do first.

There’s a little bit of Naaman in all of us.  It is so easy to want to go after the quick fixes, to get angry and demonize each other, instead of asking: what does God require of me for this healing?  I thought about some seven ways we  must “dip” ourselves in God’s healing river of grace:

(1)     We must first look into our own hearts,  get off of  our “high horse”, step out of our “chariot” and take God’s message seriously.

(2)    We must stop expecting somebody to “fix us”  and see the simple, earthy thing we must do now, being made plain. 

(3)    We must see the need to make God a priority in our life and follow God’s instructions we know might even “complicate” lives we have lined up under our own command rather than under God’s command.

(4)    We dip our lives in the unimpressive, mundane, waters of regular in worship, changing schedules to participate study and learning, making a daily effort to  follow Jesus, giving our tithe and offering to support this church, as we wait on God’s healing.

(5)    We must humbly repenting of our sins, rather than listing the sins of another;

(6)    We must participate in God’ work now.  Instead of saying I don’t have time, I am too old, I am not at all able or responsible and always expecting someone else to do it, we  need to part of the solution, not part of the problem.  

(7)     The number one thing we must do for our healing:  Don’t wait on someone to say to you “Shazam” and think if you having your way, that it’s going to be O.K.

What if Elisha told us all this morning that nothing is going to be O.K., if we persist on walking away and only being right “in our own eyes”? What if there will be no healing without the humbling of our own hearts before the Lord?   Incurable diseases like leprosy and like sin will not get better on its own; it will only get worse.  It will only get worse unless we humble ourselves to work together and with each other, and to accept God’s message in ways that are obvious, displaying a true change of our own heart. 

This week in the News, a Victoria Secret Angel winner; a beautiful young woman who beat out 10,000 other competitors to become a model for the Victoria Secret brand, heard her niece saying, “I want to grow up to be just like you?”  That prophetic message shook her to the core.   She felt the “conviction” of the Holy Spirit.  She humbled herself, and she “gave up her wings” because she realized that this was not the kind of lifestyle she should be modeling.   Such a surrender and submission of heart to God is becoming so rare these days that it makes “front page news”.

A GOD WHO WAITS ON US TO WASH

Until Naaman was willing to “wash” in the water God has chosen, he will not be made clean.  Our God is not a God who controls our fate, but our God is a God who surprisingly puts our future into our own hands.  God will only work his healing on God’s terms---the terms of righteousness and mercy, grace and goodness, repentance and humility of heart.    

Once I read that the great popular preacher, D.L. Moody, who preached across American and also preached in his home church in Chicago, now known as “The Moody Church”, once preached from John 3:16 as his text:  “For God so love the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believe in him will not perish.”  Then the next week, he took the same text.  Then he took it again, and again, and again.  For 8 weeks straight he had preached on this same text and in every message he preached on the love of God and who his people needed to respond to such saving love.   After the eight sermon was finished, one of his members came out the door and commented, Pastor Moody, when are you going to stop preaching on the Love of God.   Dr. Moody, looked straight into the eyes of that member and asked him in his “Elisha” voice; “When, then are you going to do it, live it, show it?”   Until I see it happening, I won’t stop preaching this text.

We all need  to hear “Elisha’s” strong boundary voice today.   Jesus had this same voice when he confronted the religious who refused the healing word of his day, saying: “There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleanse, save Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 7.27).  We are told the response to Jesus was much the same as Naaman’s: “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage” (Luke 4.28).   To hear that we must participate in God’s healing can fill us with “rage” too, but we need to heed the voice that will not give in to the quick fix gods and short cut whiz kids of this world.   We need a voice that will not fall down before the “high ego” gods that like to impress but have no real healing or helping power at all.   And we need to hear that voice from the messenger who gives us the true message we must take to heart:   If we don’t bathe in the river, as God commands us all to bathe in, we will not get clean and we will not have God’s cure.   

Finally, listen to what the servants told Naaman after he walked away mad:  “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?  How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean?” (13).  The lowly humble servants saw what Naaman could not see from his high and mighty position.   Before God could do the “big” thing; he and we must be willing to do the most obvious: “Wash ourselves, and be clean!”  We can’t choose the healing waters; but we have to submit to the waters God has chosen.  We have to submit because only God has the power to heal, fully and completely.  

When Naaman did what the prophet commanded, he found his “healing”.   He also found the true God: “Now, I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”  With the true God there no short cuts.  There are no quick fixes.  There are no magic spells, no special prophets to take you by the hand.   To find God’s healing, we must humble ourselves and “dip” into the waters he’s chosen for us.  Will you wash?  Will you know that only Israel’s God can take your soul and this church, where it needs to go?  Only God can make us clean.  Only God can give us complete healing; but you and I have to “wash”.   God’s water of grace and healing a waits us.   Will you wash?  Amen.