Matthew van Maastricht

Sermon originally preached at Calvary Community Church. Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Few things are more delightful to me in this passage, than the fact that this whole event happened, this story was recorded, this whole thing began with the words of a little foreign slave girl. This little slave girl, someone with no social standing or status to speak of, spoke words of wisdom that people heard, but no one truly listened to.

This little slave girl was in the service of Naaman’s wife. Now we are told that Naaman had leprosy. While typically we think of leprosy as the disease that makes body parts fall off, this may or may not be exactly what from which Naaman was suffering. In the ancient world, the term leprosy covered a multitude of skin diseases. But whatever it was, it was likely incredibly unpleasant.

So Naaman comes home from a day at the palace meeting with the king to discuss military strategy, and as he comes home it is apparent, again, to everyone in the household that no matter what their doctors have done, Naaman is still in great suffering. So as this little slave girl, whom they captured fromt the land of Israel, as she was helping Naaman’s wife to get ready for bed, she remarked to her mistress, “O, if only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” And the slave girl finished her tasks and when she had left, Naaman’s wife went to speak to Naaman the words that the slave girl told to her.

I can imagine that Naaman would have been cautiously hopeful. On the one hand, this was a possibility for him to be cured from this awful disease, but I can also imagine that he would be cautious so as not to get his hopes up. Someone as important as Naaman would have received the best medical care available at the time, and the chances were good that he had sought medical attention. But whatever he may have been thinking or feeling, Naaman brings this to the King.

Of course, though, the king cannot send Naaman with just a camel, no, Naaman is important, and so he sends a letter to the King of Israel, but not only this but sends ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. This is quite a sum, but for someone so important in the kingdom, this was well worth it. So this has now become a matter of diplomacy. The king of Aram, which is modern day Syria, sends him to the King of Israel with all of this money.

So Naaman and his grand royal caravan shows up at the palace of the King of Israel with the letter, requesting that the king cure Naaman of his leprosy. The king, of course, tears his clothes because he can’t heal Naaman, and he thinks that the king to the north is trying to set a trap for him, requesting the impossible from him.

And all of this because they heard the little girl, but did not listen to her.

But Elisha gets word of this, after all, the king doesn’t tear his robes without anyone taking notice. So Naaman goes to Elisha’s house. I love the specificity of this part of the story, “So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house.”

It wasn’t just Naaman who showed up, but his entire entourage, he comes with his status and his pride and his prestige, and he shows up at Elisha’s house, the ordinary house of a prophet.

But Elijah won’t play into this, and so he sends a messenger out to him with the instructions. Go and bathe in the  Jordan river seven times and you will be healed.

But Naaman will have none of this. Naaman didn’t want to be told this simple thing from this simple messenger, he wanted the great prophet to come out, and wave his hands, and call on God and bring all the special effects and do something fitting of his status. Not only this, but he was told to bathe seven times. That’s it? I came all the way from Aram for this? In the Jordan, no less? The murky and muddy waters of the Jordan River?  We have rivers back home, and they are cleaner and nicer and more pristine than these backwaters.

Naaman turns away and begins to lead his entourage away.

But one of his servants came to him. “If he told you to do something involved and difficult, wouldn’t you have done it?  Why not just do this simple thing, what do you really have to lose?

So Naaman got down from his horse, and took of his armour and put down the shield of his king. He walks down into the Jordan River and baths seven times, and his flesh was restored to perfection.

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The beauty of this passage is not so much in the end of Naaman being restored to health, I mean, that is the climax of the story, but that is not necessarily the beauty. The beauty is that the driving forces in this story were ordinary simple folks. The slave girl who got the whole ball rolling, the servant who convinced Naaman that he didn’t have anything to lose give washing in the Jordan a try. When God is involved, these ordinary people can be capable of extraordinary things. When God is involved, an ordinary messenger can speak grace. When God is involved, servants and slaves can speak truth. When God is involved an ordinary river can take on miraculous properties, and when God is involved, the ordinary can do extraordinary things.

Today we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, when we take these ordinary elements, bread from the earth and fruit from the vine and God does something extraordinary with them. In the moment, we are lifted up into heaven and we commune with, we are united with, Christ and all the saints of all time and places, and for a moment, for a brief moment, we can experience the glory of heaven.

This is what we believe about the sacrament, and it is beautiful, it is amazing. And all of this from these ordinary elements.

We serve a God who continually uses ordinary things. A nomadic person in Mesopotamia who would become the father of the people of God, a bush that is ablaze but is curiously not consumed, a person who had difficulties with public speaking, an unwed teenage girl who would give birth to the redeemer of the cosmos, and ordinary people like you and me. God takes these ordinary things, and by God’s grace, extraordinary things happen.

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Today is All Saints’ Sunday — the day we observe All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is not the day to think about Saint Augustine or Saint Francis or Saint Benedict or Saint Luke or Saint John, All Saints’ Day is when we remember all those brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before, all those who are properly called saints, all those who have stood in the presence of God and have seen the beautiful vision of the glory of God. All Saints’ Day is not a day to glorify the dead, don’t get me wrong, but a day that we can give God thanks for those who have impacted our lives, either individually or as a church, those who may not be known to many, but who, in one way or another, represented Christ to us.

Faith is not something that we come to on our own, the journey of faith is not one that we trod alone. Each of us have, and have had, people in our lives who have told us stories about God and about God’s people. We have had people who have shared with us the story about grace and redemption found through Christ. We have had people in our lives who have spoken grace into our lives, who have spoken God, who have served as companions and guides on the way.

These people are not always the important ones, maybe not the obvious ones. Maybe these people are not the kings, but rather the little servants, the people who blend into the woodwork, the people who don’t have much prestige or power, people who are not often noticed, but who can speak or live wisdom.

The wonderful thing about God is that those who are far off have been brought near, the first will be last, and the last first, the weak will be given power, and the powerful will be cut down. God can work through unexpected people in unexpected situations.

So today, we can give thanks to God for God’s immense creativity, for God’s desire to work through ordinary things and ordinary people, we can give thanks to God because “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28).

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But God didn’t just work at one point through ordinary people, but God continues to work through ordinary people and ordinary things, this is God’s modus operandi

So as we look back at the past in the story of Naaman, we stand in the present as we give thanks for those who have gone before, we can also look to the future, and think of the possibilities that might be in store for this ordinary little church on the top of a hill in New Berlin, Wisconsin. We have a wonderful past and these walls could tell so many stories of so many different people. Stories of people coming to faith, and people growing in faith. Stories of life: marriages, baptisms, celebrations of birth, recovery from disease and illness. Stories of grief and loss, death and funerals. Stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things as God’s people. But think of the stories that they might yet contain. The stories of ordinary people telling about the story of how God took on flesh and lived a life like you and me, and taught people what God desired, and lived a completely obedient life which ultimately led to his death, only for him to raise from the dead.

It’s a story that begins relatively ordinary but ends extraordinary. It is a story which is like you and me, and those for whom we give thanks today.