Seventeenth Day of Lent

An Old Postcard Image of Nazareth

Monday, March 4, 2024

Collect and lections from the Episcopal Lesser Feasts and Fasts Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints

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Follow the assigned readings with me this Lent….

Kenneth Randolph Taylor

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2 Kings 5:1-15b (TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures):

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was important to his lord and high in his favor, for through him the LORD had granted victory to Aram.  But the man, though a great warrior, was a leper.  Once, when the Arameans were out raiding, they carried off a young girl from the land of Israel, and she became an attendant to Naaman’s wife.  She said to her mistress,

I wish Master could come before the prophet in Samaria; he would cure him of his leprosy.

[Naaman] went and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.  And the king of Aram said,

Go to the king of Israel, and I will send along a letter.

He went out, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing.  He brought the letter to the king of Israel.  It read,

Now, when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent my courtier Naaman to you, that you many cure him of his leprosy.

When the king of Israel read the letter, he rent his clothes and cried,

Am I Gold, to deal death or give life, that this fellow writes to me to cure a man of leprosy?  Just see for yourselves that he is seeking a pretext against me!

When Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, he sent a message to the king:

Why have you rent your clothes?  Let him come to me, and he will learn that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the door of Elisha’s house.  Elisha sent a messenger to say to him,

Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.

But Naaman was angered and walked away.

I thought,

he said,

he would surely come out to me, and would stand and invoke the LORD his God by name, and would wave his hand toward the spot, and cure the afflicted part.  Are not the Amanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?  I could bathe in them and be clean!

And he stalked off in a rage.

But his servants came forward and spoke to him.

Sir,

they said,

if the prophet told you to do something difficult, would you not do it?  How much more when he has only said to you, ‘Bathe and be clean.’

So he went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had bidden; and his flesh became like a little boy’s, and he was clean.  Returning with his entire retinue to the man of God, he stood before him and exclaimed,

Now I know I know that there is no God in the whole world except in Israel!

Psalm 42:2-6 (TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures):

Like a hind crying for water,

my soul cries for You, O God;

my soul thirsts for God, the living God;

O when will I come to appear before God!

My tears have been my food day and night;

I am ever tainted with, “Where is your God?”

When I think of this, I pour out my soul:

how I walked with the crowd, moved with them,

the festive throng, to the House of God

with joyous shouts of praise.

Why so downcast, my soul,

why disquieted within me?

Have hope in God;

I will yet praise Him

for his saving presence.

Luke 4:23-30 (The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition):

So he [Jesus] said to them [at Nazareth],

I expect you will quote this proverb to me, ‘Cure yourself, doctor! Let us see you do in your own country all that we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’

Then he added,

I assure you that no prophet is ever welcomed in his own country.  I tell you you the plain fact that in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were shut up for three and a half years and there was a great famine through the whole country, there were widows in Israel, but Elijah was not sent to any of them.  But he was sent to Sarepta, to a widow in the country of Sidon.  In the time of Elisha the prophet, there were many lepers in Israel, but not one them was healed–only Naaman, the Syrian.

But when they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was furiously angry.  They sprang to their feet  and drove him right out of the town, taking him to the brow of the hill on which it was built, intending to hurl him down headlong.  But he walked straight through the whole crowd and went on his way.

The Collect:

Look upon the heart-felt desires of your humble servants, Almighty God, and stretch forth the right hand of your majesty to be our defense against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

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The enemies seemed to be the former neighbors, at least for Jesus in this day’s Gospel reading.  And why is that?  One reason is that were too familiar with Jesus to understand who he was.  In other words, they were simultaneously too familiar and insufficiently familiar with him.  Jesus had just taught with authority at the Nazareth synagogue (after the temptations in the wilderness), beginning his public ministry.  The former neighbors did not believe that the spirit of the Lord was upon him.

Jesus cited the example of Naaman, a military officer of Aram, a rival of Israel, the northern kingdom.  (Think about the geopolitics of this story.)  Naaman had a skin condition, probably not the disease most people think of when they hear the word “leprosy.”  (The Biblical authors used the term “leprosy” very broadly.)  This condition, whatever it was, caused concern, however, and the Aramean king permitted Naaman to seek treatment in Israel.

In the story from 2 Kings, Naaman learns of Elisha via a captured servant girl, and he receives instructions from a servant of the prophet.  Servants play a prominent role in this account.  And the cure is a relatively simple and unexpected procedure.  Irony abounds.

Another element original readers might not have expected is the extension of grace to Gentiles, even to an agent of a rival kingdom.  I appreciate the extension of grace to Gentiles, for I am among the goyim.  The love of God is universal.  Deo Gratia.

So, do any of us not perceive the universality of the love of God?  Do we think that anyone is beyond grace?  One must consider the element of human free will, of course, for it constitutes another essential aspect of salvation for those not covered under Single Predestination.

Finally, grace demands something of its recipients.  It is free, not cheap.  What does grace demand of you?

KRT

Written on February 26, 2010

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