Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 4, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It is, I think a nice coincidence that the lectionary gives us the story of Naaman and Elisha on this American Independence Day. That story is a perfect vehicle to help us American Christians do something really important. It helps us ponder some fundamental questions about our nation and our citizenship in the most militarily powerful country in the world. That’s what I want to do this morning. And before I do I want to say that this is a very personal sermon for me. I feel passionately about some of the things I’m about to say. I don’t expect all of you to agree with me, but I do ask you to hear what I have to say and to consider it carefully before rejecting it, if you do reject it. That being said, let’s start by reviewing that story of Naaman and Elisha that we just heard from 2 Kings.

We start with Naaman. He is “commander of the army of the king of Aram,” the ancient name for Syria. Aram was a regional power, from time to time fighting wars with Israel. The story says that Naaman was “a mighty warrior” who, despite his position of power, despite his ability to fight and defeat neighboring nations, suffered from “leprosy.” Despite his power, he was not well and needed healing.

Naaman’s wife has a slave girl, an Israelite captured in one of Naaman’s wars. She is among the lowest of the low, an enslaved woman forced to serve the family of the commander of the army that had enslaved her. Nonetheless she seems to care some for Naaman, for she tells his wife that there is a prophet in Samaria—in Israel—who could cure Naaman of his skin disease. So Naaman gets permission from his king to go to Israel to see if this prophet could indeed cure him.

After some intervening intrigue Naaman arrives at the house of Elisha, the prophet of whom the Hebrew slave girl had spoken. He arrives “with his horses and chariots.” Imagine the scene: The commander of the army of a regional power marches up. He comes with the trappings of worldly, military might. I imagine not only horses and chariots but an armed contingent of soldiers come to provide protection and probably to intimidate all they came across as well. They march up to the house of the prophet. Their banners wave in the wind. Their shields, armor, and swords flash in the sunlight. It’s an awesome spectacle, a show of military might proclaiming Naaman’s importance and power in the world.

And what does Elisha, called in this story the man of God, do? Nothing. Naaman’s going for shock and awe, and Elisha, the man of God, just isn’t interested. The prophet doesn’t even come out of his house. He doesn’t invite Naaman in. Rather, he sends a servant to tell the great Syrian commander what he should do to be made well, namely, go bathe in the river Jordan.

Naaman is outraged! He says: “I thought that for me he would surely come out” and do something flashy, something impressive, something spectacular even. It didn’t happen. He expected to be greeted and treated like the great man he thought himself to be. He wasn’t. He wasn’t greeted at all. All he got was a messenger, not even the prophet himself. He was treated like an ordinary person. He’s so offended that at first he wants none of the prophet’s instruction to go wash in the river Jordan. That’s not good enough for him. So he left, we are told, “in a rage.” Whereupon some more servants intervene. Naaman’s own servants convince him that he’s being silly. Why not do it? You’d do something hard, so why not do something easy? Which Naaman then does and is cured of his skin disease. When he got over his pride and humbled himself to do the simple thing that the man of God had told him to do, he was cured.

Look at the dynamic in this story. The prophet, the man of God, the man who understands God’s will and ways, is totally unimpressed by Naaman’s show of pomp and power. Naaman’s great standing in the world means nothing to Elisha. His display of military power avails him not at all. The weak and lowly in the story are the ones who represent wisdom and the way of God. A slave girl, a servant of the prophet, and Naaman’s own servants tell him the truth of his condition. They, the weak and lowly, are the instruments of his healing, not his might and his power. They bring him healing from God, something all the military power in the world could never do.

I ask: Who are we, who is America, in this story? I answer: We are Naaman. Naaman is a worldly power that is in dire need of healing, and so are we. We are a worldly power, the most militarily powerful nation that there has ever been on earth. Like Naaman we throw our weight around. We send our armies halfway around the world to enforce our will. Like Naaman we go for shock and awe and believe that the rest of the world will bow down before our overwhelming military might.

Yet we are in dire need of healing just as Naaman was. We need healing of our addiction to military force. Like Naaman we expect power and might to solve all our problems, yet our great power does not satisfy us. It doesn’t bring the results we think it should bring. Our great might does not bring us the respect and affection of the rest of the world but turns much of the rest of the world against us. Like Naaman we are too proud, too addicted to the use of force, too sure that the rest of the world should and will bow down before us. The spirit and creativity of our nation dry up as we see no solution to problems other than the use of force. Naaman had physical leprosy. We have developed spiritual leprosy as a result of our addiction to violence.

The story of Naaman and Elisha shines a light on our illness as a nation, and it also points us toward the cure. Our great might will not and cannot bring the cure, just as Naaman’s great might could not and did not bring his cure. Rather, our cure will come, if it comes, the way it came to Naaman. It will come when we start listening not to the voices of the powers in the world but to the voice of God, not to the voices of the strong and wealthy but to the voices of the weak, the marginalized, the poor. It will come not through feats of power but through simple, humble, ordinary acts of compassion and justice. It will come when we, like Naaman, humble ourselves, admit our illness, admit that power and military might cannot cure that illness, and seek the true ways of recovery, God’s ways of recovery, the ways not of power but of compassion, not the ways of might but of justice.

So let us celebrate our Independence Day. There is much that is good about this country. Let us celebrate the freedom we have as Americans, the freedom to speak our mind and to worship our God as we wish. The freedom to elect leaders who will, one day, follow those true paths of recovery, the paths of God’s way of peace.. We have, at times, been that light to the nations that we always tell ourselves that we are, although we have been that light less because of our might than because of our freedom and the compassion we also frequently manage to express. There is much to celebrate about our country; but there is also hard work to be done, the work of healing, the work of becoming whole, the work of following God’s ways of peace rather than the world’s ways of power. May we heed the lines of the great old hymn that we began this service with: “For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.” Amen.