February 16, 2003

Matthew Lawrence

2 Kings 5:1-14     Mark 1:40-45

Both of our Bible stories have to do with a miraculous healing. Jesus touches a leper and he is healed. The commander of an army contracts leprosy so he washes in the river Jordan and is healed. You know, it's almost as if the Bible is asking us to believe that such things are possible!

But let's be honest for a minute, how many of us find ourselves wondering if this isn't a set-up? Because a part of us desperately wants to believe it is possible -- and another part of us doesn't want to be taken for a fool.

We hear these stories of healing and a part of us wants to say, "C'mon God, don't mess with me now, because you know how I feel!" There are so many people in this world that need healing! There's Heather*, for starters, and while we're at it her mother Sandy, and for that matter my mother Dulcie, who is trapped in a bed in a nursing home with MS, not to mention all the other thousands and millions of wonderful beautiful souls of God who are suffering right now from cancer and AIDS and hunger and disease and brokenness.

Especially when they are close to us, - we want to rescue them; we want to go to them and lift them out of their sickbeds; we want to carry them, running, like Heather would be rescuing that baby, running up to the altar of God and lifting them before the Lord and crying out, "Okay, God, You got me, I believe! Okay? Is that what you want? So now cure them! C'mon now God, do your magic thing! You say you're a God of healing so get to work! You cured the poor beggar in Jerusalem so cure my mother! You even cured Naaman, who was an enemy of Israel -- so what about Heather?"

Those of us who have seen death and tragedy up close -- we have little patience with sunny optimism. When someone we love is in the midst of deep suffering and disease there is no place in our hearts for a preacher's glib clichés. We will not be exploited by easy promises of miracle cures. We are not children, and this worship service is no sideshow circus act.

So what are we supposed to believe about God and healing? Are these stories from the Bible just nice fables of a bygone age when dragons flew and miracles happened? Or are they real? And if the stories are real, how are they real? Because we need to know. We've lived too long and seen too much to go in for fairy tales and "cleverly-devised myths", to use Paul's phrase.

When I got to this point in writing my sermon I stopped and took a long walk and prayed for Heather and all the folks I know who are suffering and when I got back I lit this oil lamp for them and it burned while I wrote the rest of this sermon. This is my "What about Heather" lamp. I bought it in Taizé France last summer and Sandy and George, I want you to have it as a sign of love from all of us at Canterbury House.

The other day I went to a healing service at an Episcopal church and the priest stood up and said, "the first thing we have to know about the word `heal' is it's not the same as the word `cure'." I was a little suspicious when he said this, it sounded like he was about to make some kind of clever excuse for why God was not curing my mom of her MS -- but later on I went to the dictionary and saw what he meant.

The word "heal" comes from the same Old English root as the words "whole", and "holy", and "hale", as in "he's a hale and hearty fellow." When we say that someone is healed we're talking about someone who has found wholeness, who has been blessed by a spiritual and physical integration that brings her spirit to the surface of her face -- you know what I'm talking about, that twinkle, that spark, that deep fundamental wealth of spirit. Sort of like Heather Jones, come to think of it

When I think about it, I've known people who were deeply healed even when they were very sick. There was a man who taught me how to pray while he was dying of AIDS; his devotion to God was so deep and powerful that it changed my life. There was a friend of mine battling brain tumors for 30 years who spread the joyful power of the gospel every day of her life. There is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, battling prostate cancer as we speak, who nonetheless still manages to climb a pulpit on Sunday mornings and proclaim a gospel that will rattle your bones.

On the other hand, a person can be cured of a disease and still not be healed, not be whole. Getting over the flu might make us feel better, but it won't necessarily make us better people; in fact it might free us to become even bigger pains in the butt than we were when we were sick.

Being cured does not mean we are healed. In order to be healed, we must be made whole.

Which leads us to our Bible story; 2 Kings, Ch. 5, a story about healing. Naaman is the commander of the army of the king of Aram -- which if you're confused is basically the same as Syria and this was about 850 B.C. when Israel and Aram were at war with one another.

And it turns out that even though Naaman is a mighty warrior, he suffers from leprosy; and he finds out through a servant girl that there's a prophet in Israel named Elisha who can cure his leprosy, so he decides to go. This is sort of like Saddam Hussein's top general asking if he can come to the Henry Ford hospital to get a treatment for hemorrhoids ... and everyone knows about it! Because in the ancient Middle East there is nothing more shameful than leprosy.

But Naaman doesn't care; he is so desperate for a cure he will endure almost any humiliation, up to a point. I mean, like any man he has his pride, and so probably for the same reason that old men drive red Porsches (which I intend to do when I'm old) he sets off with this massive caravan of camels and stallions and an enormous fortune, six thousand shekels of gold; ten talents of silver an entire wardrobe of expensive clothes to make a most magnificent show of power and prestige as he presents himself to Elisha.

Well Elisha sees him coming and just about splits his side laughing at this guy's pretension and arrogance. "Look at this guy with his crimson silk robes; his stallions and chariots! This guy thinks his wealth and power mean something to God! This guy thinks he can buy himself some healing!"

So Elisha decides to mess with his head.

He doesn't even meet him at the door. He sends a servant to him, who says, basically, "Hey dude, nice clothes; but okay ... Elisha? He says go strip down naked and wash yourself in that river down there. Yeah, like seven times."

This really makes Naaman mad. "I came all the way from Damascus! I am an important man with big money! Elisha is supposed to meet me in the splendor of my radiance give me my money's worth! C'mon, let's see the show! He's supposed to wave his arms, perform his magic, do those pyrotechnics! But instead he tells me to bathe in that stinking river like I'm some beggar on the road?" Elisha's servant says, "Uh, yep, seven times. Oh, and he says to make sure to scrub behind your ears."

Okay, Naaman's an idiot; but he's no different from us. He wants the cure, but not the healing; he wants God to cure his leprosy without touching his life. He wants to be confirmed in his power and prestige; he wants to be seen by God as a man of importance and status. He wants to be cured with his crimson silk robe on, not, God forbid, healed in his nakedness; with his shameful, diseased white flesh revealed before God. He wants to be healed on his own terms, with his armor still on. The last thing he wants is to be vulnerable and exposed, before God.

And what I love about this story is it's his servants who save him: the lowest members of the caste system talk him into following the advice of the prophet. Because they know what it means to be vulnerable and small. They know what a blessing it is to be in the presence of a living God and to be loved exactly as you are, slave or free, Jew or Aramaen, mighty warrior or little girl. They know that it is not their strength that saves them, but their weakness.

That wonderful writer and theologian Henri Nouwen once said that our "wounds are our calling sounds." By that he meant that it is through our woundedness that we hear God's voice; God is calling to us through our suffering; through our suffering God shows us the way into genuine human relationships. As long as Naaman stayed up there on his camel with those crimson robes, he wasn't ever going to get it; he couldn't understand Elisha; he couldn't understand his servants, and he couldn't understand God's word for him.

We can't be healed in our strength and crimson robes. And you know what, we can't heal in them either. As long as I am wearing my crimson robes, my prayers for Jody mean nothing; as long as I am separating myself from the human condition; as long as I am holding myself back from encountering my own mortality, my own woundedness, I can't expect God to hear my prayers for Heather or for my mother or for anyone else.

And so this is where we get down to the heart of the matter. When we pray for someone's healing, how often would we like to think that we are the rescuers, and they are the ones needing rescue. I want to be the knight in shining armor; I want to be the firefighter! But what I believe God is saying to us this morning is that we might get a little confused sometimes as to who is rescuing whom.

Heather is not a helpless child; in fact, she's been in the river for awhile now; and we dare to say that in a profound sense she is already healed. Maybe Heather has a blessing for us that we need to receive.

We will never know until we take off our crimson robes and get into that river ourselves. We can only become healers when we recognize that we, too, need healing; because you know what? We all have this terminal disease which is our mortality.

So this oil lamp is not just the "What about Heather" lamp; or the "What about Sandy" lamp, or "What about Dulcie" or "What about the refugees in Sudan" or the starving infants in North Korea, etc., etc. This is also the "What about Matthew lamp"; the "What about Fred lamp", the "What about you" lamp.

It's only when we are standing in the river together that we will hear the quiet, gentle voice of the servant girl, which is no one's voice but the voice of God. It is God, who came to us as a servant, who is speaking words of healing; it is none other than Christ, who suffered on a cross so that we might know that no matter how sick we are, no matter how much pain we are in, our pain is born by Him. Christ is carrying our pain, so that we don't have to.

It is not up to us to take away Heather's pain, or my mother's pain, or anyone else's, no matter how much we would like to do that. Christ has done that for us. It is not for us to be the rescuer in the crimson robes: Christ rescues us. It is not for us to call upon God's cure as if God were a magician and we are all entitled to live lives free from all pain and suffering. Rather, it is simply up to us to hold Jesus' hand as he takes us to the river. It is a river of life; a river of tears, but finally a river of everflowing blessing; a river of constant, rushing love, healing us, renewing us, making us whole.

Christ heals us in the heart, which is God's heart, once pierced and broken, but now restored, renewed, healed. Thanks be to God. Amen.

*Note: The names in this sermon have been changed for publication.