The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
One of the themes that keeps recurring throughout the Bible is this: It
is very hard for us humans to allow God to be God. We so much want to
share in his power and glory. We want to have an equal say with God...or maybe
even MORE say than God has...about our salvation, our life, our relationships.
But, the Bible keeps telling us, God is God and we are his creatures, his
beloved children, the work of his hands...but we are NOT God! And most of us
have a very hard time accepting that basic fact. I call it a basic fact, because
it is one of the bases on which our understanding of God, and therefore our
religion, rests.
I am pretty sure that most of you, when you heard what I just said, started
thinking about Adam and Eve. Yes, they are the first example of the human
refusal to allow God to BE God. But there are others, all through the Bible, and
today we have two such examples in our readings.
First, there is the story of Namaan the leper. Namaan was a good man, a
hard-working man. He was a general and a good one, and when he led his army into
Israel and took captives, he was good to the captives. That comes clearly to us
through this morning's reading. The little girl whom he captured and brought
home was obviously treated well. She felt comfortable enough in her role as a
captive slave to be able to speak up and try to help Namaan when his leprosy was
discovered. That says much about how well he treated her, and his other
captives. The Bible makes it quite clear that he was held in high esteem in his
own land, so much so that his servants felt quite easy about offering advice to
him. And so he took the advice and went back to Israel, to ask the prophet
Elisha to heal him. And God, of course, knew what was going on, and told Elisha
how to handle the situation.
However, for all his kindness and the good regard that people held Namaan in,
there was one thing he was not able to do, and that was: he was not willing to
let God be God. Elisha sent his servant to instruct Namaan on how he might be
cured, and Namaan just plain did not want to accept that instruction.
Bathe seven times in the Jordan River? For heaven's sake! The Jordan is
really just a small creek compared to the mighty rivers in my home land! And
that prophet Elisha...he didn't even come out to see me, let alone wave his
hands and do magic spells to heal me! Why, he has no manners at all, no respect
for me, the general who has conquered his country and now comes to ask a small
favor! He must know that I have the power and the right to ORDER him to heal me!
So Namaan thought to himself. He decided not to obey the instructions he had
been given. Like Adam and Eve, he thought he was entitled to better treatment at
the hand of God. He thought he knew better than God does, how God should act.
It speaks well for Namaan's humility that he took the advice of his servants
and finally decided to obey the instructions that had come to him from God,
through Elisha. And Namaan, as we have heard, was healed, and gave glory to
God...AFTER he had learned to let God be God, and to admit that Namaan himself
was NOT God.
And then there is the story of Jesus healing the leper.
The book of Leviticus, which God gave to Moses, contains many rules for both
worship and daily life which were part of the Covenant between God and the
Jewish people. Leprosy was considered to be very contagious, and so lepers were
not allowed to come into contact with other people. They had to leave their
homes, dress in rags, and ring a bell to warn people off. Anybody who touched a
leper was considered to have become "unclean," and could not participate in
worship, or have anything to do with other folks, until he or she was ritually
cleansed, just as a leper who recovered would have to be. And so when this leper
approached Jesus, and asked Jesus to heal him, what happened next was downright
astonishing.
First, he broke the Law by approaching Jesus. He must have had some sense
that this man Jesus could help him, or he would not have risked breaking the
Law. He could have been stoned to death for that.
Then, Jesus actually touched him! Jesus risked becoming ritually unclean. It
is very interesting what one of the Church Fathers, Origen, writes about this:
And why did he touch him, since the Law forbade the touching of a
leper? He touched him to show that "all things are clean to the clean." Because
the filth that is in one person does not adhere to others, nor does external
uncleanness defile the clean of heart. So he touches him in his untouchability,
that he might instruct us in humility; that he might teach us that we should
despise no one, or abhor them, or regard them as pitiable, because of some wound
in their body or because of some blemish for which they might be called to
render an account...So, stretching forth his hand to touch, the leprosy
immediately departs. The hand of the Lord is found not to have touched a leper,
but a body made clean!
Jesus, of course, is God, and is above the Law. Nobody knew that then; this
miracle was one of the things that taught that fact. It is one of the proofs of
Jesus' godhood.
Jesus then told the man to go and show himself to the priests, as the book of
Leviticus orders. The priest can lift the label "unclean" off the man's
shoulders, once he is convinced of and ratifies the cure. The former leper is
instructed by the Scripture to make an offering of thanks for his healing, and
then to wash thoroughly and dress in clean new clothes, leaving the infected old
ones behind to be burned. Jesus in this way showed his own respect for the Law,
and reminded the former leper to obey the Law too. And Jesus added one more
order: Don't tell anybody about this.
And, of course, the man was so excited about being healed that he went and
spread the news all over. He thought he knew better than God, or maybe it was
just emotion from the healing. One way or another, the effect was that he would
not let God BE God, for Jesus was not able to go into any other towns to preach
and teach and heal...which was Jesus' way of being God just then. We cannot help
wondering if Jesus' mission might have been more successful if the leper had
kept his mouth shut and permitted Jesus to get on with being God.
There are lessons for us, of course, in these stories, aside from the great
theme of allowing God to do his work his way, and not trying to make him work
our way. One lesson is that we need humility. We need, like Namaan, to affirm
that we don't know everything, don't even know best, and that we need to obey
God, even if it seems inconvenient, ridiculous and degrading. Another lesson is
not to run away from someone because of their external appearance...the smelly
drunk sleeping under the bridge might have a much cleaner soul and be closer to
God than we ourselves, freshly bathed and nicely dressed, do. Someone has said
that the things we most cringe at are the things that we really need to pay
attention to and learn from. There is wisdom in that saying. We need to join
ourselves to Jesus, who reached out to touch the leper, and who today would make
a point of trying to help a welfare mother, a mentally ill person, an addict, a
convict, an AIDS patient. Such work will teach us humility and teach the person
we help something about the love and power of God...a win-win situation if there
ever was one.
Most of all, we need to meditate on this theme, and figure out how to make it
part of our own lives: Can we learn to allow God to BE God? Can we accept that
we are creatures, not Creator? Can we accept that God is indeed all-knowing,
all-wise and all-loving...and we ourselves are not? Amen.
