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It is a hectic Sunday morning after worship. People are streaming in and out of the pastor’s office as he tries to put away all of the things that seem to have accumulated on his desk since he arrived earlier that morning. Suddenly Neta appears at the door. “Pastor, I’d like you to meet Emily Johnson. She’s worshiping with us for the first time today and wants to join our church.” The pastor puts aside what he is doing and greets Emily warmly. He invites her to sit down for a minute so that he can get to know her a little better. Emily begins to tell the pastor how much she likes the congregation. She was especially impressed with the Sunday school for her three young children. She wants to join soon so that they can get started regularly and wonders what she needs to do to join. She isn’t a member of this church’s denomination and hasn’t attended church regularly since she was a teenager. She reaches in a bag that she has with her and brings out a watercolor painting which she has painted herself. “Here,” she says, “I have a gift I want to give you since you’re going to be my pastor.” The pastor is a bit surprised, but he receives the gift graciously. Already he is getting restless. It has been a long morning and he would like to get home for lunch and relax a little before the denominational meeting he has to attend that afternoon. Then Emily tells him that she is a single parent and has just started back to school to finish her degree which will take her about two years. She is on a limited budget and she has heard that the church is a place to go to find people who are willing to help when you need help. She wonders if the pastor could help her find someone who would babysit for her for free. Now, if you were the pastor, how would you respond to Emily? Perhaps Emily’s story is not so different from Naaman’ s story in our text for today. We all know Naaman’s story from our Sunday school days. It is one of the more familiar stories in the Old Testament. Naaman is a foreigner to the king of Israel, yes, even a sometime enemy. But here he comes bearing gifts, seeking a favor from the king. He wants the king to heal him of his leprosy. The king of Israel at the time shows us one way to respond to Emily. We could respond with offense. “What do you think this place is? A welfare agency? Lady, have you gotten the wrong information about what is going on here.’’ The king doesn’t understand at all what Naaman’s request is. He knows that he has no special power to heal anyone of leprosy. He becomes very suspicious, suggesting that really what Naaman wants him to do is reject him, so that he (Naaman) can become offended and have reason to start a quarrel with him. This part of this story lifts up for us a dilemma which constantly faces us in the church. How do we respond to those who come to us seeking some kind of help for themselves or members of their family -- sometimes even bearing us gifts and flattering us in the process? This is every church’s challenge. One of the groups of persons I think of immediately here are the transients who come to the church seeking help. Most often they come directly to me and ask for a handout. Usually they describe a very urgent need which they have for food, rent money, or perhaps gas to get to another town. Sometimes they even promise to send me the money when they get their welfare check. How am I to judge whether these people are telling the truth or not? If you were in my shoes, how would you respond? Another group of people are people like Emily. They come with a need but they are looking for more than just the immediate filling of their need. They do want a place to belong, a place that will give them support, but sometimes, like Emily, the need or needs they have are great. Still another group of people are those who come and want to get involved in the church right away. It’s easy for us to become excited about them because we are always looking for volunteers and when people offer without having to be asked, it is a special pleasure. Yet, often many of these people overextend themselves or have various kinds of problems relating to the persons with whom they work so that their helping becomes more of a burden than a sharing in the work of the church. These are the people God sends us to whom we are called to minister. I am not sure that we often see them as such. Very often, I suspect, we see many of these persons more as “problem” prospective members rather than persons to welcome into the family with open arms. In our text the prophet Elisha was the person who offered the real welcome for Naaman and offered to fill the request which he brought. Notice that Elisha didn’t make much todo about all the gifts Naaman brought him. It appears that he saw Naaman himself as the real gift God had sent him. Here was a man, who once he was healed, would become a witness for God’s power among a group of foreigners -- even sometime enemies. Naaman at first didn’t like the way the offer of healing was extended to him. Many of the persons who come to us with needs often at first don’t like the way we extend our friendship to them either. But in the end he received the gift of healing, and he exclaims with joy, “Now I know there is no god but the God of Israel.” Today this text affords our congregation the opportunity to reflect on how we receive persons who come to us seeking our help. Sometimes, they, like Naaman, come bearing material gifts, hoping as I’m sure Naaman hoped, that nice gifts will get our attention and lead us to fill their perceived needs. How easy it is for us to reject both their gift and them. Often it is not apparent to us how we can meet their immediate needs. Certainly we don’t want to give the impression either that we can be bribed or, for that matter, that it is necessary to bring a gift to get our help. How easy it is for us, like the king, to miss the real dynamic of what is happening when these persons come to us. Really, you see, as Elisha rightly perceived the persons themselves are the real gifts from God. If we can find a way to receive them (and often that means addressing their immediate needs) not only will we have responded with God’s love and mercy, but more than likely we will have received a gift that keeps on giving. Imagine how many people Naaman told about what happened to him, giving praise to God when he arrived home. Truly he was a gift to Israel who kept on giving for many years into the future. That’s who the persons are who come to us bearing gifts and needs. They are God’s gifts to us through whom we can fulfill his call to show love, mercy and forgiveness to all. Here’s what the pastor did for Emily. He told her that he would think about her need and how the church could help her and call her back at a time they agreed. That evening he called Mabel Black whose only daughter and family had moved half a continent away. Mabel had been so involved with her grandchildren that she was having a really difficult time adjusting. Mabel was on Emily’s doorstep the next morning. Not only did Emily join the congregation and become an active, ministering member herself, but she brought her brother and his family, her sister and her family, and a close friend and her family into membership in the church, too. She became a gift that kept on giving even as she received a gift that kept on giving. We can be that kind of a congregation, too. I hope that seeing Naaman’s story from another perspective this morning will help you as members of our congregation to give more careful thought to the persons who come to us with needs. Almost every time we can find a way to meet them through prayer, patience, and creative problem-solving. Then we too will have among us many new gifts who keep on giving. Amen.