“We Ask for Healing; God Asks for Holiness”

Mark 1:40-45; II Kings 5:1-14

II Kings 5:1-14

{1} Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.

{2} Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. {3} The girl from Israel said to her mistress, Naaman’s wife, “If only my lord [Naaman] were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

{4} So Naaman went in and told his lord [the king] just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. {5} And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”

He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. {6} He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

{7} When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

{8} But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

{9} So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house.

{10} Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”

{11} But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! {12} Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage.

{13} But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, 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’?”

{14} So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of Elisha, the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

Mark 1:40-45

{40} A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” {41} Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” {42} Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

{43} After sternly warning him, Jesus sent him away at once, {44} saying to him, “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.”

{45} But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

The Sermon

I’m told that in the story of Alice in Wonderland, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast each day.

That seems like an intriguing idea. What six impossible things would you choose to practice believing on any given day before breakfast?

Would you practice believing that the whole world could be fed? That in a world where tons of produce are left to rot on the ground, and basic foodstuffs are given or withheld from whole peoples as a tool of geopolitics, while the global Church of Jesus Christ is too preoccupied by questions about certain people’s fidelity and chastity—that despite the inhumanity of some, and the misdirection and inattention and apathy of others, that on this day, no one would be left to die for lack of food?

Or would you choose to practice believing some impossible thing much closer to home—that you would see again a long-lost someone from your past; that you might walk again through a house you remember from long ago that you know is no longer standing, or is no longer in the family?

Would one of the impossible things you choose to practice believing in for just one morning be an impossible reconciliation with someone—an impossible restoration of an impossibly broken relationship?

Or might it be something even closer, even more personal?

As you look in the mirror, be it the one on the wall or the one deep in your soul, what do you see there that you know is not right, or not complete, or keeps you from being the whole person you want to be?

Is it something physical—are you dealing with a disease, an impairment? Is it a mental blockage, an emotional emptiness, a spiritual confusion?

If you were to dream an impossible healing for yourself, what would that look like for you when it was done?

What would it take to let you be the whole person that you want to be? How would that be different from who and what you are now?

If you can imagine it, you can believe in it, even if just for one morning.

Alongside the necessary medical or psychological or emotional changes, what are you prepared to do, if you could experience real healing, even an impossible healing?

These questions were running fleetingly through your mind as you went about the litany of your life’s daily, mundane events: you were doing the things you normally do, the routine rituals of getting up and getting ready and doing what you do.

The evidence of that thing, whatever it is, that keeps you from being whole, was there as always; but you were so used to it by now, it was just something you had come to accept as a part of you. It couldn’t be helped; it couldn’t be improved.

It was either your fault—you just couldn’t do what needed to be done, you couldn’t resist continuing to do the things that caused your disease to continue—or it was a failure of the availability of the right kinds of treatment; the right kinds of medication hadn’t been invented yet; the right doctors to help you and the right science to advise you are not yet available.

Your condition, though, was not one of your own choosing, even if your ailment is a result of your behavior, this is not the result that you would have chosen for yourself.

Sometimes there are connections there that are less than obvious. All your neighbors have something like this.

The addicted woman next door has a childhood experience in her background that has shaped her whole life.

The man in the shop who has a mental impairment was exposed to things that can barely be talked about, but even if he could say it, no one else could ever really understand.

The bent over man down the street is a victim of a disease called aging; at least, it’s treated like a disease, for which there is no known cure, so he felt like they’d rather just set him aside and forget about him and hope they’d hear about it so they could raise a toast when he’s gone.

The girl in the house across the way has the disease of feeling uncomfortable in her own skin. She’s too heavy, she’s not pretty enough, doesn’t dress well enough and isn’t graceful enough. No one tells her this; she just feels it, and it isn’t subtle. When she gets up in the morning to go to school, it’s like she shackles her own feet and attaches a chain to a 200-pound weight, which she will drag with her throughout this day, like every other day.

And then of course there are your friends all around you who do not need to make spiritual allusions in order to consider what it is that ails them.

With grit and usually quiet but fierce determination, they’re facing down cancer;

they’re surviving heart disease;

they’re trying to heal from one injury in order to cope with another;

they’re seeing doctors and speaking with nurses and insurance companies;

they’re worrying about themselves and their families

and they’re either asking God for healing,

or they’re trying to make the intellectual connection with a God who can be all good, all wise, and all powerful, when there are so many people in this condition.

Those are your neighbors, and this is where you live; and you fit right in, because you know your own burdens. And though each of us carries our own, often unknown to each other, we have in common the need for healing.

It was about noon, and you were going about your business, when he came running into the main residential area where you live. You knew his voice, because like everyone else you lived in fear of hearing it, because if you were close enough to hear him, you were close enough to get infected with his disease. And no one wanted that disease.

But he was telling everybody what had just happened: how he had met the man from Nazareth, Jesus, and he had said to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean;” and about how Jesus, obviously moved with pity, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”—and how, immediately, the leprosy had left him, and he was made clean.

Look at your hands, how clean they are. Feel your face. Breathe in deeply and feel the breath of life.

As you heard him coming, you could overhear him telling that story, and finally he came right up to you, but not in the way a person who’s lost their mind would have done it. It was more like he knew you knew him, and he knew you knew him to be a leper—someone you would never, ever want to be around if you valued your life or your health.

But he also seemed to know that you would know just from his voice, his face, his appearance, his enthusiasm, that it was different now; that he was clean, that something had happened to him, that it was OK now to be near him, that there was no longer any room for any reason not to listen to this man’s words and be in his company, and breathe the same air that he breathes—

that he was, in a word, healed.

And when he received the healing that he had begged for, Jesus gave him one instruction: say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.

You’ll find, in Leviticus 14, a long passage on “the ritual for the leprous person at the time of his [or her?] cleansing” (Lev 14:2 ff.): The person shall be brought to the priest; the priest shall go out of the camp and make an examination; if the disease is healed, the priest shall command that two living clean birds and cedarwood and crimson yarn and hyssop be brought for the one who is to be cleansed; the priest shall command that one of the birds be slaughtered over fresh water in an earthen vessel… it goes on, and on, and on, for thirty verses.

But this ancient holiness ritual is what Jesus wanted the man to go and do. What he told him not to do was to say anything to anybody but the priest; but as always, the man is far too giddy with his healing to listen to that.

And who can blame him? Who can blame any of these people whom Jesus is restoring to full health and wholeness and strength, for running out to the places where they can find the most people to hear their message: I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see: there is a balm in Gilead. That is a gospel that really is good news.

But those of us who, every day before breakfast, dream the impossible dream and ask God for healing might also listen for God’s call to us. Because even concerning our own health, it’s not all about us. If you’re asking God for help, then it’s about God, too. When Naaman needed healing, he was all ears; but when the prophet of God told him exactly what he needed to do, it was, “Wait a second; I know better than that—and hey, don’t you know who I am?”

And when Jesus healed this leper—and the Bible scholars tell us this may have been literal leprosy, but could also have been anything that would have made someone an outcast from society—when Jesus made him clean and whole and healthy, he sent him straight to the Temple. The healing had happened by the grace of God, but there was still holiness to be observed.

“Waiting,” said Lewis Smedes, “is our destiny as creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for. We wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write. We wait for a not yet that feels like a not ever. Waiting is the hardest work of hope.”

So take heart, and every morning before breakfast, you might try believing in something that seems impossible: that where there seems to be no hope, there is hope; that where there is a gaping hole in your life, there is a place for God; that these broken and disease-riddled bodies we carry around are actually vessels of enormous, unspeakable beauty.

But while we wait, and hope, and pray, and beg for healing, in addition to approaching God with the laundry list of what we want, we can also take a second to say, “I love you, God,” and take time for holiness, through which God says to us, “I love you too.”