Follow the directions
Commentary
Over the course of my lifetime, I have occasionally been caught up in the recurrent genealogy fads that periodically sweep through American pop culture. One such endeavor turned up a purported family coat-of-arms that we knew was bogus since it incorporated the first letter of the family name (a spelling known to be no more than 150 years old). Other efforts were far more productive. Several lines of evidence converged to indicate that my family was one of the members of the Scottish clan Gunn. From that we have been able to determine that the family motto is, "Aut Pax, Aut Bellum," meaning "Either Peace, or War."
My wife (obviously having joined the family by marriage rather than by birth) insists, however, that while "Aut Pax, Aut Bellum" may be the formal, official family motto, the real family motto -- in the sense of the one that my family actually lives by in our daily lives -- is, "When all else fails, read the directions." As we also sometimes say in my family, "I resemble that remark."
To be completely honest about it, I would have to admit that the motto is a bit more emphatic, something like, "When -- and only when -- all else fails, read the directions." It is as if it would be an affront to our intelligence and ability to think through problems ourselves if we had to rely on someone else's instructions, even if that someone else was the person who created the thing in the first place. As my wife would gladly tell you, this motto goes far beyond the stereotypical aversion of American males to asking for directions on how to get some place or find something in a store. No, we pride ourselves on our ability to use maps to navigate and even diagrams to see what a finished product should look like. But "some assembly required" instruction sheets are beneath contempt. And the only thing worse than being forced by repeated failure actually to read the directions? Finding out that there really was an easy way to accomplish the task, even if it was not obvious from looking at the finished product.
Naaman must have been a distant ancestor back somewhere in my family tree. As a general and "mighty warrior" in the Aramean army, he was obviously a take charge, problem-solving kind of guy who was not accustomed to having other people tell him what to do. But Naaman also had a problem. From the biblical account we learn that he was willing to go to great lengths to solve his problem -- willing to do almost anything it seems but to follow directions.
2 Kings 5:1-14
From the evidence provided in the books of Kings, it is difficult to sort out the precise political relationship in the mid-9th century B.C. between the northern kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Aram seated in Damascus (ancient Syria). In 1 Kings 22:1-40 we are told that a three-year period "without war" between the two kingdoms ended with a battle for control of Ramoth-gilead in which Ahab was killed. By the time of Elisha's dealings with Naaman, a second of Ahab's sons, Jehoram, had become king of Israel (2 Kings 3:1). From Jehoram's reaction to the king of Aram's sending Naaman to him to be healed (5:6-7), it is clear that Aram continued to hold the upper hand in the relationship even if Israel was not technically a vassal-state to Aram. That "the Lord had given victory to Aram" through Naaman (5:1), although admittedly ambiguous ("victory" over precisely whom is unstated), would reflect the same relative balance of power. In some later traditions, indeed, Naaman is credited with being the one whose arrow had felled King Ahab (see Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.5).
Naaman's prominence as "commander of the army" and a "mighty warrior" stood in marked contrast to his social position relative to his physical condition. He had "leprosy," one of any number of skin disorders the ancients indiscriminately lumped together by a common word ranging from the "heartbreak of psoriasis" to the disfiguring Hansen's disease known to us as leprosy. We cannot know his precise, modern medical diagnosis. But from the distance he was willing to travel and the price he was willing to pay for a cure (some 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, according to 5:5b), we can certainly infer that it was a serious, perhaps life-threatening, malady. No doubt he had tried everything he could think of by way of treatment. So when the young Israelite servant girl in his household suggested that Elisha might be the answer, Naaman was ready to follow the directions.
Well, almost ready. Elisha's directions were simple and direct: "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman was quite confident at this point that these directions could not possibly be right. Then as now, the Jordan was a meandering, slow-moving, muddy mess of a river. Exposing open wounds to its water was more likely to compound one's physical problems than to cure them. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" Not only is Naaman's homeland pride wounded, but his personal ego had taken a beating as well. "I thought for me he would surely come out ... and cure the leprosy!" These directions could not possibly be correct, and so Naaman "turned and went away in a rage" in search of some other procedure.
Fortunately for him his servants knew how to manage him for his own good (a pattern begun with that young Israelite girl who was serving his wife). Assuaging his bruised ego, they reminded him that he would gladly have undertaken a difficult task at the direction of the prophet. Why this hesitancy at something so simple? Wasn't it at least worth a try after such a long trip? So Naaman went to the muddy waters of the Jordan, following the directions to the letter through seven immersions. It doesn't take too much imagination to hear the curses and "I-told-you-so's" of this soldier through the first six dips. But after that seventh time under the waters, "his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean."
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
In the last week's lectionary reading from the preceding verses of 1 Corinthians 9, we saw the core of Paul's evangelistic strategy: "I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some" (9:22b). This week's lectionary reading provides a specific example of how he could contextualize (to use a modern buzzword) his preaching.
That the ancient Greeks had a keen interest in athletic competitions is of course widely known, and the return of the modern Olympic Games to Athens next year will no doubt reinforce that awareness. What is less known, however, is that the ancient Olympics were the most important of four major athletic competitions. Athens hosted the Pan-Athenian Games, not the Olympics (which were also not held near Mt. Olympus but at Olympia in the city-state of Elis on the Peloponnese). Delphi was the location of the Pythian Games, and the Isthmian Games were held in Corinth.
When Paul then asks rhetorically, "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize?" he has asked the most banal of athletics questions to some of the most intense sports fans of the ancient world. If the question was so easy that even the youngest of children could answer it, nevertheless it was language that reverberated in their very bones.
The point of Paul's metaphor is that the Corinthian Christians must exercise self-control -- not only as an evangelistic strategy for bringing others to faith, but so as to assure their own continuation and growth in the faith. Here the need is just as contextually relevant to the Corinthians even if less rhetorically obvious.
Corinth was a key commercial port in ancient Greece. The slipway across its narrow isthmus made it possible for ships to sail by way of the calmer waters of the Gulf of Corinth rather than sail all the way around the Pelopon-nese. Like many port cities ancient and modern, Corinth had a reputation for sexual excess. The Greek playwright Aristophanes coined the word "to Corinthianize," meaning "to fornicate," and Plato referred to prostitutes as "Corinthian girls." That the sexual mores of some in the Christian community there might scandalize even their fellow Corinthians (see 1 Corinthians 5:1) was thus saying something!
Paul's concerns with self-control in this congregation went far beyond sexual restraint, however. Here in chapter 9 he discusses foregoing a number of practices that may be unobjectionable that nevertheless will be avoided so that the cause of Christ can flourish. It is then fascinating that Paul sought to restrain the Corinthians' strong sense of libertarianism by an appeal to their equally strongly held commitment to the value of athletic training and discipline.
Along the way he also employs the very typical rabbinic-style argument of "from the lesser to the greater." If athletes are willing to "exercise self-control in all things" in order to gain something as "perishable" as a victor's wreath and the fleeting fame that may go with it, how much more should we be willing to exercise self-control to receive the "imperishable," eternal prize of salvation?
Mark 1:40-45
Even simple instructions are not always simple to follow, as the leper in the gospel lesson for this Sunday discovered. Like Naaman, this leper has heard that there is a prophet who is able to cure. The only restriction in his mind is whether Jesus will consent to perform the healing ("If you choose, you can make me clean"), and so he humbly kneels before Jesus and begs for his assistance. Jesus is moved with compassion and immediately cleanses him of the leprosy.
As central as physical healing is to this brief encounter, the social and religious purity implications of leprosy are what are emphasized. Notice that the words for "healing" never occur in the passage, but forms of the word "clean" appear in each of the first four verses. The leper's most serious problem is not his physical disease. It is the social and religious taboos associated with "leprosy" (the range of possible diagnoses is as wide here as with Naaman, and the likelihood greater that it is one of the less medically severe maladies) are what must be redressed if he is to resume his place in family and community. Unlike the case with Naaman, then, the instructions he receives relate not to his healing per se but to his reintegration into society.
Jesus "sternly warn[ed] him" in the directions: "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." Jesus' concern was that he be able to join the community by demonstrating to that society's proper authorities that he was no longer a contagion risk. These directions proved to be, you might say, as clear as mud. What could be the harm in telling everyone he met the wonderful news that Jesus had healed him? Surely there was room in these instructions to improve on the end product a bit. If telling the priests was required, telling everyone would be better -- right?
But Jesus must have had some reason for "sternly" giving the instructions that he did. The only consequence of the man's failure to follow these directions that is stated in Mark's Gospel is that Jesus' sudden fame became a hindrance to his ability to move about from village to village. Yet Jesus must have had more reason than that for commanding silence about his healing ability, one aspect of what scholars refer to as "the Messianic Secret." Why wouldn't Jesus direct him to tell anyone and everyone what had been done for him? I suspect that part of the reason was that the same directions do not necessarily apply to everyone. What this leper needed to do to be whole was different than what Naaman needed to do. The steps to his restoration could not be blindly repeated by everyone.
Application
Culturally, we are overcoming our resistance to following directions. How else are you to explain a publishing craze of books "for Dummies" and "Idiot's Guides" to everything under the sun? Why, even with my genetic predisposition to avoid following directions, I own a couple of such books. But to the extent that we have exchanged an unwillingness to accept directions for a search for one-size-fits-all solutions, we are really no better off. God's direction and will for us is personalized to our own unique circumstances. Yes, there are principles that apply to all -- truths of the gospel such as God's love, forgiveness, mercy, and justice. But God is too attuned to the individual situations of our lives to give exactly the same directions to Naaman from Aram and the unnamed man from Galilee even if they were both lepers.
To take up Paul's image of athletic training, perhaps it is the case that some of us are training to be runners and others of us boxers. The skills, training, and disciplines required for the tasks we will undertake and for the needs in our lives will be different. What we all share in common is a need not to "run aimlessly" or to "box as though beating the air." Whether we are running or boxing or competing in life in some other way entirely, what is required for success is that we follow God's directions for the ministry and life to which we have been called.
If our goal is genuine wholeness, then we are going to have to follow God's directions for assembling all the parts of our lives rather than relying on our own cleverness. Indeed, our own ideas about the best way to do things may just prevent us from gaining the personal blessings we need from God or impede rather than advance the cause of the gospel. But God is able through the scriptures, the traditions of the church, and the life of the community of faith to spell out those instructions for us. So, even before all else fails, follow the directions.
Alternative Applications
1) 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. What would it mean for us as preachers and for members of our congregations if we were able to communicate the message of the gospel creatively in the idioms of the very specific contexts in which we have been called to minister? The fact is that from what little biographical material we have about Paul, it seems very unlikely that he had never committed himself to the disciplines of athletic training. He was not a runner or a boxer, and yet he metaphorically assumed both roles to communicate his message to those who valued athletics. He was able to become a Corinthian in order to gain the Corinthians.
Yet equally important, Paul was careful in the aspects of the culture that he chose to adapt to his purpose. He did not choose the most stereotypical values of the Corinthians from Aristophanes and Plato, but a value that could find a parallel in the values of God's reign. And indeed, he actually managed to play two different and perhaps competing values of that culture over against each other to underscore his point.
2) 2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45. One of the struggles facing congregations today is balancing the demands between inclusivity and exclusivity, between being welcoming of all and maintaining a "Christian identity." Congregations even struggle with what counts as a "Christian identity." More than a few church-growth gurus have noted the apparent paradox that many mainline congregations that tout themselves as open and accepting have declining numbers while other religious communities that place stiff demands on membership are growing and flourishing.
Both the Old Testament and gospel lessons for this Sunday seem to come down on the side of inclusivity and openness. The gospel story emphasizes God's concern for the healing and wholeness of lepers who are ostracized by their communities. And the Old Testament story is about the healing of Naaman, who was not even an Israelite and so was outside the ranks of God's people. Nevertheless, God's acceptance of these two lepers is not permission for them to do whatever they please. If they and others are going to enjoy God's blessings, they need to follow the direction of God's prophets. We don't choose between inclusivity or exclusivity, but rather work to balance inclusivity and exclusivity.
First Lesson Focus
2 Kings 5:1-14
This story is a favorite with preachers, because of its many notes of warm human interest. Obviously the principal thrust of the story is the emphasis on Naaman's pride and the necessity of his ridding himself of his own self-importance, as he humbly becomes a worshiper of the one true God of Israel. Few stories fit better the manner of the Christian life, which calls for the crucifixion of one's own self will in favor of following Jesus in his total commitment to the will of his Father. When Jesus commands all us disciples to take up our cross and follow him, many persons take that to mean that we are to endure some physical ailment or some mental or psychological suffering, as if some such burden is the cross we have to bear in this life. But that is a misunderstanding of Jesus' command. When our Lord commands us to take up our cross and follow him, he commands us to let ourselves -- our wills, our desires, our plans, our achievements be crucified and laid aside for the sake of doing what God wills and desires and plans for our future. We are to die to ourselves that we may live to the glory of the Father through our dedication to Jesus Christ.
The Christian faith is not intended as a panacea for our troubles, to make us feel better about ourselves or to help us with our psychological adjustments or to enable us to become successful in our society. Indeed, the Christian faith has very little to do with our status and well-being, although millions have found it to undergird their lives and to give them peace and joy that the world cannot give. But primarily the Christian faith is intended to transform us into the servants of God that we are supposed to be, so that we live not for our selves and our own welfare, but for God and for the sake of his work toward his kingdom. The Christian faith replaces our spirit with the Spirit of Christ, so that we grow up into his stature, and all that we do points to his glorification and to the service of his Father.
(By way of parenthesis, it should be pointed out, that although Naaman is cured of his leprosy because of his repentance and obedience, physical cures of our ills may not necessarily follow such self-surrender. God has the power to heal physical ills, but human repentance does not necessarily call forth such healing, and there are times when God actually uses physical suffering in the fulfillment of his purpose.)
There are other noteworthy emphases in the story. First is perhaps God's concern for all the peoples of the earth, not just for his covenant people. Through his prophet, he shows mercy to a foreign army commander, even though that commander has been defeating Israel in Syria's border warfare against her. It's almost as if God is working as a subversive against Israel. But the Lord's mercy reaches out to all who are in need, ignoring every human boundary and division, and indeed, all human-generated strife.
Interesting too is the fact that it is the Lord who has given Naaman his success in battle against Israel. During the 9th century B.C., there was almost continual border warfare between Syria to the north and the northern kingdom of Israel that was ruled by the Omri dynasty (6:8, 24; 10:32-33; 13:22). During the reigns of kings Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram, Jehu, and Jehoahaz, Israel's peace was marred by successive victories and defeats at the hands of the Syrians, until that kingdom was finally conquered by the great Israelite ruler, Jeroboam II. But surprisingly, our text tells us that it is the Lord himself who gives Naaman victory in battle against Israel. The Lord is not always fighting on our side, it seems, and he shapes history according to his sovereign will and not according to our desires.
The roles played by the "little people" in the story are touching -- the Israelite slave girl and the servants of Naaman, who urge him to obey the prophet's command to wash in the Jordan. As Paul wrote, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28), that the credit for God's wondrous deeds would rest never on human prowess or wisdom, but on the working of God through those whom the world considers insignificant.
Touching too, however, is the utter humility of Naaman in his confession of the sole lordship of God. At the end of the story he asks that two mule loads of Israelite soil be sent back to Syria with him, because he wishes to worship the Lord alone. But deities at the time were always attached to their particular territory, and so to worship the Lord, Naaman takes back with him some of the Lord's territory. On that he can stand as he prays and sings his praises to the God of Israel.
The brief picture of King Jehoram of Israel, in verses 6-7 is a vivid characterization of kingly self-assertiveness, as contrasted with the humility of the other characters in the story.
Elisha's prophetic powers are mirrored briefly in the fact (v. 8) that he knows, even beyond the telling, that Naaman is seeking a cure for his leprosy. And Elisha wishes to use the cure to bring glory to the prophetic office.
Perhaps most puzzling is the fact that Naaman, though leprous, continues in his post as commander of the Syrian army. Lepers were strictly segregated in ancient Near Eastern life. Yet apparently Naaman's service is so valued that he is not banned from communal life, or perhaps his leprosy is not yet developed enough to pose a threat to his compatriots. But his continuation in his post, despite his disease, is at odds with normal ancient practice.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 30
The heading in my copy of the NRSV labels Psalm 30 as a "Thanksgiving for recovery from grave illness," and verse 2 affirms that. Because the psalmist's plea for deliverance has been answered, he brings this psalm as an offering of praise.
One sermon theme this immediately suggests is the matter of remembering to thank God for answered prayers. This was pounded into me again and again by the church of my youth, which placed great emphasis on thanking God. I knew of one pastor who even kept a prayer journal in which he recorded all of his prayer requests, and beside them he wrote how and when they were answered. Then, in his subsequent praying, he made it a point to thank God for those answered petitions. That practice is too mechanical and too much a scorekeeping approach to the Divine for me, but there is something to be said for the principle.
Following the rescue of nine Pennsylvania coal miners from a collapsed mine last summer, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial (August 2, 2002, W13) about how some people saw the rescue as an answer to prayer, citing a sign in a restaurant in the miners' town that read, "Thank you God, 9 for 9." After reviewing the usual questions of whether praying gets God to change his mind and why God would save some and not others, the editorial referred to Thomas Aquinas and Paul Tillich and their shared view that God is "infinite consciousness, wisdom and bliss, underlying and supporting the material cosmos." In this view, the editorial said, "answers to prayer" are not "instances of a supernatural being putting an arbitrary number of requests into his 'Yes' box ... but are responses of this cosmic spirit to the desires and intentions of all finite spirits."
There are other theological explanations of "answered prayer" (not to mention of "unanswered prayer" as well), and you won't want to rehearse them all in a sermon. A more fruitful avenue arises from the pattern of alternation that underlies this psalm. That pattern is set in verse 2: "I cried to you for help"/"you have healed me," and repeats in other verses. We see it clearly in verse 5 -- "His anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime" and "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning" -- but it's present elsewhere as well (see especially v. 11).
Your sermon could focus on how prayer and praise are the twin tools for dealing with the experiences of life, both the hard and the gladsome ones. The pastor who kept the prayer journal did not view his practice as any kind of tally sheet. To him, it was simply evidence of how actively God is involved in our lives. And his point is right -- our response to the activity of God in life ought to be prayer and gratitude.
My wife (obviously having joined the family by marriage rather than by birth) insists, however, that while "Aut Pax, Aut Bellum" may be the formal, official family motto, the real family motto -- in the sense of the one that my family actually lives by in our daily lives -- is, "When all else fails, read the directions." As we also sometimes say in my family, "I resemble that remark."
To be completely honest about it, I would have to admit that the motto is a bit more emphatic, something like, "When -- and only when -- all else fails, read the directions." It is as if it would be an affront to our intelligence and ability to think through problems ourselves if we had to rely on someone else's instructions, even if that someone else was the person who created the thing in the first place. As my wife would gladly tell you, this motto goes far beyond the stereotypical aversion of American males to asking for directions on how to get some place or find something in a store. No, we pride ourselves on our ability to use maps to navigate and even diagrams to see what a finished product should look like. But "some assembly required" instruction sheets are beneath contempt. And the only thing worse than being forced by repeated failure actually to read the directions? Finding out that there really was an easy way to accomplish the task, even if it was not obvious from looking at the finished product.
Naaman must have been a distant ancestor back somewhere in my family tree. As a general and "mighty warrior" in the Aramean army, he was obviously a take charge, problem-solving kind of guy who was not accustomed to having other people tell him what to do. But Naaman also had a problem. From the biblical account we learn that he was willing to go to great lengths to solve his problem -- willing to do almost anything it seems but to follow directions.
2 Kings 5:1-14
From the evidence provided in the books of Kings, it is difficult to sort out the precise political relationship in the mid-9th century B.C. between the northern kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Aram seated in Damascus (ancient Syria). In 1 Kings 22:1-40 we are told that a three-year period "without war" between the two kingdoms ended with a battle for control of Ramoth-gilead in which Ahab was killed. By the time of Elisha's dealings with Naaman, a second of Ahab's sons, Jehoram, had become king of Israel (2 Kings 3:1). From Jehoram's reaction to the king of Aram's sending Naaman to him to be healed (5:6-7), it is clear that Aram continued to hold the upper hand in the relationship even if Israel was not technically a vassal-state to Aram. That "the Lord had given victory to Aram" through Naaman (5:1), although admittedly ambiguous ("victory" over precisely whom is unstated), would reflect the same relative balance of power. In some later traditions, indeed, Naaman is credited with being the one whose arrow had felled King Ahab (see Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.5).
Naaman's prominence as "commander of the army" and a "mighty warrior" stood in marked contrast to his social position relative to his physical condition. He had "leprosy," one of any number of skin disorders the ancients indiscriminately lumped together by a common word ranging from the "heartbreak of psoriasis" to the disfiguring Hansen's disease known to us as leprosy. We cannot know his precise, modern medical diagnosis. But from the distance he was willing to travel and the price he was willing to pay for a cure (some 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, according to 5:5b), we can certainly infer that it was a serious, perhaps life-threatening, malady. No doubt he had tried everything he could think of by way of treatment. So when the young Israelite servant girl in his household suggested that Elisha might be the answer, Naaman was ready to follow the directions.
Well, almost ready. Elisha's directions were simple and direct: "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman was quite confident at this point that these directions could not possibly be right. Then as now, the Jordan was a meandering, slow-moving, muddy mess of a river. Exposing open wounds to its water was more likely to compound one's physical problems than to cure them. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" Not only is Naaman's homeland pride wounded, but his personal ego had taken a beating as well. "I thought for me he would surely come out ... and cure the leprosy!" These directions could not possibly be correct, and so Naaman "turned and went away in a rage" in search of some other procedure.
Fortunately for him his servants knew how to manage him for his own good (a pattern begun with that young Israelite girl who was serving his wife). Assuaging his bruised ego, they reminded him that he would gladly have undertaken a difficult task at the direction of the prophet. Why this hesitancy at something so simple? Wasn't it at least worth a try after such a long trip? So Naaman went to the muddy waters of the Jordan, following the directions to the letter through seven immersions. It doesn't take too much imagination to hear the curses and "I-told-you-so's" of this soldier through the first six dips. But after that seventh time under the waters, "his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean."
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
In the last week's lectionary reading from the preceding verses of 1 Corinthians 9, we saw the core of Paul's evangelistic strategy: "I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some" (9:22b). This week's lectionary reading provides a specific example of how he could contextualize (to use a modern buzzword) his preaching.
That the ancient Greeks had a keen interest in athletic competitions is of course widely known, and the return of the modern Olympic Games to Athens next year will no doubt reinforce that awareness. What is less known, however, is that the ancient Olympics were the most important of four major athletic competitions. Athens hosted the Pan-Athenian Games, not the Olympics (which were also not held near Mt. Olympus but at Olympia in the city-state of Elis on the Peloponnese). Delphi was the location of the Pythian Games, and the Isthmian Games were held in Corinth.
When Paul then asks rhetorically, "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize?" he has asked the most banal of athletics questions to some of the most intense sports fans of the ancient world. If the question was so easy that even the youngest of children could answer it, nevertheless it was language that reverberated in their very bones.
The point of Paul's metaphor is that the Corinthian Christians must exercise self-control -- not only as an evangelistic strategy for bringing others to faith, but so as to assure their own continuation and growth in the faith. Here the need is just as contextually relevant to the Corinthians even if less rhetorically obvious.
Corinth was a key commercial port in ancient Greece. The slipway across its narrow isthmus made it possible for ships to sail by way of the calmer waters of the Gulf of Corinth rather than sail all the way around the Pelopon-nese. Like many port cities ancient and modern, Corinth had a reputation for sexual excess. The Greek playwright Aristophanes coined the word "to Corinthianize," meaning "to fornicate," and Plato referred to prostitutes as "Corinthian girls." That the sexual mores of some in the Christian community there might scandalize even their fellow Corinthians (see 1 Corinthians 5:1) was thus saying something!
Paul's concerns with self-control in this congregation went far beyond sexual restraint, however. Here in chapter 9 he discusses foregoing a number of practices that may be unobjectionable that nevertheless will be avoided so that the cause of Christ can flourish. It is then fascinating that Paul sought to restrain the Corinthians' strong sense of libertarianism by an appeal to their equally strongly held commitment to the value of athletic training and discipline.
Along the way he also employs the very typical rabbinic-style argument of "from the lesser to the greater." If athletes are willing to "exercise self-control in all things" in order to gain something as "perishable" as a victor's wreath and the fleeting fame that may go with it, how much more should we be willing to exercise self-control to receive the "imperishable," eternal prize of salvation?
Mark 1:40-45
Even simple instructions are not always simple to follow, as the leper in the gospel lesson for this Sunday discovered. Like Naaman, this leper has heard that there is a prophet who is able to cure. The only restriction in his mind is whether Jesus will consent to perform the healing ("If you choose, you can make me clean"), and so he humbly kneels before Jesus and begs for his assistance. Jesus is moved with compassion and immediately cleanses him of the leprosy.
As central as physical healing is to this brief encounter, the social and religious purity implications of leprosy are what are emphasized. Notice that the words for "healing" never occur in the passage, but forms of the word "clean" appear in each of the first four verses. The leper's most serious problem is not his physical disease. It is the social and religious taboos associated with "leprosy" (the range of possible diagnoses is as wide here as with Naaman, and the likelihood greater that it is one of the less medically severe maladies) are what must be redressed if he is to resume his place in family and community. Unlike the case with Naaman, then, the instructions he receives relate not to his healing per se but to his reintegration into society.
Jesus "sternly warn[ed] him" in the directions: "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." Jesus' concern was that he be able to join the community by demonstrating to that society's proper authorities that he was no longer a contagion risk. These directions proved to be, you might say, as clear as mud. What could be the harm in telling everyone he met the wonderful news that Jesus had healed him? Surely there was room in these instructions to improve on the end product a bit. If telling the priests was required, telling everyone would be better -- right?
But Jesus must have had some reason for "sternly" giving the instructions that he did. The only consequence of the man's failure to follow these directions that is stated in Mark's Gospel is that Jesus' sudden fame became a hindrance to his ability to move about from village to village. Yet Jesus must have had more reason than that for commanding silence about his healing ability, one aspect of what scholars refer to as "the Messianic Secret." Why wouldn't Jesus direct him to tell anyone and everyone what had been done for him? I suspect that part of the reason was that the same directions do not necessarily apply to everyone. What this leper needed to do to be whole was different than what Naaman needed to do. The steps to his restoration could not be blindly repeated by everyone.
Application
Culturally, we are overcoming our resistance to following directions. How else are you to explain a publishing craze of books "for Dummies" and "Idiot's Guides" to everything under the sun? Why, even with my genetic predisposition to avoid following directions, I own a couple of such books. But to the extent that we have exchanged an unwillingness to accept directions for a search for one-size-fits-all solutions, we are really no better off. God's direction and will for us is personalized to our own unique circumstances. Yes, there are principles that apply to all -- truths of the gospel such as God's love, forgiveness, mercy, and justice. But God is too attuned to the individual situations of our lives to give exactly the same directions to Naaman from Aram and the unnamed man from Galilee even if they were both lepers.
To take up Paul's image of athletic training, perhaps it is the case that some of us are training to be runners and others of us boxers. The skills, training, and disciplines required for the tasks we will undertake and for the needs in our lives will be different. What we all share in common is a need not to "run aimlessly" or to "box as though beating the air." Whether we are running or boxing or competing in life in some other way entirely, what is required for success is that we follow God's directions for the ministry and life to which we have been called.
If our goal is genuine wholeness, then we are going to have to follow God's directions for assembling all the parts of our lives rather than relying on our own cleverness. Indeed, our own ideas about the best way to do things may just prevent us from gaining the personal blessings we need from God or impede rather than advance the cause of the gospel. But God is able through the scriptures, the traditions of the church, and the life of the community of faith to spell out those instructions for us. So, even before all else fails, follow the directions.
Alternative Applications
1) 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. What would it mean for us as preachers and for members of our congregations if we were able to communicate the message of the gospel creatively in the idioms of the very specific contexts in which we have been called to minister? The fact is that from what little biographical material we have about Paul, it seems very unlikely that he had never committed himself to the disciplines of athletic training. He was not a runner or a boxer, and yet he metaphorically assumed both roles to communicate his message to those who valued athletics. He was able to become a Corinthian in order to gain the Corinthians.
Yet equally important, Paul was careful in the aspects of the culture that he chose to adapt to his purpose. He did not choose the most stereotypical values of the Corinthians from Aristophanes and Plato, but a value that could find a parallel in the values of God's reign. And indeed, he actually managed to play two different and perhaps competing values of that culture over against each other to underscore his point.
2) 2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45. One of the struggles facing congregations today is balancing the demands between inclusivity and exclusivity, between being welcoming of all and maintaining a "Christian identity." Congregations even struggle with what counts as a "Christian identity." More than a few church-growth gurus have noted the apparent paradox that many mainline congregations that tout themselves as open and accepting have declining numbers while other religious communities that place stiff demands on membership are growing and flourishing.
Both the Old Testament and gospel lessons for this Sunday seem to come down on the side of inclusivity and openness. The gospel story emphasizes God's concern for the healing and wholeness of lepers who are ostracized by their communities. And the Old Testament story is about the healing of Naaman, who was not even an Israelite and so was outside the ranks of God's people. Nevertheless, God's acceptance of these two lepers is not permission for them to do whatever they please. If they and others are going to enjoy God's blessings, they need to follow the direction of God's prophets. We don't choose between inclusivity or exclusivity, but rather work to balance inclusivity and exclusivity.
First Lesson Focus
2 Kings 5:1-14
This story is a favorite with preachers, because of its many notes of warm human interest. Obviously the principal thrust of the story is the emphasis on Naaman's pride and the necessity of his ridding himself of his own self-importance, as he humbly becomes a worshiper of the one true God of Israel. Few stories fit better the manner of the Christian life, which calls for the crucifixion of one's own self will in favor of following Jesus in his total commitment to the will of his Father. When Jesus commands all us disciples to take up our cross and follow him, many persons take that to mean that we are to endure some physical ailment or some mental or psychological suffering, as if some such burden is the cross we have to bear in this life. But that is a misunderstanding of Jesus' command. When our Lord commands us to take up our cross and follow him, he commands us to let ourselves -- our wills, our desires, our plans, our achievements be crucified and laid aside for the sake of doing what God wills and desires and plans for our future. We are to die to ourselves that we may live to the glory of the Father through our dedication to Jesus Christ.
The Christian faith is not intended as a panacea for our troubles, to make us feel better about ourselves or to help us with our psychological adjustments or to enable us to become successful in our society. Indeed, the Christian faith has very little to do with our status and well-being, although millions have found it to undergird their lives and to give them peace and joy that the world cannot give. But primarily the Christian faith is intended to transform us into the servants of God that we are supposed to be, so that we live not for our selves and our own welfare, but for God and for the sake of his work toward his kingdom. The Christian faith replaces our spirit with the Spirit of Christ, so that we grow up into his stature, and all that we do points to his glorification and to the service of his Father.
(By way of parenthesis, it should be pointed out, that although Naaman is cured of his leprosy because of his repentance and obedience, physical cures of our ills may not necessarily follow such self-surrender. God has the power to heal physical ills, but human repentance does not necessarily call forth such healing, and there are times when God actually uses physical suffering in the fulfillment of his purpose.)
There are other noteworthy emphases in the story. First is perhaps God's concern for all the peoples of the earth, not just for his covenant people. Through his prophet, he shows mercy to a foreign army commander, even though that commander has been defeating Israel in Syria's border warfare against her. It's almost as if God is working as a subversive against Israel. But the Lord's mercy reaches out to all who are in need, ignoring every human boundary and division, and indeed, all human-generated strife.
Interesting too is the fact that it is the Lord who has given Naaman his success in battle against Israel. During the 9th century B.C., there was almost continual border warfare between Syria to the north and the northern kingdom of Israel that was ruled by the Omri dynasty (6:8, 24; 10:32-33; 13:22). During the reigns of kings Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram, Jehu, and Jehoahaz, Israel's peace was marred by successive victories and defeats at the hands of the Syrians, until that kingdom was finally conquered by the great Israelite ruler, Jeroboam II. But surprisingly, our text tells us that it is the Lord himself who gives Naaman victory in battle against Israel. The Lord is not always fighting on our side, it seems, and he shapes history according to his sovereign will and not according to our desires.
The roles played by the "little people" in the story are touching -- the Israelite slave girl and the servants of Naaman, who urge him to obey the prophet's command to wash in the Jordan. As Paul wrote, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28), that the credit for God's wondrous deeds would rest never on human prowess or wisdom, but on the working of God through those whom the world considers insignificant.
Touching too, however, is the utter humility of Naaman in his confession of the sole lordship of God. At the end of the story he asks that two mule loads of Israelite soil be sent back to Syria with him, because he wishes to worship the Lord alone. But deities at the time were always attached to their particular territory, and so to worship the Lord, Naaman takes back with him some of the Lord's territory. On that he can stand as he prays and sings his praises to the God of Israel.
The brief picture of King Jehoram of Israel, in verses 6-7 is a vivid characterization of kingly self-assertiveness, as contrasted with the humility of the other characters in the story.
Elisha's prophetic powers are mirrored briefly in the fact (v. 8) that he knows, even beyond the telling, that Naaman is seeking a cure for his leprosy. And Elisha wishes to use the cure to bring glory to the prophetic office.
Perhaps most puzzling is the fact that Naaman, though leprous, continues in his post as commander of the Syrian army. Lepers were strictly segregated in ancient Near Eastern life. Yet apparently Naaman's service is so valued that he is not banned from communal life, or perhaps his leprosy is not yet developed enough to pose a threat to his compatriots. But his continuation in his post, despite his disease, is at odds with normal ancient practice.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 30
The heading in my copy of the NRSV labels Psalm 30 as a "Thanksgiving for recovery from grave illness," and verse 2 affirms that. Because the psalmist's plea for deliverance has been answered, he brings this psalm as an offering of praise.
One sermon theme this immediately suggests is the matter of remembering to thank God for answered prayers. This was pounded into me again and again by the church of my youth, which placed great emphasis on thanking God. I knew of one pastor who even kept a prayer journal in which he recorded all of his prayer requests, and beside them he wrote how and when they were answered. Then, in his subsequent praying, he made it a point to thank God for those answered petitions. That practice is too mechanical and too much a scorekeeping approach to the Divine for me, but there is something to be said for the principle.
Following the rescue of nine Pennsylvania coal miners from a collapsed mine last summer, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial (August 2, 2002, W13) about how some people saw the rescue as an answer to prayer, citing a sign in a restaurant in the miners' town that read, "Thank you God, 9 for 9." After reviewing the usual questions of whether praying gets God to change his mind and why God would save some and not others, the editorial referred to Thomas Aquinas and Paul Tillich and their shared view that God is "infinite consciousness, wisdom and bliss, underlying and supporting the material cosmos." In this view, the editorial said, "answers to prayer" are not "instances of a supernatural being putting an arbitrary number of requests into his 'Yes' box ... but are responses of this cosmic spirit to the desires and intentions of all finite spirits."
There are other theological explanations of "answered prayer" (not to mention of "unanswered prayer" as well), and you won't want to rehearse them all in a sermon. A more fruitful avenue arises from the pattern of alternation that underlies this psalm. That pattern is set in verse 2: "I cried to you for help"/"you have healed me," and repeats in other verses. We see it clearly in verse 5 -- "His anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime" and "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning" -- but it's present elsewhere as well (see especially v. 11).
Your sermon could focus on how prayer and praise are the twin tools for dealing with the experiences of life, both the hard and the gladsome ones. The pastor who kept the prayer journal did not view his practice as any kind of tally sheet. To him, it was simply evidence of how actively God is involved in our lives. And his point is right -- our response to the activity of God in life ought to be prayer and gratitude.
