Things to do instead of writing a sermon...
---read blogs
---play solitare
---play with my new puppy(probably my favorite thing today)
---watch the birds
---housework??? maybe a little
---sleep
---sleep
---sleep
Every Saturday I end up asking myself why I continue to do this...especially since I have another full-time job that is very stressful these days. Well, there is that whole God thing...the One who called me to this in the first place, the One who enabled me to get through seminary, the One who continues to sustain me...
And again I get around to only being able to say "Thanks be to God" (even though I am still very tired and tired of spending every Saturday writing a sermon)

Sermon on 2 Kings 5:1-14, Mark 1:40-45

6th Sunday Ordinary Time---B

Important people expect to be treated with deference and respect. Think about the leading stars of stage or screen, or powerful politicians, or the CEO's of large companies...and think about how they expect to be treated. You wouldn't find them, for instance, staying at Motel 6 and eating at McDonalds. No...they go to expensive hotels and restaurants and they expect personalized service...they expect that their every wish will be immediately granted. Important people have luxurious, private boxes built for them at sports stadiums, they have limosines and private jets, and personal assistants(whatever they are). And should you meet one of these important people, well, you don't greet them like you would other people...these prestigious and "beautiful" people expect that they are owed deference, because they are so great, and they look for the acknowlegement of that from all around them.

And so it is with Namaan in our Old Testament lesson for this morning. He was a very important person, a VIP. Namaan was the commander of the army of Syria, who had won many battles against Israel, the country to their South, in the 9th century BC. As a result, Namaan had many servants who waited on him and his family, and provided for their every need. And, he was highly favored by the king of Syria, to whom he had free access. Namaan apparently had only one problem, and it was a big one...he had leprosy...or some other equally disfiguring skin disease. In the Bible, the word used for leprosy can mean many different types of skin diseases. Whatever the skin disease was, we can be sure that it was disfiguring, and seemingly incurable. Usually people with such diseases were banished from their community, to avoid infecting someone else, and because in ancient times, disease was very often thought to be a result of sin, or some kind of curse. Naaman was not banished, though...he was very important, and he was very rich. Namaan's wife heard, from her young Israelite slave-girl, that the prophet Elisha, in Israel, could heal leprosy. When Namaan heard about this, and told the king, the Syrian king wrote a letter to the king of Israel, sent a huge gift, and asked that Namaan be cured. Well, the king of Israel thought it was all a plot, of course, so that Namaan could sneak back into the country and win another military victory...but Elisha heard about it and asked that Namaan come to him.

And so Namaan went, with his entourage, and he arrived at Elisha's amidst a cloud of dust with his horses and his chariots and his servants, and no doubt with great flourish...and no doubt expecting the prophet to show him proper deference and respect for the important man that he was. Namaan probably also expected that Elisha would cure him using great ceremony, intoning special prayers to the God of Israel. Well, Elisha didn't even pay him the courtesy of greeting him and inviting him in. Instead, Elisha sent out a servant with the message that Namaan should go and wash himself seven times in the Jordan River. Namaan was, not surprisingly, humiliated and furious! How dare Elisha give such trivial and simple instructions??!!? Namaan came to have something done to him...to be cured...not to be told to go do something...especially not something like go and bath seven times in the dirty, disgusting, muddy Jordan River! Well, once again a humble servant has wisdom that a great man does not have, and at the urging of his servant, Namaan went to the river Jordan, no doubt feeling stripped of his pride as he stripped off his clothes...and he bathed in the river 7 times, and he was made clean.

Namaan had to find his way beyond and through his pride and his haughtiness to get his healing...and sometimes, so do we. What kinds of things do we need to be healed of...and what does it mean to be cleansed by God? Whatever your individual answer to that question may be, there are some things that we all need to do...for instance, we need to give up our sense of our own self-importance, and we have to give up our illusion that we are entirely in control...and our need to be in control.

The leper in the Gospel of Mark had no illusion of control...he was certainly very poor and powerless, no doubt he had been banished from his home and community because of his disease. And, in the culture of first century Jews, community was everything. Also, at that time, lepers were responsible for maintaining their own ostracism from society in general, and from specific contact with anyone. And yet, that leper had the boldness, the courage, perhaps the desparation, to approach Jesus. And when he did, the most remarkable thing happened...Jesus reached out and touched him, and he was healed! Imagine how long it had probably been since that man had been touched...for anyone to touch him would have made them ritually unclean under Jewish law. And yet, Jesus, a very devout Jew, touched him with pity and with compassion, and healed him. To put that into context, imagine you are in a large city, and you come across a homeless person, known to have AIDS. This person is also filthy dirty, malnourished and stinky, with running sores all over his body...would you be willing to reach out and touch him in pity and compassion? Here's something even more difficult to imagine...if you were the homeless person with AIDS, would you risk scorn and rejection...would you ask to be touched...would you ask to be healed???? I think many of us would answer "no" to both questions. And yet, both of these stories, the story of Namaan and of the leper, these stories tell us that God is a God of mercy and compassion....the God who suffers with us. (the word compassion comes from the Latin meaning "suffer with")

These stories also tell us that God desires that all of his creation be made whole...for that is what healing is really all about...being made whole. God does not discriminate between rich and poor, between the beautiful people and the outcasts...God even wants the lepers among us, the most outcast of the outcasts, and the commander of foreign forces that have waged war on God's people (even our enemies) God wants them all to be healed...to be made whole. God wants good for all of his creation, and Jesus came to that all may have abundant life. God is above all a God of love, who wills for us the blessed fruits of his love. The abundance of that love is shown to us by the grace that God heaps upon us all---by the beauty of the natural world around us, by the sun he makes to rise on the evil and the good...by the rain he sends on the just and the unjust...

Knowing this about God can be tough, I suppose...knowing that "our" God wants such healing and abundant life for those we consider to be practically worthless sinners, or our enemies...and yet that is what these texts tell us. And, dear ones, this is the Good News...God wants that for all of you, as well...even, especially, when you fear you are too unclean in some way or another...God calls you to him, God reaches out and touches you with pity and compassion, and God says: My beloved child, you are made clean...you are made new...you are made whole in me.

In the name of the Father,and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.