Healing Happens 021206
2 Kings 5:1-14 Mark 1:40-45
Servant girl – sad face/happy face
Some people you know have something wrong with them
Lots of people are sad, even you sometimes
You can help each other and other people by telling them God cares about them
Pray with me, sing with me: “water, river spirit grace”
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times
So begins a Tale of 2 Cities
So begins a tale of 2 Lepers
So it was for Naaman: it was the best of times: he had it all….position, power, reputation
but also something wrong with him: leprosy
didn’t seem to be the contagious out casting kind of disease but it still put a damper on his ‘best of times’—he just wasn’t whole
for Anon, as we shall call the 2nd leper – the one who confronts Jesus—it was just the worst of times. He had the outcast kind. Not only was he not whole, he didn’t belong. No power, no position, no prestige.
But grace came to both. For both, healing happens.
Here’s Namaan: powerful, well thought of, well able to travel far and wide in search of his healing. And water, river are the means by which God brings him to wholeness
And here’s Anon: powerless, ignored –in fact ostracized, probably reduced to panhandling. And loving hands are the means by which God brings him to wholeness.
God is concerned about both the powerful and the powerless
God wants healing to happen
but God waits to be invited in.
Both need to acknowledge the power beyond themselves, the power beyond their control, and come to terms with it.
For Namaan, it’s harder. It took him time and self examination and a lot of guidance from others to get off his high horse—he made a lot of errors in judgment before he finally was humble enough to acknowledge that
1.he wasn’t in charge of his healing. And 2. healing for him required humility
Hmmm….ouch
For Anon, healing happens much differently: he is already as low as he can get; he doesn’t need to be humbled—he needs to be lifted up! And he goes straight to the source, without all the roundabout attempts Namaan manages. So Jesus touches him, outside the box behavior, so that he can acknowledge
1. he’s worth God’s attention And 2. healing involves belonging—reconciliation with the community
Namaan wants healed, and he’s asked to do something he considers beneath him---and asked to do it publicly. He almost doesn’t do it
Anon is asked to do something he’d have thought beyond him, and asked to do it publicly. He didn’t do it, because it was just for himself….instead he found something even more public.
healing happened when Namaan let go his power and pride
healing happened when Anon rose up and spoke up.
In God’s Politics, Jim Wallis writes, God is personal, but not private. An active faith, whether seeking or sharing, is not a private affair
Healing happens when we get involved and participate actively in what we’re praying for
If you’re going to pray for your own healing, get to a doctor too
…..guidance, open your eyes and ears
…..encouragement for someone, send a card
……homeless, start building relationships
….the poor, get advocating
….children, teach SS or volunteer in the nursery
….the nation, get loud…
do more than pray and protest and complain: work for alternatives
So which of these 2 resonates with you? Which needs addressing in your life: the power or the helplessness?
I bet there are some Anons here this morning: people who feel left out, different, who don’t have a place to belong….someone with a dis-ease that needs the touch of loving hands. This day, in or beyond this place, it will happen….somewhere here is the hand that can reach out and help you…because I also know that God is here, working through someone…..
But I also know for sure that there are Namaans here this
morning: people
who have no connection with the muddy messy waters of the
people who’ve been looking all over for healing and wholeness, or
People who can’t admit they need help outside their own control, or
people who wouldn’t touch an AIDS patient, or dirty their hands with the homeless, let alone immerse themselves in Anon’s world.
But grace happens--grace is the great leveler: god’s grace is offered to both Namaan and Anon, powerful and powerless
All of us, need healing
powerful, upper-middle class Americans or humble welfare recipient
old or young, black or white, rich or poor
need to have something fixed that’s wrong with our lives, that’s not the way God wants our lives to be….it might be I need a course in humility, or you might need to know you are valuable to God….it might be a physical healing, or perhaps it’s spiritual, or relational.
I am here to tell you –the text is here to tell you: healing happens—differently for each of us, often in unexpected ways, though unexpected people, but it happens.
For both Namaan and Anon, it was an individual healing, and but only at first. Both went on to call attention to their society’s need for healing, to change their habits, to share their stories with the larger community. Healing happens, but for Christians it must always also be communal:
Think of which leprosy needs addressing in our society: the leprosy of power, or the leprosy of poverty? Or both?
remember the little girl, and the servants in the story, more powerless Anons, without whose wisdom and compassion Namaan’s healing would not have happened ….
we need to listen to the children, listen to the captive, listen to the poor, listen to the powerless…for they hold the key to our healing
May God forgive us for our individualism,
may God heal our dis-ease, and
may God make our society, through us, or in spite of us, more whole.
Amen
Benediction
May we have the compassion of the child to reach out even to the powerful
May we have the humility of Namaan to seek help when we are hurting
May we have the wisdom of the servants to speak it like it is
May we have the faithfulness of Jesus to love outside the box.