Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
A Service of Healing

The concept of healing is a big part of the Judaeo Christian tradition. We have story after story in the Bible about cures of bodily illness or emotional disorder brought about through spiritual means. We have extended that idiom to refer to the healing of relationships between individuals and larger communities. Biblical accounts of healing have a particular form – there is something similar about all of them. The sufferer of the affliction is identified. We may or may not learn the details about the effect that it has had on his or her life. A healer is identified who describes the means by which well being can be restored. The afflicted one chooses whether to undertake those means with varying degrees of deliberation. The results are made known.
The means by which healing takes place are usually some kind of ritual words or actions. To us in the 21st century they can seem almost magical. Certainly they are distinct from the kinds of medical procedures, medications or therapies that we are accustomed to identify with the restoration of health from a physical or a mental ailment. There is one thing that never happens in these stories. Healers don’t apply the means of healing without somehow engaging the one afflicted and receiving his or her assent and cooperation. Occasionally the one who is ill is so sick that others seek healing on his behalf, but in one way or another, the one being healed really has to want to change.
Today’s story from the book of Kings is interesting for its little side excursions from the main story. Naaman, the great Aramean general (Aram is the ancient name of Syria) is ill with the fearsome disease of leprosy. Knowledge of a cure comes from a very unlikely source – a young Israelite girl who has become enslaved as the spoils of war. There is an odd irony to that. Why is this insignificant one who has suffered as a result of the great general’s military genius inclined to be so generous? Why doesn’t she at least use this knowledge to bargain for her freedom? And why do all of these more powerful people even listen to what she has to say? If we are looking to be made well the means of doing so may be revealed in unexpected ways. That revelation may reflect unexpected and undeserved generosity on the part of another. From the readers point of view in this story from 2 Kings the revelation puts the general in the debt of one whom he may indirectly have harmed. Her generosity of spirit is an implied forgiveness for his actions that puts him on the road to healing.
The Syrian King sends him off to the King of Israel with an explanation of their request and an impressive array of gifts. The King of Israel views the request for healing through the lens of his own limitations. His life isn’t about healing – it’s about politics. The king can’t put aside his own sense of limitations or his fear for his own well being to engage with the afflicted general. Life will put in our path those whose well being we can have a hand in. Those opportunities may be unexpected and they may seem daunting. They may appear to be threatening to our own sense of who we are and who we want to be. To assist them may seem to require an unreasonable sacrifice. Our responses to fear and threat may blind us to need which seems to great, but with which we are truly capable of assisting.
Fortunately for Naaman, Elisha steps in. He explains to Naaman what he must do to be healed – wash himself in the Jordan seven times. It is, as we might expect, a ritual action. An act of cleansing that is both literal and symbolic – the latter because of the powerful presence of the Jordan in Israel’s sense of itself as a nation and its spiritual life. We learn at this point that Naaman has traveled to Israel with some expectations about how healing is supposed to happen. His expectations are focused on the outward manifestation of the illness and an inclination to place the means of healing outside himself. He wants the healer to wave his hand over the spot on his body where the leprosy is evident and call upon the God of Israel to cure it. He doesn’t anticipate much of a part for himself in the cure. And if it isn’t going to happen as he envisioned it, he’s a little disgusted that he had to travel all the way to Israel and wash in their river when there are perfectly good rivers where he comes from. Naaman’s expectations threaten to get in the way of his being healed. He comes to Israel not expecting to have a part in his own healing. And he comes without expecting that the means of healing will take him beyond what he already knows and where he has already been. The means by which we will be healed is frequently simpler and more straightforward than we imagine it will be. But it is never something applied exclusively from the outside – we always have a part in it. It will take us into unknown territory – perhaps to a place that challenges our assumptions of who we are and where we belong.
Naaman is furious when he hears Elisha’s instructions. He storms off, intending to refuse the healing altogether. His servants call him back and persuade him to try it – even though it may look too easy and seem very unsatisfying. He does it and is restored to health.
Healing is often much more about accepting a challenge to our own assumptions about who we are and what we should do than it is about anything coming to us from the outside. Shedding our afflictions can truly just that – letting go of what makes us sick, unhappy or anxious, robs us of our integrity or seems to make us behave in ways that we. Letting go involves the engagement of the one who is to be healed. It isn’t relief enacted entirely from the outside, independent of our engagement. As Naaman learns, the process of healing may seem to be less than it is cracked up to be and more trouble than it is worth until we experience the results.
All of us have identified with more than one of the characters in this story at one time or another. Like the slave girl, you may have had an opportunity to step beyond the moral high ground of victimhood and offer help to one who has harmed you. Like the king and his wife, you may have listened to an idea from a source that seemed absurdly unlikely or too insignificant to be worth bothering with. Like Elisha, you may have had something important and valuable to offer to someone who was very reluctant to accept it. Like Naaman, you may have made the leap of faith and a journey toward healing that seemed to have too many twists and turns ever to be worthwhile. I welcome you to join in the prayers for healing today in whatever role you find that you occupy in this moment, trusting in God’s presence with us as we engage our own well being and that of others.