Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Grace. . .
“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’?”
Grace. . .
We have a problem
with grace, and that is our ego.
Naaman.
A commander of an
Aramian army.
One powerful
enough that the King of Israel was frightened and intimidated by him.
A foreigner.
But most
importantly, a leper.
A couple of
things we know about lepers:
·
Leprosy was a dreaded infectious disease;
·
It was often considered a curse from God brought
about by our sin and the decay brought into the world by the fall;
·
Lepers were shunned. Fear of contracting the disease led to people
being ostracized and isolated from their communities and families;
·
And finally, there was no known cure.
All of this meant
that lepers were considered some of the lowest of the low, cursed by God and
man alike, and with little or no standing in the community.
Which makes
Naaman an interesting case.
Leprosy actually
shows no favorites.
It’s not just a
disease of the weak and the poor.
Naaman was a man
of great power, and probably, wealth.
And yet he
suffered from this disease.
And he was
desperate.
So desperate that
he took the advice of a young slave girl and sought help from an enemy and a
foreign nation’s God.
Naaman was so
desperate that he was willing to do anything to be cured.
What he didn’t
expect was grace. . .
Elisha sent word
to him, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored
and you shall be clean.”
Naaman expected
something different.
“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! 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?”
Wash and be made
clean.
And he was
enraged.
Why?
·
Well, for one thing, to be told to wash probably
offended him because of the belief that leprosy was a result of filth.
·
And secondly, Naaman was still proud enough that
he felt he deserved the personal attention of Elisha.
·
And finally, he expected more of a ‘show’.
Instead, what he
got was just a simple word of instruction.
Wash. Be clean.
Be healed.
And he was.
In the Gospel
lesson we hear the story of the ten lepers that Jesus cured.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14When he
saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they
went, they were made clean.
The focus then
shifts to one of those lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, who alone returned to
Jesus to thank him.
One of the
directions we could go at this point is to say that these two lessons are about
gratitude.
The story of the
ten lepers used to always be assigned for Thanksgiving.
The message was
sort of a shaming.
Shame on you for
being ungrateful. Even the foreigners
returned to give thanks. You should too.
That’s a little
morality lesson.
We learned that
from our parents.
Say “Please.” And say “Thank you.”
OK, point well
taken.
Another point we
could make today, is about grace.
For starters,
though we might want to judge the nine lepers who didn’t return to give thanks
to Jesus, the fact is that Jesus healed all of them.
Their being
healed was pure grace.
Likewise, Naaman,
though he was enraged was also healed.
Wash, be clean.
Show yourself to
the priests, be healed.
Grace.
Another point
well taken.
There is another
dimension of these Bible stories that spoke to me this week.
That’s the matter
of borders.
These were
foreigners that were healed.
From Aram. From Samaria.
As we study the
scriptures, one thing that we learn is that in the beginning there was an
understanding that God was the God of the Israelites, and that other nations
had their own gods. It was the God of
Israel against the gods of the other nations.
And through much
of the Old Testament there was an understanding that God was Israel’s champion,
defeating Israel’s enemies and always on Israel’s side.
God was a
national God.
What happens as
we move through scripture, over the ages, is that more and more God is
understood as the God of all nations, not just Israel. This culminates with the Great Commission
where the disciples are sent out to the nations.
But the tendency
remains for us, even to this day, to believe that God is “our God”, and by
implication, not “their God”.
There are two
ways we draw borders and boundaries in order to claim God as our own.
The first is when
we declare ourselves to be a “Christian Nation”. Implied in that is the understanding that
there are other nations that are not “Christian”.
Now part of that
is just fact.
We consider
ourselves to be Christian.
Arabs most often
are Muslim.
India is
predominantly Hindu.
Israel, Jewish.
But there is a
line that we cross at times wherein we understand that God is on our side, as
opposed to all those other nations. And
sometimes, our American exceptionalism, is so great that we believe God is more
on our side than even that of other Christian Nations.
For example,
there are many other nations that are as Christian, if not even more Christian
than us, yet we tend to see ourselves as being better than, for example,
Tanzania.
Borders.
And even stronger
border that we draw is the religious border.
Historically, it
is the Nicene Creed which defined that border.
If you believe
the Nicene Creed you are part of the Christian Church, and if you don’t, you
aren’t.
That’s a border.
An interesting
part of our history is that the Nicene Creed was written and adopted in
response to an order from the Emperor Constantine.
A ruler of
nations mandating that the Church define its borders.
Once the Nicene
Creed was adopted there were insiders and outsiders.
And grace was
reserved for the insiders.
Fast forward to
today and the question of borders continues to shape our understanding.
First of all, God
is not confined within any of our human borders.
God is not a
United States citizen.
And God is not a
Democrat or a Republican even though sometimes we act as though he is.
God’s grace
extends to all people, regardless of their citizenship or political
affiliation.
And secondly, is
an even more divisive question.
Naaman would not
have been a Jew, yet the God of Israel healed him.
The Samaritan
leper was not considered to be an orthodox Jew, yet he was cured as well.
The question
is: Is God’s grace and mercy an
exclusive gift to those who adhere to the Nicene Creed or any other definition
we have of the “Christian faith”?
Is baptism
necessary for salvation?
Does one have to
make a particular confession of faith in Christ Jesus in order to ‘merit’ God’s
mercy and forgiveness?
Our historical
way of answering those questions was to say “Yes, grace is restricted to those
within the Church. Our Christian faith,
our receiving the sacraments of baptism and communion, and our accepting Jesus
are the basis of our salvation.”
That’s been our
understanding.
That’s how we
understand Jesus’ words "I am the
way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Historically,
that not only meant believing in Jesus, but being a member in good standing in
the Church.
But over and
against this very exclusive claim is another theme in the Bible, namely that
God’s prerogative is to show mercy and grace to whomever he pleases:
In Romans Paul
writes:
For he says to Moses, "I will have
mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have
compassion." So it depends not on
human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”
The bottom
line: If God wants to be merciful and
gracious, God can to whomever he chooses and none of the boundaries that we
would make and adhere to matter. Amen
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