2 Kings 5:1-15
February 16, 2003
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Oatmeal
During the cold winter months in Boston, my mother would make cream of wheat in a pot of boiling water before we went to school. The stuff sticks to your ribs and stays with you for most of the morning. We would break off a piece of brown sugar bar to make it taste good. Breakfast was an ordeal back then.
Joy likes hot oatmeal or cream of wheat over cold cereal. She has a box that says, Quaker “One-Minute” Oatmeal. But she also has other boxes that have little pre-packaged oatmeal portions that say, “Instant Oatmeal.” All you have to do is empty the little package in a bowl and pour hot water to have hot cereal. She prefers the instant because it’s faster.
Kellogg, Post, and other companies introduced cold cereal as an alternative to cooked grains like oatmeal. Now all you have to do is sit down, pour out the raisin bran, add milk, grab a spoon and eat. It’s fast but soon this seemed like too much to do. So the American public opted for toaster food like Pop-Tarts. But you have to wait until the toaster to warm up, so we went to granola bars.
Now Kellogg has come up with “Breakfast Mates,” a single portion packaged with its own milk, bowl, and spoon. One study by the New York Times found that it can cut prep time by a single second—from 14 to 13 seconds! We live in an instant culture!
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons. Let’s name them Nathan, the older brother and Ryan, the younger one. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake; I can wait.’” Nathan turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Save a minute here, hoard an hour there, and life gets busier. We are all busy. Too busy to wait. Even for God. We want instant everything. One of our deepest desires is to have everything in our lives happen precisely when we want it to, at the very moment of our desire, hope, or need.
If we’re dirty, we want to be clean.
If we’re hungry, we want to be fed.
If we’re poor, we want to be rich.
If we’re ignorant, we want to be wise.
If we’re just ordinary, we want to be beautiful.
If we rent, we want to buy.
If we’re suffering, we want to be pain-free.
If we’re sick, we want to be cured.
We are afflicted with what some call the Acceleration Syndrome. We want all of this now.
Naaman’s Leprosy
In today’s Old Testament reading, Naaman, a high-ranking officer in Aram’s army, is looking for a quick and instant cure. Naaman has leprosy—a skin disease that causes him to be considered untouchable and unclean by others. Our text says that Naaman was a “great man” with many victories and medals on his uniform. But leprosy is no respecter of persons. And even the greatest of men can be rendered socially marginal and politically impotent by disease.
As a powerful leader, Naaman probably sought out every miracle healer his country had to offer. When he heard from one of his servants that there was a prophet in Samaria who could cure him, he sets off with a whole entourage of horses and chariots filled with gold, silver and fine linens. He heads off not to the prophet’s house but to the King of Israel himself. When you are privileged, you can be sure to have the very best doctors—those who care for the king himself.
But the king has no power to cure him. In fact, the king is downright suspicious of why a foreign military leader is showing up on his doorsteps with all these gifts in the first place. So when Elisha the prophet tells the king he can help, the king quickly takes up his offer. He sends Naaman to the prophet’s house.
Now just imagine this scene. Naaman is a desperate man who has always gotten his way. He wanted his healing done the quick way. He didn’t want another task, another journey, another job. He expected his healing to be done and over with now.
Perhaps he expected Elisha to wave his hand over the leprous skin, and restore it to health. Perhaps this miracle worker would mutter a few well-chosen prayers to his God, and bring healing and relief to his diseased body. In Naaman’s mind, he was already envisioning himself riding back to Aram upon his chariot with his head held high, his cleansed arms exposed for all to see. Naaman saw himself independent, strong, powerful, and cleansed once more.
What a shock it must have been, then, for Naaman and his entire entourage to arrive at the prophet’s house, and to find himself greeted there not by the famous prophet Elisha himself, but by one of his servants. And what a shock it must have been for Naaman when, instead of coming out to offer prayers and to wave his hand over Naaman’s body, the prophet sends only a simple word of instruction to Naaman. The servant said, “Go wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”
Naaman was not pleased. In fact, he was angry. Wash in the River Jordan? If he’d been looking for a river to make him clean, he certainly didn’t need to come all this way to wash in the muddy old Jordan River. He had far superior rivers of his own back home. In rage, he stalks out.
But for a third time in this story, a servant, a person with little power prods the great military leader to do the healing thing. “Sir, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
Messy Healing
It’s not always easy in life to do the simple thing—especially the simple thing that God requires of us for our healing. Even if we don’t have the wealth and military might of a Naaman, we favor the quick, fast, miraculous cure over the humbling, messier cure that comes from doing simple things over and over again—like washing seven times in the Jordan River.
Some of you know that for the past two months I have been seeing doctors and physical therapists for a condition called a “frozen shoulder.” There is some inflammation in my right shoulder that immobilizes my shoulder, gives me pain, and keeps me up at night. I haven’t been able to play tennis! When the doctor looks at my age on my chart, he says, “Your body is only showing common wear and tear of white hair!”
For my treatment, I have taken naproxen, got a cortisone shot, gone to 5 physical therapy sessions, and had ultra sound. But I still have the pain. So I went back to the surgeon this past week because I wanted instant healing. My options were to have shoulder surgery that would lead to one-year of rehab or enduring the pain of a frozen shoulder for one year. According to current research, the pain would eventually go away. I chose to endure the pain.
My healing will require me to do simple physical therapy exercises every day. It’s not glamorous or miraculous surgery. Some days they’ll be painful. Healing will require me to have faith in the simple repetitions of circling my arm around and around, over and over again until wholeness returns.
When a limb is broken, or disease radically changes your life; when your heart is broken or injustice renders you incapacitated; when your spirit is broken, and all you can muster is the false confidence that comes from bolstering yourself up with the things of this world, it is very difficult indeed to trust that through obedience to the simple acts God requires that healing will ever come.
And yet isn’t that how God works for the healing in our lives? Not in glamorous ways, but in unglamorous ways. Not quick cures, but in slow, messy cures. Not instant recoveries, but in recoveries that come only after repetitive washings in muddy waters.
Instant God
Naaman was a busy man. He was a successful general with things to do. He didn’t have time for Elisha to send his servant out with a detailed prescription. Naaman expected a two-minute miracle. He expected instantaneous healing.
Are we like that too? What do we expect from God? You expected this sermon should be shorter. I expected my frozen shoulder to be thawed by now. We don’t even take time to say, “Open 24 hours a day and seven days a week” anymore. We just say, “24/7” and we understand. Saying “24/7” is quicker and faster.
We have instant delivery, instant credit, instant oatmeal, instant mashed potatoes. (During the holidays, we had a college student over for dinner who never had real mashed potatoes! For him, mashed potatoes were instant!) What we want is an instant God. Just add water and voila!, our hopes are met!
Naaman wanted an instant God.
But some things are not instant. God isn’t instant. God doesn’t do what we want when we want it. God does things the right way, not the quick way.
Naaman’s idea of the Lord God is a God who does his bidding. Heal me instantly! At the very least, he expected Elisha to do his bidding. Naaman was a great man who demanded quick and great results. He believed Elisha would come out, wave his hand over the leprosy, pray a prayer and be done with it.
It doesn’t happen that way, not for Naaman, not for us. We’ve constructed a world where time is saved, where instant is the norm. But God chooses his own time and can’t be ordered by what we want.
Elisha’s task for Naaman is anything but instant. Elisha required Naaman to give effort, to travel, and give time. If Naaman wants healing, he’ll have to put in the effort. If he wants healing, he will have to go down to the Jordan River. If Naaman wants healing, it will be done in God’s time of washing for seven times. It won’t happen according to Naaman’s terms.
Naaman’s problem is not that he was only impatient. He also had too much pride. People did what Naaman told them to do and did it quickly. He was smart, clever, able, rich, well dressed and rode around in the latest, updated chariots. No one stood in his way. He was somebody who thought everybody was a nobody.
But God taught Naaman through Elisha that it’ll take some effort on his part to be healed. It won’t happen with a wave of a hand or a few chosen prayers from the prophet. Naaman himself will need to do something.
Instant Results
We in the church like to talk about “instant conversions.” We like to see some instant miraculous healings. We want to see God acting on his own with instant results so that we might believe. After all, Moses got to see a burning bush, it would be nice for us to see a smoldering shrub at least.
But if we spend all our time waiting to see lightening bolts and pillars of fire and plagues of locusts, we will end up missing what God is doing.
Several years ago a man was driving his pick-up truck through the mountainous back country of Oregon. But he got stuck in a snow bank. As he considered what to do, he decided to put his trust in God, that God would send someone to rescue him. So day after day he sat in the cab of his truck, writing business letters, and personal letters, waiting for the God-appointed person to come and save him. Nine weeks later, a passing motorist discovered this man dead, having frozen to death. The most tragic part of this story is that if he would have gotten out of his truck and walked a few hundred yards, he would have come upon a clear road, where cars had been going past every day. He was so intent on being saved in a miraculous way that he failed to see the way out that God had already provided for him.
All this man needed to do was to get out of his truck and find the clear road. All Naaman had to do was to wash seven times in the muddy Jordan River. All I will need to do is to continue doing my physical therapy exercises to free up my shoulder from pain.
There is no accelerated or instant spirituality. There’re a few instant answers to our prayers, but an apple doesn’t ripen in a day. You don’t go to church, attend one worship, one Bible study class, and expect to be spiritually whole. You have to come Sunday after Sunday, week after week, perhaps year after year—continue doing those things that bring you closer to God.
We may shave minutes or seconds off our daily lives using instant anything, but none of that changes God’s time, or the length of our days on earth, or how God chooses to respond to us.
God answers prayers, our hopes and our desperate needs according to his schedule. And God’s time is eternal and beyond time, above time, and never a matter of seconds or minutes.
God healed Naaman. God will heal us, too, and give us new life. Maybe not in the quick ways we want. Maybe not in the ways we expect. Maybe not even in the ways we think we need.
God does heal wounded hearts. God heals burdened souls, and sometimes frozen shoulders, and minds. God heals, God cares, and God loves.
God loves you so much to send you the Great Physician to restore your troubled soul and diseased body so that it becomes like the flesh of a young boy. Christ came to teach us to build our lives around faith in him.
Believe in Jesus. He leads us to eternal life when we trust God by repeatedly coming to him in humility and obedience, washing our lives in the muddy waters of life, and faithfully believing that in God’s time, we will be healed.
Let us pray.
O God, lead us to trust in your time for our lives. When we are experiencing trouble, brokenness, suffering, and pain, comfort us with the faith that in your grace and mercy, our lives are participating in the wondrous work of your realm on earth. Bless us as your faithful children. Amen.