Real Reality: Bumping up Against Grace

2 Kings 5:1-14 

(& Revelation 7:9-17)  

Naaman is a hot shot general. A high up muckity muck commander of the King of Aram’s army.  And he’s got a terrible secret. He has a dreadful skin disease. The kind that if it were widely known; people would shun and fear him. The kind that spreads wickedly and eventually destroys you, bit by bit, making you numb and breaking you down, until you’re worthless and ruined, and then you die.

Now, there is going to be some rearranging in this story, some view-shifting suprises. Some lessons about who God is, and some surprising places where power does and doesn’t reside, and what ultimately is real reality. So listen up.

To start, Naaman is powerful. The slave girl that his soldiers stole from her homeland who now serves Naaman’s wife, is not. And yet this girl knows who can help him (which means she also first must know he is in need of help) and she offers to him what she knows – there is a prophet who can cure you. 

The slave girl from Israel does not keep silent and guard her knowledge, instead she reaches out to help the very person responsible for her slavery. Why?, we might wonder if we were Naaman. Why would she help me? It makes no sense. But Naaman, so secure in his perch of power, doesn’t stop to wonder about this.  He misses the first sign.

 Instead he goes straight to his boss, a king, who sends him off to the king of Israel – because who is the most powerful person in a nation but its king?  Any shamans or seers or healers would certainly be under his employ; he wields the power of life and death, so surely he is the one to whom Naaman should be sent, right? And off Namaan goes.  Now these two kings have been at war before (such as when the slave girl was taken from Israel to begin with) and they will be at war again. But for now, the king is asking a fellow king for a favor.

Only, the king of Israel is not pleased by this request.  In fact, he tears his clothes, thinking the other king is provoking him, creating a situation that could lead to more war. Because, and here’s our second glimpse into the strange workings of the people of God- the descendants of those delivered out of slavery into the promised land, those who knew the wilderness and the covenants of God’s way of life that is radically different from the Pharaoh’s, those who lived under King David, who have known the direct intervention of the Almighty, and the guidance of prophets, and the wisdom of Solomon – they don’t function like other kingdoms.  You see, the king is not really the most powerful person in Israel. Kings have their place, sure, but God appoints prophets who anoint kings and hold kings accountable, who speak to God for the people and for God to the people, and who provide a kind of checks and balances, cosmically speaking.

So as Naaman’s journey unfolds, he’s getting himself into something. All the centers of power that should be, are proving to be merely illusion, or simply a matter of opinion, as Naaman travels farther and farther from what he has always known as reality. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

Until, after Elisha summons him from the king’s court, he arrives at the front door of the prophet.

Naaman’s life is in the balance. This disease will eventually take his health, his reputation, his career, his life.  And here’s his chance to be cured.  So he is going to throw all he can at it. And what he can throw is considerable. He is accustomed to getting what he can pay for, to knowing what his prestige and riches can buy. He is not used to being treated as though he is… ordinary.  He knows the score. He has settled it more than once.  He knows the rules to the game and how to stay on top, where he belongs.

Here’s the irony though, for the very powerful Naaman, for most of us, from time to time, perhaps.  Super-commander, leprosy-infected Naaman stands at that door believing he is both better than, and worse than, every other person around him.

He knows he is in a position to need to humble himself enough to ask for healing, but not so much that he is helpless or anything. He can certainly pay for it. He can wow the prophet in the process.  He can show up with his chariots and entourage, with his considerable wealth dripping off him ready to trade treasures for services rendered.

And yet, as he is soon to discover, this is not about what Naaman can earn or buy or bargain for. This is not about approaching kings and impressing prophets and purchasing a new shot at life.

This is grace. Pure and simple. Unearned. Undeserved. Healing because God chooses to heal him, and nothing else.  Naaman has bumped up against the grace of God.

So Naaman’s choice to receive this gift that can’t be bought is going to be humbling. He’s going to have to follow instructions, as mundane as they are, that give no attention whatsoever to his greatness or his terribleness. They simply say, go and bathe in the Jordan river.  The river that Jesus will one day be baptized in and claimed as God’s own.  Bring your impressive self with your impressive disease to the muddy, ordinary, unimpressive river.  Dip seven times- the number of completion, of perfection- and you will be made clean.

This infuriates Naaman. It makes him crazy with indignation.  Here he stands in real need, the spot on his arm spreading, he swears, even since yesterday! Here he stands near his state of the art chariots in his flashing armor and rich robes, more striking in his might and in his need, than anybody else, right? He is to be taken seriously.  And then he is sent off by a lowly messenger like an errand boy, to bathe in an underwhelming river.  Elisha the prophet doesn’t even come to the door.

Will he receive the gift of healing? Will he accept the grace that is offered?

How do we try to earn what is only a gift? 

How might we miss what God wants to do in and through us through ordinary people in ordinary ways, because we are so convinced God should do it in the way that would impress us or others? Take us as seriously as we take ourselves?  Respect our hard work, or our deep pain?  We want God to play by the rules of the world. To reward those who earn it, or buy it, or deserve it, or can prove they’re worthy, or who pray the loudest, or beg the hardest, or give the most selflessly.

And we want God to join us in our conspiracy to cheat death or avoid death, which means, actually, that we want God to fear death along with us.

But God doesn’t. God is not afraid of death.  God’s not afraid of anything that intimidates us or impressed by anything that sways us.  One day we will stand with God on the other side of the ordeal, on the other side of whatever told us we were dirty or different or dangerous, whatever told us we were worthy, or better, or good.  One day we will stand on the other side of it, not because we did anything to get there but because Jesus did. Jesus is more powerful than all that we think is powerful, more real than all we think is real.

You and I, we’d like a little lead time. We’d like a heads up, and maybe a bit more of a buffer, financially speaking. We’d like to be able to rest our whole security in something we can see and touch, even if what we can see and touch is the respect of others measured by the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers or letters after our name, or people who know our name. We’d like to trust in our success or stability as witnessed by the numbers on our bank statement, or report card, or frequent flier miles, or on our latest fasting-cholesterol reading, or gauge our value by how well our kids and grandkids are doing in the world’s eyes. 

What we don’t realize is that healing never comes to our bodies alone, or an isolated problem or situation. It’s always more of a total overhaul: it changes our spirit and our outlook and our way of being in the world, maybe even more than it affects the physical ailment or specific immediate problem.  Because healing is a stepping momentarily into the eternal, where our metrics don’t mean a thing. It shifts what matters to what really matters.

The final voice of wisdom, that is, voice of with the power to shape the outcome of things for Naaman, is another servant.  Come on, the man says. If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would’ve done it in a heartbeat. This is easy! Why not give it a try?

So a discombobulated Naaman, stripped of his pride and his pristine robes, steps through the weeds and muck into the Jordan river and begins to dunk himself under. One could say, he steps into his own baptism, his own Red Sea crossing – “Be Still, and God will fight for you.” 

I wonder what got washed away with each dip?

How could that “prophet” humiliate me in this way? Who does he think he is?

Dunk. Does he even know who I am? I am important and powerful!

Dunk. I am powerless and filthy, riddled with disease and heading for the grave.

Dunk. I want to be made well. I really want to be healed.

Dunk. What if this works? Could this possibly work?

Dunk. Why should it?  Who do I even think I am?

Dunk. Oh God, help me!

Dunk.

And out he emerges from the watery darkness, glowing and clean, with the skin of a child, fresh and unblemished.

Listen to what happens next:

15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’

But [Elisha] said, ‘As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’

He urged him to accept, but he refused.

Then Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant for your servant will no longer offer burnt-offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord. ¹⁸But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.’

[Elisha] said to him, ‘Go in peace.’

God is God and we are not. 

God’s way of being and doing is not a bit like our own, and God doesn’t care one whit for our success or power or credibility or how much we can bargain for what we think we should earn.  Instead God cares for each of us in our most naked and vulnerable selves– all the mess and all the glory mixed up together in a body that breaks down and an ego that puffs up. 

Naaman discovered that God heals and makes whole.  He felt what it is to be seen and loved by the Creator.  He glimpsed a reality stronger and deeper than what he’d always believed, so off he went, with a ridiculous grin plastered on his fresh-skin face, and a couple of wagon loads of Israeli soil so that from now on he could pray on holy ground to the God who saw and saved him.

Today is All Saints Sunday. It has been celebrated in the Christian Church for over a thousand years, as a day to look beyond the reality in front of us to the bigger picture, to remember that those who’ve gone before are, what the author of Hebrews calls, “a great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us. That in God’s reality nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not time or death, not heights or depths or angels or demons or principalities or powers or things present or things to come or success or power or weakness or failure or who we think we are or who we say we know or what we can measure.  All the things we see as so important, so permanent, so powerful -they cannot define us, they cannot save us, and they cannot keep us enslaved.  God is outside and beyond, and also enters right in, right alongside, so that we are not alone.

A tradition in many churches today is to remember your baptism. That which truly defines us. The reality spoken over us that our identity is first and foremost, and last and forever, in Christ Jesus. We approach the font and feel the water in our hand and imagine ourselves going under, imagine the lies and the sickness and the sin and the shame and the pride and the arrogance and the self-importance and the self-hatred and the judgment and the pity and all of the layers washing away as we dunk under into the watery chaos and come up, clean and new. 

We imagine ourselves alongside all who’ve ever gone under that same water – Naaman, and Jesus, and your own dear grandmother, and those sitting beside you right now- no better and no worse than any other, and saints, every single one.  Because we are not defined by the reality of the world that tells us who we are is earned, bought, lost, or bargained.  We are defined by the Creator of the Universe who reaches out in unearned, undeserved grace, and grabs hold of us and says, this one is mine.

Listen to the words spoken over the baptized – as I speak them over you again today:

For you, little one,

the Spirit of God moved over the waters at creation,


and the Lord God made covenants with God’s people.


It was for you that the Word of God became flesh


and lived among us,

full of grace and truth.


For you, [N], Jesus Christ suffered death


crying out at the end, "It is finished!"


For you Christ triumphed over death,


rose in newness of life,


and ascended to rule over all.


All of this was done for you, little one,


though you do not know any of this yet.


But we will continue to tell you this good news


until it becomes your own.


And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:


"We love because God first loved us." 

May we, like Naaman, be washed again today of whatever we fear and hide, whatever we believe is powerful and able to say who we are and aren’t. 

And may our hearts be opened and our perception awakened,

to see what is really real,

to walk vulnerably into the healing that is offered us,

and to face our lives confident in the promises that hold us, and brave to live them out,

alongside all those we share our days with, and all those who’ve gone before us, and all those who will come after you and me. 

Today, may we bump up against grace.

Amen.

Drowning, deep breaths, and who defines reality

 Luke 10:38-42

The story of Mary and Martha almost always leads to some kind of polarizing assumptions about how we should be and what we should do, that tend to begin with, So, are you a Mary or a Martha? In other words, Are you a doer? Or a thinker? – (and before you answer, serene thinkers are clearly better than busy doers). 

EXCEPT that nothing gets done without the doers, so don’t say it too loudly.  Who’s going to get the food on the table if everyone is sitting around at the feet of Jesus? What would happen if we all stopped doing? Nothing. That’s what would happen. A whole lot of nothing would get done.  And then where would we be? 

Martha is muttering all of this to herself while she slams the pots down on the stove and glares into the living room, trying to catch Mary’s eye, while Mary is apparently casually on purpose ignoring her.  And the dinner starts to burn and the table isn’t set and the other guests are approaching, finally, driven to desperation, Martha tattles.

 And you know it has to be bad when the quintessential host of a welcoming home tattles to the guest.  Her stress is through the roof and she has blown a gasket.

Lord, don’t you even care that she’s left me to do all the work alone?  Tell her to help me!

But before we judge her too harshly, or, as has always been the case with me, sympathize with her too completely, before we try to make this some kind of lesson in how to be better at whatever, I want to notice the way she says this.  It’s urgent. It’s panicked.  This woman is overwhelmed.

And, while it couldn’t be a more different story, still, it reminds me of another time friends of Jesus said, “Lord, don’t you even care… that we are dying! It was when the disciples were caught in the middle of a terrible storm, and the boat was going under, and Jesus was asleep ASLEEP in the stern.  And they shook him awake in terrified panic and said these same words, Lord, don’t you even care… Don’t you even care that we are drowning here?

And for as much as that is NOT where Martha is, it is where she feels like she is. I am drowning here! Tell her to help me!  I am alone! Do something!  Jesus, don’t you even care?

It is said that in this day and age we live in this heightened flight or fight state of stress much of the time.  And from time to time, on an otherwise ordinary day, I find myself here – when the chaos and noise start to build, drama is escalating, little people are arguing, the house is messy, the dogs are barking, and I look around and notice that my husband is off somewhere minding his own business, blissfully relaxing or something, and I suddenly feel desperate and alone. I get more and more worked up until I yell out- Hey, don’t you even care - ?

That I am drowning! That I can’t take it anymore? Do something!

And when he hears me and wanders into the situation, one of two things happens.  Either he calmly speaks normal voice words into my chaos, Kara, this is you.  You’re pretty stressed right now.  Take a deep breath.   And I’ll be honest, at first this is annoying, but just a single deep breath later and I gradually realize that I am not really drowning after all, and it’s mostly in my interpretation of things, and we all calm down and approach things differently. 

Or more likely, the alternative happens, which is that he buys my interpretation of things and jumps into the chaos along with me, which at first feels satisfying, but quickly becomes unhelpful because now we are both drowning, yelling, overwhelmed and out of sorts, ratcheting up the stress for everyone.

Jesus doesn’t get sucked into Martha’s interpretation of things.

She is not drowning.

And just like the disciples, tossed about in the little boat in the big storm, Martha has lost sight of who is sitting in her midst.  She has allowed the elements, the demands she feels and the situation around her to tell her what reality is.   

But again and again, in every moment with every person, Jesus is inviting us to interpret reality differently.

Jesus is inviting us to live in the truth that in life or in death we are held in the love of God. To take a deep breath and set it all down once in a while to come back to that truth. 

That nothing can separate us from the love of God.

That life is a gift. 

That God made this whole thing in all it complexity so that we could enjoy it together with God, together with each other, together with all that lives and breathes and grows and dies and buzzes and chirps and flows and rumbles and sits silent and majestic and unmoving in the background and crawling and bawling and snoozing and snorting in the foreground.

People keep forgetting this, in every time and place and every way imaginable. People keep finding all sorts of new and creative ways of cutting ourselves off from each other and from God, defining reality by all sorts of false and demanding standards.  Acting as though we are alone, as though it is all up to us, as though we are against one another instead of in it together.

And so God comes right among us to remind us again, in walking alongside, talking alongside, living alongside, suffering alongside.  But even with Godwithus in the living room, we still slip into worry and distraction and forgetting.

The saddest thing ever said to me by my children, the most poignant and piercing moment I’ve had as a mom so far, which felt like a kick in the gut, was when my three year old daughter said to me one day, “Mommy, play with me!  Please play with me, Mommy. You can bring your computer.”

And I looked up from the screen into her pleading little face and I began to cry.  How could I have so lost what’s real? 

Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the good, and it will not be taken away from her.

What would it look like to let Jesus define reality instead of the relentless demands and overwhelming threats of the world?  Those messages that tell us who to be, and who to fear, who to hate, and who to admire, and what to do to make ourselves worthy, important, good enough, what to avoid to keep ourselves righteous, what is powerful and what is weak and how threatened we are at any given urgent moment.

The word for distracted in the Greek has a sense of being pulled in many different directions.  We are pulled in so many different directions that we miss the meaning; we lose what’s real.

We worry so much about the hypothetical and the correct, get so distracted by the urgent and the important, become so focused on the job to be done and the cause to be fought and the service to be offered and the duty to be done that we sometimes miss the human beings right in front of us, and we sometimes miss the opportunity to be a human being ourselves.

It is here that we meet Jesus, always here, with and for each other.  God is present in our lives. Participating in life.  We can be too!

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-burdened and I will give you rest, Jesus said. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and I will give you rest for your souls.

Whether the storms are around us, between us or inside us, they are never bigger or more powerful or more real than the God who enters in and calls us to do likewise. 

We’ll forget a lot, and we will need reminding, like Martha did, that we aren’t really drowning.  That the one who made and loves us all is right here in our midst. That there might be a different, more real way to see and exist in reality than the one that we’re buckling under at the moment.

We don’t have to live as though we are alone, as though it is all up to us, as though we are against one another instead of in it together.

And the promise is that we will be reminded, when we get brave enough or desperate enough, frustrated enough, or scared enough to ask the question Martha burst out and the disciples cried out, Lord, don’t you even care?

Because Jesus can’t get sucked into our interpretation of it all, no matter how real or overwhelming it feels to us.

Instead, the one with the power to quiet the storm reminds us again, I care about you.  And I care about your sister.  And I am right here.  You are not alone.

So come, weary ones, heavy burdened ones. Come workaholics and worriers.  Come thinkers and doers and fighters and doubters, and bring your own real self and your own real versions of the question, whatever they may be.

Lord, don’t you even care?

Lord, don’t you even care– about a teenage boy being shot and his killer going free?  We’re broken, it’s bigger and deeper and sadder than we can grasp. 

Lord, don’t you even care that the church is so messed up? That people get hurt and lies get spread and judgment and hatred define us instead of love and mercy? 

Lord, don’t you even care that the cancer is back?  And it is winning?

That the gulf between us is widening? And I can’t seem to find forgiveness or even words?

That there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this situation, and I am not sure how we’re going to make it?

That I am overwhelmed and sleep-deprived? That my stress is through the roof?

 

Lord, don’t you even care that we are drowning here?

And then, may the one whose love holds us all, in life and in death, God incarnate in our midst, raise gentle eyes to your anxious face, and in compassion and understanding, speak the voice of calm into your storm, My child, you are pulled in many directions and worried about many things. But there is need of only one thing. 

And at first it’s annoying – because we’d prefer he jump in and agree with us that it’s all too much.  

But after one deep breath it becomes hope, peace, a lifeline, as we are invited to set down our many worries and sit, for a time, at the feet of Jesus, and find rest for our souls.

Jesus, draw us into the one thing, bring us into your love, that we may know we are not alone, and that as real as our troubles are, and as necessary as our work may be, chaos and fear, anger and hopelessness, worry and distraction may not define our reality.

Jesus, speak peace to our turbulent hearts and awaken our joy, that we may recognize you and join you where you are, right here in this holy life with us, right here in this ordinary life with each other.

Amen.