Sermon - February 12, 2006 - Finding your compassion
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
12 February 2006
2 Kings 5.1-12; Mark 1.40-45
Being good, together
© J. Christy Wareham, 2006
Of the fifteen or so of us who went all the way through Ivanhoe Elementary School in Los Angeles together, I’d say about a third of us were people of color, so we sort of noticed racial differences, but racial differences also seemed pretty normal to us. That didn’t mean we didn’t notice someone who was different in other ways. We did notice David, for instance, who happened to be Hispanic, but being Hispanic is not what set David apart. Now, David’s speech did sound a little different. He had a slight accent, and he didn’t make conversation as easily as everyone else. Also, he was a bit unkempt. His shirts and pants and shoes usually looked worn and didn’t fit very well, and he wasn’t quite as clean as we were used to. You could see dirt, sometimes, under his fingernails. So that was a way David was different, if not very.
Here’s the pity of it. I was a kid and didn’t understand about social norms, or even my own needs and emotions, but there was something about the rest of us that couldn’t quite find a way to include David easily in our social life. Though he was accepted in class activities and in games on the playground easily enough, David was seldom to be found at one of our birthday parties. He wasn’t in Cub Scouts. That would have been his parents’ responsibility to act on, but I have the feeling no one encouraged them, or him.
As I say, I didn’t have much insight about my feelings at that age, but I can say that the reason I remember David is that the image of him in my memory leaves me sad. Watching him in school with us made that impression on me. He was a gentle person who smiled, cooperated, tried to do well and seemed to appreciate any friendship we might share with him. I think I remember a couple of times seeing a flare of temper rise from David, but, golly, how would that surprise you? Personally, I probably was kind to David, as far as that goes, since I was that sort of kid, but if I had those years back, I hope to think I’d take kindness a little farther than I did.
Anyway, David was never quite part of things, though he did his best. I wonder how I’d remember David differently if we had done our best.
One time, a girl did do her best, though I can’t explain to you why. If we knew her name, we’d build a monument to her memory, but people kept forgetting to write down the names of females in the Bible. This one lived in a country ruled by a king who was the enemy of another king. The enemy king had ordered a raid on the girl’s village, and all we know about the raid today is that they abducted this girl and enslaved her to the service of the wife of the commander of the army called Naaman. You only have to think of the Sudanese janjaweed militia raiding villages, killing most family members and maybe abducting a few, to know the terror of this girl’s life.
But there was something in the girl's heart that could not be moved. She had the capacity we are probably all born with to care for those who suffer, and even the terror of being abducted by an army couldn’t stop her from caring, even about Naaman, the army commander, who suffered with leprosy. By the judgment of the girl’s Hebrew religion, Naaman with his leprosy was unclean. She might well not only have ignored him but despised him, and yet the girl felt compassion for Naamen. So she referred him to a prophet of his enemy Israel for a cure, even though she must have known Naaman’s Aramean HMO would tell him the prophet was not in-network.
So Naaman goes to his king, the king of Aram, who wrote a letter to the king of his enemy, the king of Israel. Aram and Israel were enemies in the way most countries are usually enemies. They manage a kind of hostile truce that holds off expensive wars while despising each other enough to stay afraid—like Israel and Iran, like Japan and China, like the United States and Venezuela (though why we’re afraid of Venezuela is a little hard to explain).
When Naaman hands the king of Aram’s letter to the king of Israel, the king of Israel just about soils his trousers. He is so afraid, he can’t stop to notice that the man standing before him is really, really sick, so afraid that he can’t feel even as much compassion as a terrorized little girl for someone who is suffering, so afraid that he can’t trust the power of his own renowned prophet to cure. Why is the king of Israel afraid? Because, the author of Second Kings tells us, he thinks the whole thing is a trick by the king of Aram to ask for a favor impossible to perform. He thinks the king of Aram will attack him, the king of Israel, for failing to perform it.
The author of Second Kings knows that this is the way of the kind of king who only thinks about his claim to power and forgets his responsibility for blessing. He becomes so absorbed in his own place in the world that he thinks everything is about him. He thinks everything revolves around him and all threats are aimed at him. The reason the founders of America created our democracy is that they had finally learned this about kings, and they set up a system of checks and balances that would circumscribe the power of our rulers for just these situations when they become so preoccupied with anxiety about their own power that someone else would have to pull back the reins.
The king of Israel had no such formal authority to circumscribe his power—and heaven knows what he might have done, having so seriously mistaken the level of threat, and what kind of war might have come about because of his fear—but there was an informal authority that provided the check and balance, the spiritual authority of the prophet. The prophet was Elisha, and Elisha, having heard of the mission to heal Naaman, persuaded the king of Israel to let go of his fear, avoid an unnecessary war, and let a ministry of compassion come about through a work of healing. Israel’s king was not enthusiastic, but he went along, if fearfully.
It’s easy to ridicule this king of Israel for his fear, but give him credit. He listened to his prophet, and of how many rulers can you say that?
Now it was Naaman the leper’s turn to get caught up in his fear. He goes to Elisha for healing, but when Elisha tells him to go for seven dips in the river, he gets nervous. He’s sure his disease is more serious than that. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s have something spectacular, here, something worthy of my grave condition. I need atmospherics, Industrial Light and Magic, Cecil B. DeMille reincarnated in The Matrix. I am the commander of the army of Aram, man! Don’t let me just die here with your feeble immersion-in-the-Jordan mumbo jumbo! I can’t be healed by humble holy water!!!”
But that’s just it, isn’t it? Our healing is an exercise in humility. We can’t heal ourselves, not entirely. We’re sick because of all sorts of things life does to us, all sorts of things the world does to us, all sorts of things we do to ourselves, all sorts of things we have no idea of and no answer for. All the same, we can do a great deal about our healing. There comes a point, though, where we are humbled by how little whatever we do does anything to heal us, and all we can do is be humbled by the mystery of everything, by the powers that afflict us and by the powers that heal us.
Thus humbled, we can walk with Naaman to the Jordan, where all his six thousand shekels of gold and all his ten sets of garments and all his horses and chariots did him about as much good as your great-grandmother’s cure for warts. We just have to let go of all the medical magic—which, powerful as it is, understands a fraction of the miracle of life—and surrender our fate to the waters of Jordan, the river of life. Naaman did it, God bless him, Naaman did it. “And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was made clean.”
So God used the prophet Elisha to show that God offers healing mercy to the outsider and the unclean, even the outsider who is the enemy. But people, even God’s chosen people, needed to have the outsider to keep as an enemy and the unclean to shun. Who knows why? There always seems to be a certain amount of fear inside us that we don’t know what to do with, and we find someone to attach it to. Or there’s always someone who’s sick and in need to remind us of our own frailties and our needs that aren’t being met, and like my schoolmates and me, who left David out of our circle, people leave out the sick and needy. Kids don’t need an excuse to be insensitive, but adults do. Otherwise, they’d feel ashamed. So they create an excuse like “uncleanness,” which puts the shame on the one in need.
This is the problem we have with the disease we call AIDS, today. Whereas Jesus looks at disease as an opportunity for mercy and healing, many people make it all about shame. “People who have AIDS,” they say, “wouldn’t have caught it if they hadn’t misbehaved. They injected drugs or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. Shame on them. Don’t give them clean needles; don’t give them condoms.” That’s what many of our moralistic leaders say. Mercy doesn’t teach people, the wisdom seems to go; sickness and death teach people. So people keep dying, because they’re morally unclean.
I guess it’s okay to think that way. Maybe sometimes it works, I don’t know. But Jesus doesn’t think that way. Jesus heals first and asks questions later. Jesus believes in mercy. Jesus doesn’t leave people out of the lovingkindness of God, not for any reason.
We can’t be leaving people out of the lovingkindness of God. I realize, now, that my friends and I left our schoolmate David out, at least somewhat outside of our collective lovingkindness. I have to forgive myself for that, and I find that I do forgive myself . . . every time I think about it. We were kids, after all, and there were adults around to keep an eye on David and to help us learn about lovingkindness. Now, we’re the adults.
At the free clinic board meeting the other day, one of the hospital staff reminded us that the clinic would be seeing people who owned homes and nice cars but who frivolously overspent their budget. Such people think somebody owes them medical care, even though they could afford it if they were more responsible. Okay, that’s true. Shame on them, I guess. We could call them morally undeserving.
But what if we thought like Jesus, or like that little slave girl in Aram, and showed mercy first and asked questions later? We might be overwhelmed for a while at the clinic, and that’s a reality we’d have to reckon with. At least it’s a practical reality that can be fixed with practical solutions. What we don’t want to do is inflict spiritual damage by closing off mercy from our hearts. That would be disastrous, not only for others but also for ourselves. We need to be curing people all we can and then start working on moral and spiritual restoration. It may not always work, but it’s the way Jesus does it. So it’s the way I want to do it.
It’s hard enough looking back on my childhood, when I didn’t know any better, and seeing the missed opportunities to show grace. The last thing I want to do is look back on my adulthood, when I know full well what is good, and wonder what stingy spirit got into me.
I’m not saying I can’t get mad at people who make mistakes. If you believe what it says many places in the Bible, even God gets very mad at people who make mistakes, but God gets over it. Psalm 30, the one the lectionary prescribes for today, says, “For God’s anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime.” I invite you to see yourself this way. If you find yourself having a moment of anger, realize it is just for a moment. You are made in God’s image to show favor—to show mercy—for a lifetime. The spiritual purpose for the lepers in your life is not so that you can condemn them. It is that you may love them and show mercy. Amen.
12 February 2006
2 Kings 5.1-12; Mark 1.40-45
Being good, together
© J. Christy Wareham, 2006
Of the fifteen or so of us who went all the way through Ivanhoe Elementary School in Los Angeles together, I’d say about a third of us were people of color, so we sort of noticed racial differences, but racial differences also seemed pretty normal to us. That didn’t mean we didn’t notice someone who was different in other ways. We did notice David, for instance, who happened to be Hispanic, but being Hispanic is not what set David apart. Now, David’s speech did sound a little different. He had a slight accent, and he didn’t make conversation as easily as everyone else. Also, he was a bit unkempt. His shirts and pants and shoes usually looked worn and didn’t fit very well, and he wasn’t quite as clean as we were used to. You could see dirt, sometimes, under his fingernails. So that was a way David was different, if not very.
Here’s the pity of it. I was a kid and didn’t understand about social norms, or even my own needs and emotions, but there was something about the rest of us that couldn’t quite find a way to include David easily in our social life. Though he was accepted in class activities and in games on the playground easily enough, David was seldom to be found at one of our birthday parties. He wasn’t in Cub Scouts. That would have been his parents’ responsibility to act on, but I have the feeling no one encouraged them, or him.
As I say, I didn’t have much insight about my feelings at that age, but I can say that the reason I remember David is that the image of him in my memory leaves me sad. Watching him in school with us made that impression on me. He was a gentle person who smiled, cooperated, tried to do well and seemed to appreciate any friendship we might share with him. I think I remember a couple of times seeing a flare of temper rise from David, but, golly, how would that surprise you? Personally, I probably was kind to David, as far as that goes, since I was that sort of kid, but if I had those years back, I hope to think I’d take kindness a little farther than I did.
Anyway, David was never quite part of things, though he did his best. I wonder how I’d remember David differently if we had done our best.
One time, a girl did do her best, though I can’t explain to you why. If we knew her name, we’d build a monument to her memory, but people kept forgetting to write down the names of females in the Bible. This one lived in a country ruled by a king who was the enemy of another king. The enemy king had ordered a raid on the girl’s village, and all we know about the raid today is that they abducted this girl and enslaved her to the service of the wife of the commander of the army called Naaman. You only have to think of the Sudanese janjaweed militia raiding villages, killing most family members and maybe abducting a few, to know the terror of this girl’s life.
But there was something in the girl's heart that could not be moved. She had the capacity we are probably all born with to care for those who suffer, and even the terror of being abducted by an army couldn’t stop her from caring, even about Naaman, the army commander, who suffered with leprosy. By the judgment of the girl’s Hebrew religion, Naaman with his leprosy was unclean. She might well not only have ignored him but despised him, and yet the girl felt compassion for Naamen. So she referred him to a prophet of his enemy Israel for a cure, even though she must have known Naaman’s Aramean HMO would tell him the prophet was not in-network.
So Naaman goes to his king, the king of Aram, who wrote a letter to the king of his enemy, the king of Israel. Aram and Israel were enemies in the way most countries are usually enemies. They manage a kind of hostile truce that holds off expensive wars while despising each other enough to stay afraid—like Israel and Iran, like Japan and China, like the United States and Venezuela (though why we’re afraid of Venezuela is a little hard to explain).
When Naaman hands the king of Aram’s letter to the king of Israel, the king of Israel just about soils his trousers. He is so afraid, he can’t stop to notice that the man standing before him is really, really sick, so afraid that he can’t feel even as much compassion as a terrorized little girl for someone who is suffering, so afraid that he can’t trust the power of his own renowned prophet to cure. Why is the king of Israel afraid? Because, the author of Second Kings tells us, he thinks the whole thing is a trick by the king of Aram to ask for a favor impossible to perform. He thinks the king of Aram will attack him, the king of Israel, for failing to perform it.
The author of Second Kings knows that this is the way of the kind of king who only thinks about his claim to power and forgets his responsibility for blessing. He becomes so absorbed in his own place in the world that he thinks everything is about him. He thinks everything revolves around him and all threats are aimed at him. The reason the founders of America created our democracy is that they had finally learned this about kings, and they set up a system of checks and balances that would circumscribe the power of our rulers for just these situations when they become so preoccupied with anxiety about their own power that someone else would have to pull back the reins.
The king of Israel had no such formal authority to circumscribe his power—and heaven knows what he might have done, having so seriously mistaken the level of threat, and what kind of war might have come about because of his fear—but there was an informal authority that provided the check and balance, the spiritual authority of the prophet. The prophet was Elisha, and Elisha, having heard of the mission to heal Naaman, persuaded the king of Israel to let go of his fear, avoid an unnecessary war, and let a ministry of compassion come about through a work of healing. Israel’s king was not enthusiastic, but he went along, if fearfully.
It’s easy to ridicule this king of Israel for his fear, but give him credit. He listened to his prophet, and of how many rulers can you say that?
Now it was Naaman the leper’s turn to get caught up in his fear. He goes to Elisha for healing, but when Elisha tells him to go for seven dips in the river, he gets nervous. He’s sure his disease is more serious than that. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s have something spectacular, here, something worthy of my grave condition. I need atmospherics, Industrial Light and Magic, Cecil B. DeMille reincarnated in The Matrix. I am the commander of the army of Aram, man! Don’t let me just die here with your feeble immersion-in-the-Jordan mumbo jumbo! I can’t be healed by humble holy water!!!”
But that’s just it, isn’t it? Our healing is an exercise in humility. We can’t heal ourselves, not entirely. We’re sick because of all sorts of things life does to us, all sorts of things the world does to us, all sorts of things we do to ourselves, all sorts of things we have no idea of and no answer for. All the same, we can do a great deal about our healing. There comes a point, though, where we are humbled by how little whatever we do does anything to heal us, and all we can do is be humbled by the mystery of everything, by the powers that afflict us and by the powers that heal us.
Thus humbled, we can walk with Naaman to the Jordan, where all his six thousand shekels of gold and all his ten sets of garments and all his horses and chariots did him about as much good as your great-grandmother’s cure for warts. We just have to let go of all the medical magic—which, powerful as it is, understands a fraction of the miracle of life—and surrender our fate to the waters of Jordan, the river of life. Naaman did it, God bless him, Naaman did it. “And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was made clean.”
So God used the prophet Elisha to show that God offers healing mercy to the outsider and the unclean, even the outsider who is the enemy. But people, even God’s chosen people, needed to have the outsider to keep as an enemy and the unclean to shun. Who knows why? There always seems to be a certain amount of fear inside us that we don’t know what to do with, and we find someone to attach it to. Or there’s always someone who’s sick and in need to remind us of our own frailties and our needs that aren’t being met, and like my schoolmates and me, who left David out of our circle, people leave out the sick and needy. Kids don’t need an excuse to be insensitive, but adults do. Otherwise, they’d feel ashamed. So they create an excuse like “uncleanness,” which puts the shame on the one in need.
This is the problem we have with the disease we call AIDS, today. Whereas Jesus looks at disease as an opportunity for mercy and healing, many people make it all about shame. “People who have AIDS,” they say, “wouldn’t have caught it if they hadn’t misbehaved. They injected drugs or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. Shame on them. Don’t give them clean needles; don’t give them condoms.” That’s what many of our moralistic leaders say. Mercy doesn’t teach people, the wisdom seems to go; sickness and death teach people. So people keep dying, because they’re morally unclean.
I guess it’s okay to think that way. Maybe sometimes it works, I don’t know. But Jesus doesn’t think that way. Jesus heals first and asks questions later. Jesus believes in mercy. Jesus doesn’t leave people out of the lovingkindness of God, not for any reason.
We can’t be leaving people out of the lovingkindness of God. I realize, now, that my friends and I left our schoolmate David out, at least somewhat outside of our collective lovingkindness. I have to forgive myself for that, and I find that I do forgive myself . . . every time I think about it. We were kids, after all, and there were adults around to keep an eye on David and to help us learn about lovingkindness. Now, we’re the adults.
At the free clinic board meeting the other day, one of the hospital staff reminded us that the clinic would be seeing people who owned homes and nice cars but who frivolously overspent their budget. Such people think somebody owes them medical care, even though they could afford it if they were more responsible. Okay, that’s true. Shame on them, I guess. We could call them morally undeserving.
But what if we thought like Jesus, or like that little slave girl in Aram, and showed mercy first and asked questions later? We might be overwhelmed for a while at the clinic, and that’s a reality we’d have to reckon with. At least it’s a practical reality that can be fixed with practical solutions. What we don’t want to do is inflict spiritual damage by closing off mercy from our hearts. That would be disastrous, not only for others but also for ourselves. We need to be curing people all we can and then start working on moral and spiritual restoration. It may not always work, but it’s the way Jesus does it. So it’s the way I want to do it.
It’s hard enough looking back on my childhood, when I didn’t know any better, and seeing the missed opportunities to show grace. The last thing I want to do is look back on my adulthood, when I know full well what is good, and wonder what stingy spirit got into me.
I’m not saying I can’t get mad at people who make mistakes. If you believe what it says many places in the Bible, even God gets very mad at people who make mistakes, but God gets over it. Psalm 30, the one the lectionary prescribes for today, says, “For God’s anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime.” I invite you to see yourself this way. If you find yourself having a moment of anger, realize it is just for a moment. You are made in God’s image to show favor—to show mercy—for a lifetime. The spiritual purpose for the lepers in your life is not so that you can condemn them. It is that you may love them and show mercy. Amen.
posted by J. Christy Wareham at
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