Naaman's Story

Recently, I gave a talk at my church, and thought I would include it here in case it has meaning to anyone.  The Bible verses this comes from are: 2 Kings 5 and Luke 4:14-30.

Review of important points from the story:

·         The king of Aram (Syria) thought Naaman, who was a commander of his army was blessed by God because he won lots of battles.  Syria and Israel were enemies, so this probably meant Naaman had killed some Israelites. 

·         Syrian raiders captured an Israeli girl and made her a servant to Naaman.

·         Elisha didn’t come out to meet Naaman, and that made him upset.

·         Naaman was going to just leave because of this, but his officers convinced him to try the remedy proposed by Elisha.

·         After Naaman was healed, he tried to give money to Elisha, but he refused to accept payment.

·         Gehazi then followed Naaman and got some money for himself, which ended up with him being cursed with leprosy.

What can we learn from this story?

The fact that Naaman was Syrian, and in fact an enemy of Israel (probably won battles against them where Israelites died), brings up some interesting evidence that God saw all of humanity as his children.  It’s interesting to me that there is so much evidence of this in the Old Testament that I used to just skip over.  I don’t plan to list them all, but Jonah was sent to Nineveh to tell them about God.  God told Abraham he would bless his descendants and through them the rest of the world.  Many of the laws given in Leviticus and Deuteronomy were about how to treat travelers, strangers and the poor in ways that were much better than the prevailing custom.  I think the Israelites often missed the message that God was trying to send about how much he loved everyone; it seems like the Israelites took maybe too much liberty with some of the ways they treated enemies.  I have come to believe that a lot of the most violent and horrific things in the old testament are a result of people recording their understanding of what a God would tell them to do, as well as an intent to justify things after the fact in some cases.

For me, God is the personification of love, and I understand that to mean that God wants us to receive that love as it flows out of God toward us.  And, just as importantly, God wants us to then love people as much as we can.  I think it’s a little utopian to think we can do this as well as Jesus does, but that’s the goal.  So when I look at this story, I see the love of God manifested in several places.  First, the Hebrew servant girl, who cares about her master and wants him to receive the healing she knows is possible from God.  Next is the message from Elisha: go wash yourself and you will be clean.  God wants him to be healthy and he wants to show not just Naaman, but his people, that there is a God who loves them, even as they are the enemies of Israel.

Elisha must have some of this love of God in him that he is willing to seek out Naaman and provide him the message from God about healing his skin condition.  The king of Israel didn’t even think of sending for Elisha; Naaman would never have received this healing if it weren’t for Elisha sending word to the king to send Naaman to him.

When Naaman reacts with anger about the way Elisha treated him – he was upset that Elisha did not come in person to shake hands and receive the gifts Naaman brought and he was also upset that Elisha didn’t wave his hands over the spot and utter words to God, but instead told him to wash himself 7 times in the Jordan river.  He thought there’s nothing special about the Jordan river, why would that have any effect on his leprosy.  He might have thought Elisha was just insulting him instead of providing the cleansing he was looking for. But his officers showed love for him too by persuading him to go ahead and try the cure Elisha provided. 

And finally, God chose to heal him and sent him safely on his way. 

Elisha wasn’t willing to come out to meet Naaman in person but Jesus was willing to touch a leper to heal him.  Why?  Some commentaries say that since Elisha was a Jew, he would become unclean if he was touched by a leper.  I also read one that said that Elisha was not impressed by the wealth and power displayed by Naaman and his entourage and didn’t want to reward him for showing up that way.  You don’t buy healing from God, it is something that God gives and no one deserves it more than anyone else.  This was in contrast to the belief of many that God or the gods show their blessings on those who have power and wealth, and those who are poor or powerless are not favored by God.  Elisha was trying to communicate not just with Naaman, but with everyone who was there that God isn’t impressed by human power but by love.  When Gehazi went to extort money from Naaman, he was cursed with leprosy.  Again I wonder why.  Maybe because he missed the whole point Elisha was trying to make?

There is an interesting parallel mention of this story by Jesus in the other reading we had today.  Jesus used the story of Naaman when he was challenged by the people of Nazareth to do the same miracles he had done in Capernaum.  He was frustrated that they didn’t believe him when he said he was there to fulfill the promise of a savior.  He reminded them that neither Elijah nor Elisha ministered to their own people (widows or lepers) but could only do great things among outsiders because their own people lacked faith.  This can be seen in that the king of Israel didn’t believe leprosy could be healed and that’s why he was so upset when he received the letter from the King of Aram asking for healing for Naaman.  It didn’t occur to him that Elisha could do that, because he thought he knew about what was possible.  Presumably, the people of Israel were not seeking out Elisha for cleansing of leprosy because they didn’t believe Elisha could do it.

Naaman wanted to pay to be healed.  It was important to him that this process happen in the proscribed manner.  When we try to buy favor from God that way, we enter into a false relationship with God where we are trying to control the interaction.  And it creates an illusion that we’re controlling God; but we don’t call it controlling God, because we want to lie to ourselves too and believe that it’s real.  Buying favor with God is kind of a metaphor for all the things we do to get God to do what we want.  I think of it like using certain language to create what we consider a binding contract with God.  If I confess my sins and ask Jesus to forgive me, then God has to let me into heaven, and not ask much more of me.  Sometimes people pick a kind of service to earn favor with God.  I don’t mean to say that serving people because you love God is bad.  And I’m not saying we should look around us at the people serving God and try to figure out if they are just doing it out of fear or to control God. But what I am saying is that for each of us, it’s important to examine our hearts regularly to see if we are motivated by love or if we are trying to exert control.  I believe that whenever we think we are controlling others or God or events in our lives, it is an illusion.  As people, we only have control over ourselves, and we have less control over ourselves than we think we do.

While this might sound depressing, I don’t mean it to be.  I just feel that it’s very important for us to see ourselves realistically.  When I first became a Christian, I was very worried about doing things right.  For myself, as I look back on that time, it wasn’t so much about loving God as it was about feeling like I owed it to Jesus to do everything right in order to pay him back for dying on the cross.  I did many things to try and feel like I was being true to how Jesus had purified me.  I cut off friendship with people I considered bad influences on me, I threw out all my science fiction and horror books (and I had a lot of books), I went to or hung out with my spiritual mentors 6 days a week.  These things were not necessarily bad things to do… I learned a lot about God and life from people in the church who had been Christians their whole lives.  But I wasn’t doing any of those things out of a confidence that I was loved by God.  And I surely was not trying to share any of the love of God with my community, because I wasn’t really letting myself experience much of that love.

It has taken me many years to shed the legalistic framework I had of my relationship with God.  I have gone through several phases of progress, which I won’t bore you with here.  But the important thing is that for me, experiencing God’s love, and then sharing it with the people I run across in my life is a process that I have to consciously engage with daily.  I don’t think, for me, that love is the default response.  The default response is to bargain.  To try to do the right thing, or just the same things I do every day, and I still sometimes think there is something that I will make God do if I do these other things right.  I don’t really think it’s about God making a place for me in heaven because I responded to someone with kindness, because I think being saved or sanctified is about learning and becoming more like God if God is love.  But I do think sometimes magically like if I pray enough or read the bible enough, that he will protect me from sickness or maybe he will not expect some big sacrifice for me.

God really wants to love us.  Just like a parent loves and delights in their child.  Just like you love your spouse, or your sibling.  Although the love we have for friends and family is still not the perfect kind of love that God has, I think it helps us understand the way that God loves each person.  And all of creation.  Sometimes when I read that God loves me, it can seem really abstract to me.  That’s why I really have to fight against reducing it to an obligatory thing.  Like I love God because he saved me from hell, and now he has to love me because I believe in him.  But what if God is bigger than that?  What if when the bible says God is love, it really means, that is his essence.  That is the part that sums up every other facet of God’s being.  If God really is love, then he doesn’t choose to love me or you, or an eagle.  He is loving us.  When I look at everything we humans have collected about God, I see God through the prism of human nature and culture.  I believe the bible is the record of people’s interaction with this being, and us trying to understand what God is.  That’s why so many of the stories in the Old Testament especially seem to reflect God acting much more like other Gods.  He tells people to conquer others, to kill and steal from people.  He seemingly condones many things that are abhorrent to us now.  But there are glimmers within all that bloodshed and abuse of the true nature of the God we worship. 

I also think that we are on a continuum of learning more and more about this being that we think of as God.  The New Testament refines the message of God’s love through the stories of Jesus and of the early church.  Jesus doesn’t worry about uncleanness from people he touches somehow making him unclean.  He explains that the ritual laws about purity were an example of the way God takes care of us, but it’s what in your heart that makes you clean or unclean.  In Mark 7:20-23 he says: “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.  All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”   If you think about it, all these things are really sins against other people.  Which you could say lustful desires only affect the person thinking them, they really do lead to things that can hurt others like pornography and sexual harassment.  Jesus is trying to get us to understand that when he talks about God cleansing our hearts, he means cleansing us from the kinds of things that are incompatible with loving someone.  Being cleansed by God is a process that takes a long time; it’s not a one step and done kind of thing. 

There are three points from this story and Jesus’ mention of it that I think are important.  First, God is trying to show how we are to love our enemy.  By the human way of reckoning, God had no obligation to heal Naaman.  In fact, it would have made sense for God to punish him.  God is showing in this story that he is calling his people to a greater level of love and to a much larger in-group.  Secondly, God is showing that we don’t control him by adhering to an expectation regarding how God should reward or punish people.  Especially due to the kind of society we live in, we need to work at learning not to think of our relationship with God as a contract or some other means of controlling the interaction.  God wants a relationship and that means both parties are genuine and choose to interact in a reciprocal manner based in love.  And finally, I think this story combined with the stories of how Jesus interacted with people can teach us some important things about who God is and what he wants.  Clearly, God loves all the people in this story, and wants them to have a full life with meaning.  When I say God loves us, or that God is love, it means something very special and different.  God shows his love by healing even the enemies of his people, and he is trying to show that to everyone.  He wants us to respond by demonstrating love toward our enemies.  This is contrary to human nature, so we can really only be successful at this with help from God.

Finding the balance between Freedom of Speech and being considerate of people with different values

Wow, that’s a long title.  But I really feel that it’s important to take some time and really examine this issue in greater detail.  I’m thinking, of course, of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France and the response around the world.  At the very least, violence on that scale (or any scale) is not the answer, and I’m not condoning that.  There is definitely something that worries people in the west about the response of some Muslim people to the insults that are part of modern life.  We look at the religion we are members of (or no religion), and think they are over-reacting.  Of course we disagree about the violence, but I’m trying to get at the fact that their feeling of offense and outrage over this kind of thing is foreign to western society.  At least for modern western society.  We think it’s strange for them to get so upset over a cartoon.  But that’s not really taking them seriously as people.

One scholar has said, “But you know, I’m not sure if the type of response that we have seen as of late, regarding depictions of the Prophet has to do with the depictions themselves or whether it’s about the negative depictions. My hunch is that it has a lot more to do with the negativity associated with the depictions and the message that they’re sending as opposed to the actual depiction itself. Let’s say for the sake of argument that somebody drew a picture that they said was the Prophet Muhammad, and it was actually very positive, and there was no malicious intent behind it and it was actually conveying a positive message; I find it hard to think that there would be the same type outcry.” -- Imam Sikander Hashmi

So although modern Christians wouldn’t be upset with depictions of Christ, people surely were very upset in the past when artists portrayed important Christian figures in negative ways (Piss Christ, for example).  Christianity has a long history of enforcing respect for the prophets or saints with violence.  I think we are a little hypocritical for judging the Muslims for taking depictions of the prophet Mohammed so seriously. 

So how can we be respectful of people who take their religion seriously while protecting everyone else?  It’s a big question and I don’t have the answer.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell the satirists of the world that they can’t depict any Islamic prophet in a negative light, especially if they are in a country where the majority of people are not Muslims, and aren’t offended by the depictions.  But at the same time, there are certainly other subjects for images that are not acceptable in western society.  You can’t get away with showing Jewish folks in a caricature like they were depicted before WWII; you can’t depict racist stereotypes of African-Americans or Native Americans without suffering serious backlash.

Maybe that’s a solution.  Don’t legislate what is acceptable speech, but expect there to be consequences when media goes too far.  The issue with depictions of Mohammed is that not enough people would reject an organization that published negative images of Islam because of the world we live in and the perception of the people and the religion.  Many people I think are happy to try to provoke Muslims so they can feel superior about how they are getting all worked up over nothing. 

Let me know what you think.  It’s important to discuss this topic until we get somewhere, I think.

Eric Garner

Sometimes I feel like what’s the point about talking about this issue anymore.  The issue of police violence against poor people, especially brown people.  But how can I just sit by and not call out what I see? 

Eric Garner’s case seems to be the most clear-cut of the ones we have seen recently.  His “crime” was selling loose cigarettes.  You can argue about whether that should be a crime or not, but you can’t argue he was not engaged in anything violent.  He didn’t attack the police; he just expressed frustration with being arrested again.  Why is this an offense that requires arrest anyway?  Can’t they just fine him?  There’s no violence, no theft. 

We have a video, so we know what happened.  There’s no question regarding the behavior of the police or Mr. Garner.  In the Mike Brown case, you can wonder if he really reached into the police car as the police claimed, and we know (pretty certainly) that he shoved that clerk at the convenience store.  There’s no video to show if he was coming toward the officer or not.  But in the case of Mr. Garner, there is no question.  They choked him to death because he didn’t want to be arrested.  And because he was a large black man, which means dangerous, no matter what he does. 

And now he’s dead.  I think sometimes when we see these news stories so often, we forget he doesn’t get to go on.  His family doesn’t get to see him at family dinners and holidays.  He doesn’t get to contribute his perspective to society.  It’s over for him.  And no consequences for the police officers who killed him.  What message do you think that sends to other people who have interactions with the NYPD?  Do they trust them to protect their rights? 

Christmas? Bah Humbug!

Not sure what to call this one.  Maybe just to say I’m really not feeling the Christmas spirit at all this year.  I’ve been wondering why, and part of it is that it’s up to me to work on getting Christmas traditions going.  Kent & I have never really had a big Christmas production.  The first few years we decorated and gave each other presents, and my sister’s kids were little, so we got them gifts.  But one by one, we have just eliminated people we have to buy for until it would have been just us.  And then we started waiting until the after-Christmas saks, and lately, we just get something we really want whenever we see it, and that’s the birthday or Christmas present that year. 

We saved a lot of money we don’t have, and it made the holiday season way less stressful.  But now I find myself kind of sad around Christmas time.  Everyone else is traveling to see family, and having parties, and shopping.  I am just not a part of any of those things, and I kind of miss them. 

I think I am also a little disappointed in the whole “reason for the season” slogan.  After all, there’s lots of evidence that Jesus wasn’t really born in December, and how does Santa and Christmas trees celebrate that anyway?  But the biggest problem I can see is that the birth of Jesus isn’t really the most important event.  I mean how about his ministry?  The cross?  The idea of the incarnation is a momentous thing, I guess, but I don’t know if it’s important to celebrate the birthdate.  Maybe I’m just feeling a bit of the old bah-humbug. 

Maybe it’s time for me to really think about why the birth of Jesus matters to me.  It is amazing that God would take on our likeness, but to be honest, I am not sure that really happened.  I know that would shock a lot of people, but it doesn’t seem to me like the whole gospel doesn’t really hang on weather Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  I think what matters is the love he showed for us and the way we are supposed to love each other.  Jesus said that if we have seen him, we have seen the father.  And when I look at Jesus, I see love and compassion for people.  That’s what I want to hold on to at Christmas time.  I am not interested in spending tons of money I don’t have on people who already have what they need.  Maybe I need to think of some way to share that love at this time of the year.