2 KINGS 5:1-15ab

PSALM 42:1-7

1 CORINTHIANS 9:24-27

MARK 1:40-45

Sermon – February 12, 2006

The Golan Heights is a part of the Middle East which has been fought over for thousands of years. It is a steep, rocky, mountainous area just northeast of the Sea of Galilee, territory captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 War. I hiked through part of it with my study group in 1994, ultimately reaching an impressive cement wall blocking the road. Behind it was a guard tower with a blue and white flag, near which, at that time, were some Austrian troops, serving under United Nations auspices, who were hoping to have a really boring time. They were hoping for boredom because they, and that cement wall, were what separated the Israeli Army and the Army of Syria.

Israel and Syria have fought several wars since 1948, and are still officially in a state of war. Actually, Israel and Syria have fought many wars dating back over 2,800 years to before the time of Elisha, the prophet of the Lord who, in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, by the power of God heals the commanding general of the army of the King of …Syria.

At a time when only the Hebrew people worshiped the one true God, at a time when people were no less nationalistic and militaristic than they are today, at a time when the nation of Israel was vulnerable to invasion, God was reaching out with his healing power to the commanding general of his chosen people’s most dangerous enemy.

And not only that but, however they may have felt about it, God’s chosen people wrote down this story and kept it in the priceless stories of their God even after the nation of Israel was wiped out…by Assyria, the empire that conquered Aram and most everybody else in the Middle East.

Sounds like a story we need to pay attention to.

Naaman and his king, when they hear that there is a healer in Israel, assume that the healer is the king, to whom Naaman applies for healing. The unnamed king concludes that the Arameans are creating an international incident to provoke a fight, since the king knows he can’t heal anyone. Neither thinks of the prophet Elisha. God’s power flows through other people besides the king; that’s one wonderfully subversive teaching of this story.

And God’s power does not require a big “show” with lots of razzle-dazzle to manifest itself. General Naaman pulls up with his motorcade outside of Elisha’s modest house and expects a dramatic spectacle. He then has a tantrum when Elisha merely sends a messenger to him who tells him merely to bathe in the Jordan River seven times.

Finally, the general’s brave servants point out that he surely would have done something difficult to be healed; why not something simple? Naaman swallows his pride, dips himself in the Jordan River seven times, and comes out totally healed of leprosy. He is not only healed but converted, proclaiming, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”

There is a humorous postscript to this story if you read on beyond the verses selected to be read in church. Naaman asks Elisha if God (the real God) will cut him some slack if he, Naaman, has to go through the motions of worshiping Aramean gods because he has to go to their temples on the arm of the king. Elisha acknowledges that’s O.K. Naaman tries to give Elisha money, but Elisha refuses: God’s healing gifts are free. Finally, Naaman asks for “two mules’ burdens of earth from Israel” so that he can worship the Lord “on Israelite soil” even when he is back in Syria.

Isn’t it great that we don’t have to take our donkeys over to Israel and bring back many, many buckets of Israeli soil so we can build a church on it? There is indeed “no God in all the earth except” – the one first known by the Israelites, the one who owns all the earth.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus heals a leper (which is why these two readings are paired up). It’s important to know that in ancient times, people with leprosy were banished from worship and had to live apart from others. “Leper colonies” existed in our world even in living memory. So what is really striking about this passage is that Jesus touched the leper. No one would do that, because touching a leper would make the other people ritually impure – religiously “contaminated,” as it were.

But nothing and no one could “contaminate” Jesus, either medically or ritually. Rather, Jesus’ health and wholeness “infected” them.

One other key thing these two great stories have in common: who spread the word about God’s healing power? The lowest status people in each story: the leper who was healed by Jesus, and the Israelite P.O.W. slave girl who served Naaman’s wife. Anyone can play a crucial role in spreading the Good News of God’s inclusive, healing love and power. If they can do it, what’s stopping any of us?

What indeed? Each year on one of the Sundays after the Epiphany, we at St. Barnabas celebrate “International Sunday” with the Epiphany theme of God’s people being “a light to the nations” – meaning all the nations of the world besides Israel and Judah, which in Naaman’s time were the only nations which worshiped the true God.

We can see Elisha’s outreach to Naaman presaging Christ’s outreach to the whole world through his disciples – including officers of the same Empire which crucified Jesus, ultimately converting that Empire itself.

The Roman Empire is long gone, and the last century has seen the collapse of many empires and the rise both of globalization and of tribalism and sectarianism. Ancient divisions, once suppressed by military might, whether that of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia under Tito, Saddam Hussein or European colonial powers, are now welling up around the globe even as an increasingly integrated world economy is forcing often painful adjustments and economic dislocations by people who are not neighbors but may see themselves as “losers” or “winners” based on forces far beyond their control.

In such a time as ours, the need for both peace and justice is compelling. The need for unity amid diversity is compelling. The need for common purpose and mutual respect among different cultures, nations and ideological perspectives is compelling.

In this time of both great stress and great opportunity, I believe God has a special mission for this community of Christians called the Anglican Communion, for which we pray each week.

Let me quote from this brochure: “There are over 70 million members of the Anglican family in 38 self-governing Member Churches or Provinces in more than 160 countries…Anglican/Episcopal Churches uphold and proclaim the Catholic and Apostolic faith, based on the Scriptures, interpreted in the light of tradition, scholarship and reason.”

Native-born Americans like me are used to thinking of America as the most prominent, if not dominant, members of any group of which it is a member. It is important for us to know that only about 3% of Anglicans world-wide are members of the Episcopal Church – about 2.4 million out of over 70 million – and 122,000 of the members of the Episcopal Church do not live in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, but in Haiti, Honduras, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Europe, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

On paper, England has more Anglicans – 26 million – than any other country, but honestly, a lot of them don’t actually show up in church very much. Nigeria has 17.5 million Anglicans and Uganda has 8 million; Australia is fourth with just under 4 million, followed by Kenya with 2.5 million. Right behind the U.S. in the number of Anglicans come the Sudan, the Province of Southern Africa and the Church of South India. To put it another way, there are about as many Episcopalians in The Diocese of New Jersey (from Elizabeth to Cape May) as there are in Sri Lanka or Myanmar – about 50,000.

The time has long passed that the Anglican Communion could be derided as “the spiritual embodiment of the British Empire.” As colonialism has gone into retreat, evangelism has advanced, and Anglican Churches have grown most and fastest in post-colonial situations in Africa, where strong, varied, indigenous voices of Anglicans are prominent. “Retired” Archbishop of South Africa, Desmond Tutu, is the most famous, but far from the only such voice.

We have Anglican voices from around the world in our liturgy this morning, which is drawn from Anglican Prayer Books from Kenya, the West Indies, Ghana, England, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the U.S.A. and Guyana. We learn the distinct voices from the varied contexts and cultures which shape people’s spiritualities, and we also learn how much we have in common in Christ. We learn to have respect for varied voices, to commit ourselves to truly listening to each other and to others, and to find common purposes as we serve God around the world and right here as part of this wonderfully diverse Episcopal/Anglican parish church of people who were born in 27 different nations.

We are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord. May we, like Elisha, reach out with the news of God’s healing love to unexpected people in unexpected ways. May we, like the Israelite slave girl and the healed leper, speak boldly of God’s wondrous love. May we be a force for justice, peace and joy in a world which needs all three so much, to the glory of God.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church