A Sermon preached on Pentecost XXI, 9th
October 2016 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
2 Kings 5:1-3,
7-15c, 2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke
17:11-19
Most Wednesday
mornings we offer a healing service here at St. Augustine’s, in the context of
a Eucharist. Anyone who feels the desire and need comes forward for the laying
on of hands, for anointing, and for personal prayer for healing. It is not
spectacular, I don’t send anyone over to the park to immerse themselves in the
lake and wash seven times. No one faints and falls over when I touch them,
thank God! And there have been no miraculous, physical healings that I know of.
But still, the very act of a healing
service is already a form of healing.
The sickness
described in both the OT and Gospel readings this morning, leprosy, was not
just a physical condition. It was a social condition as well, as it resulted on
the complete exclusion from society. According to the rules in Leviticus (13:45-46)
“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and …cry out,
‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the
camp.” Even the much less serious diseases or ailments, physical, emotional, or
psychological, that we usually encounter can lead to exclusion. Too often, we
fear sickness, sometimes because of the risk of infection, more often however
irrationally. We worry that we will not know what to say or do, and we often
just feel uncomfortable.
But in our healing
service, in any healing service, the sick are not excluded, on the contrary
they are welcomed into the middle of the community. The central act of healing
prayer is human contact, the laying on of hands. We pray that God working
through us will “heal us and make us whole,” because we are only whole when we
are together, not isolated and alone. And so, following the prayers for
healing, we share first the Peace, and then Holy Communion. We are one.
The readings from
Kings and Luke are also about more than just physical healing. The main
characters, Naaman and the anonymous Samaritan were doubly excluded, both because
they suffered from leprosy, or some other skin disease, and because they were foreigners.
In Naaman’s case not just a foreigner, but a representative of an enemy nation.
That is why the king of Israel is so upset when he gets a letter from the king
of Aram, or Syria as we call the country today. He thinks it is a trick: “Just
look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me." (2 Kings 5: 7) Healing
Naaman and the Samaritan, not forgetting his nine forgetful companions, was not
just an act of healing, but of forgiveness and inclusion.
But there is more.
One thing I find fascinating about these two events, is how low-key the actual
act of healing is. Naaman is almost insulted. He was expecting some great magic
show, with the prophet standing in front of him, invoking God with a dramatic
voice, while waving his hands over him melodramatically. It takes a servant to
get him off his high horse: "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to
do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he
said to you was, `Wash, and be clean'?" (2 Kings 5:13)
When the 10 lepers
call out "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” (Luke 17:11) all that happens
is that he says "’Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they
went, they were made clean.” (17:14) A healing so subtle that nine of them do not
even seem to notice, at least not until it is too late to come back and say
thank you.
And look what a vital
role “normal” people play. Naaman would not have been healed if his wife’s maid,
a young slave from Israel, had not pointed him to the prophet Elisha. And it
took the courage of another servant, speaking up to an angry master, to
persuade him to do what Elisha asks and wash himself in the Jordan river. Little
acts of compassion by “little” people are also acts of healing.
I believe that we
all have healing power. Simple acts of inclusion, compassion, love and forgiveness
are all both necessary for, and also the means of healing. They help make the
sick whole again, they give strength, they take away fear, they encourage. In
the Litany of Healing[1] we
pray at our Wednesday service, we pray that God will grant the “lonely, anxious
and despondent a knowledge of God’s will and an awareness of God’s presence.” We
ask God to “mend broken relationships.” We plead with God to “restore to wholeness
whatever is broken by human sin, in our lives, in our nation, and in the world.”
These are all acts
of healing that we can participate in and support. We can make people aware of
God’s presence by showing how God is present in our lives and in our actions. We
can mend those broken relationships we are part of and that we perhaps had a
role in breaking. We can repent – that is acknowledge and change – our own sinful
acts, whether as individuals, communities, or nations. The sin of racism is one
that looms large right now on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It needs a lot
of healing, and a lot of prayer, and a lot of action by faithful people.
The actual healing
in today’s passages is clearly miraculous and reserved to God. Both stories highlight
how healing and faith in God work together. Neither Naaman nor the lepers would
have come to Elisha or called on Jesus if they did not have at least a little faith,
and a little trust in God – even if just the size of a mustard seed as we heard last week. Some faith was already required
for the lepers to turn and go to the priests without having experienced the
healing first. Only as they depart, are they are cleansed.
Then, after they have
been healed, Naaman and the Samaritan are strengthened in their faith. The commander
of the army of Israel’s enemy is moved to say: "Now I know that there is
no God in all the earth except in Israel." (2 Kings 5:15)
The Samaritan
returns to Jesus, praising God and thanking Jesus as God’s agent in his
healing. That the other nine did not come back, and yet were still made
physically well, is a reminder of God’s unlimited grace and mercy. Healing is
not a reward for being particularly faithful. What the nine miss out on, is the
direct encounter with God in Jesus. What they miss out on, is the healing that
goes beyond the moment. What they miss out on, is the healing and wholeness only
God can give, because it goes beyond this life, which is finite. What they miss
out on, is the relationship that lasts and that sustains us through illness, and
sickness, and death. Among the ten former lepers, only the Samaritan hears the
comforting words "Your faith has made you well." (Luke 17:19)
God wants you all to
be healers, and God wants you all to be healed through faith. True healing means
becoming whole, and becoming whole means becoming one with God, which is the only
healing that lasts, even beyond sickness and death.
Amen
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