To listen to the 9:00 AM sermon click here. To listen to the 10:45 AM sermon click here.

St. Charles' Episcopal Church - Saint Charles, IL
The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany - Epiphany 6 -- Year B
Sunday February 15, 2009
2 Kings 5:1-14 - Psalm 30 - 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 - Mark 1:40-45

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

Today we hear two of the great healing stories from the Bible. Both of them involve leprosy, the scourge of the Bible. It is important to remember that when you run into leprosy in the Bible it isn't the leprosy we know today as Hanson's Disease. Leprosy in the Bible encompasses a whole host of different skin diseases. When you read a story in the Bible that has leprosy in it there are two things that are important to know. The first thing to know is that leprosy made you ritually unclean, thereby cutting you off from society, and even more importantly, from the temple. The second thing to know is that leprosy was incurable by the normal means of the day. So if you add one and two together, you see that contracting leprosy was a psychic, social, and spiritual problem of epic proportions. It didn't matter whether you were a king or a pauper. If you got leprosy you were separated away from your loved ones, forced to rely on the charity of others, and deemed unworthy to worship God in the temple, as was the duty of every good Jew. So leprosy was often seen as a sign of God's great displeasure. Now that I have spent all this time teaching you about leprosy, I'm sorry to say that neither of these stories is reallyabout leprosy! I know what you're thinking. No, leprosy is important to the story, but they're really about healing.

So let's see about the story of Naaman. Naaman is a very powerful and influential man, the commander of the King of Aram's Army. But he has a problem. He has leprosy. It must not be bad yet for he is able to hide it and still move among the people, but he is worried. Deeply worried. It is only a matter of time before he will be found out and lose all his power and influence. One of the interesting parts of this story is how everybody in the story seems to misinterpret, misunderstand, or just plain miss the actions of God's. The army of Aram is successful against Israel, so the Jews think God is against them, but our narrator tells us that God is really setting up Naaman, giving him a false sense of power, so that we will all get to see the awesome power of God.

Again and again in this tale we stumble upon God acting through the most unusual and improbable people. A slave girl captured in a raid speaks of the power of the prophet, but why in the world would the conquering hero listen...and yet he does. And so Naaman goes off with all his power and money to buy a prophet. Notice how the King of Israel lacks faith in the power of Elisha and thinks this is only a ploy to find an excuse for Aram to attack again. The people who should have faith don't, and the people who shouldn't do. It's almost like the Keystone Cops. Thankfully Elisha comes running to bail his king out of trouble, but even he is a little afraid of leprosy and so he mails in his healing, telling Naaman to go wash in the river seven times. And after Naaman grumbles a bit about what's so special about the rivers in Israel, and how could it possibly be this easy, he goes and washes and low and behold it works anyway. He is healed. The story gets even better in the conclusion that we don't hear this morning, so I'm afraid your homework is to go home and read all of Chapter 5 of Second Kings. (Don't worry, it's only 12 more verses!).

Now let's look at Jesus healing and compare the two. A leper comes to Jesus kneeling before him and begging to be made clean. Not buying but begging. Unlike Naaman, this leper knows just how easy it is to be made clean. "If you choose, you can make me clean." And look at the difference between the healings. Elisha is willing to do God's will in the healing, you remember, but is not willing to come in contact with the unclean leper. How different for Jesus. Jesus is moved by pity for the man cut off from humanity and stretches out his hand and touches the man, breaking every taboo rule in the book. In the rest of chapter five in the Second Book of Kings you will read about what an impact Elisha's healing makes on Naaman's life. (I'll let the cat out of the bag and tell you it is not that different from the leper in Mark.)

God's desire for us is that we be clean and healthy, and we don't have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there. Like Naaman, we tend to make it more complicated than it needs to be....often way more complicated. Or like Elisha we are afraid to fully commit to the process. Or like the King of Israel we are afraid it won't work. Or like the King of Aram we think it will cost us a fortune. We are all in these stories at one point or another. Every one of us. We have all sorts of assumptions about who can be healed and who can't. We have always done this to ourselves and when we hear these ancient stories we find out we have been doing this for a long time. It is comforting to not be alone. But I pray that we see something else as well. I pray that we can also see that no matter how deep a trench we try to dig to separate us from God; no matter how tall a wall we build; Godwill reach around or over or under or whatever it takes to touch us; to keep us in touch, and to clean up our sin. To make us well. This is the wonderful and awful truth that we so desperately need to remember and to share. God loves us. God loves you. And God doesn't so much want you to behave as to be well; Full of health and vitality. And God is ready and willing to make that happen. Even all the bumbling and missteps of all involved could not prevent Naaman's healing.

This year during Lent at our Wednesday evening Eucharists we will be offering a service of healing. Our members of the Order of St. Luke will be present to offer prayers for healing and laying on of hands. Healing was at the core of Jesus' ministry on Earth, and it was one of the first things he taught his disciples, even before he taught them to pray. If we are going to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world today, and we should be, then we need to begin healing the hurts of the world. I invite you to take part in this special blessing and to invite your friends as well. I cannot guarantee that you will be cured, but I know you will be healed. Our Lord wouldn't want it any other way. Amen.