The Community That Formed a Prophet

“Brothers and sisters in Christ;

Through the Sacrament of Baptism

we are initiated into Christ’s holy Church.”

Initiated. I’ve got some things to say today. Important things. Things that make a difference in this world. Things that can take sick people and make them whole. Things that can break down walls. Things that can overcome prejudice. Things that can strip bare the powerful of this world and things that can lead even enslaved children to proclaim the power of God. Would you like to hear these things?

Well, to hear them, we’re going to start with the water and those words we say as we begin every baptismal service. “Brothers and sisters in Christ; through the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy Church.” It all begins in the water. We are initiated.

I was out at Camp Occohannock-on-the-Bay during the days this week as the chaplain in residence. One of the days I was there I was talking with the children and youth about friendship and we were talking about the covenant that drew David and Jonathan together as friends in the stories from the book of 2 Samuel.

Covenant was a serious thing. It was a binding promise. To make a covenant you had some dramatic act. You might take some animals and slaughter them and lay one half of the animal to one side and the other half to the other and the two of you would walk together through them. Then you would turn and point to the carcass and say, “May God do that to me and more if I don’t keep my end of this covenant.” I often wonder what it would be like if we had that sort of ritual when we made promises to each other today. What if every marriage included walking through the carcasses? I can just imagine the wedding checklist – Caterer? Check. Candles? Check. Flowers? Check. Butcher? Check. But you would remember that promise?

The waters of baptism help us remember that we do not exist on our own. We have become part of something bigger. We are initiated into Jesus Christ and Christ’s church.

The liturgy goes on. Through baptism “we are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation.” Incorporated. Embedded in that word is the Latin root for ‘body’ – corpus – from which we get words like: corporeal, and army corps or the Peace Corps, corporation, and corpse. When we are incorporated our bodies are now part of God’s bigger story. The story of Moses and Miriam, Mary and Peter – this is our story. God’s mighty acts of salvation are not just intended for the saints but for me.

“We are incorporated…and given new birth through water and the Spirit.” In the scripture reading from 2 Kings for today did you catch how Naaman was described as he came up from the Jordan River after being healed of his leprosy? It says “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” The new birth that we are given through baptism is all about the possibility and promise of our lives in Christ. We are no longer defined by the sin and sickness that is a part of every life. We are defined by the action of God in giving us grace to be something more than what we have been, or to become what we were meant to be all along.

So this is one of the important things I have to say to you today: You have forgotten what it means to be baptized. Some of you are living as though you have never been baptized. (And maybe some of you have not been, which means we should talk.) But most of us Christians are living as though we had never been baptized and it is almost like we’ve never been wet. You were initiated into Christ’s holy Church. But some of you have been acting like the Church is a foreign thing. You have one foot in church and one foot out. You treat your Christian identity like it’s some awkward middle name that you’re ashamed of. Like maybe your name is Mergatraud and somebody yells it out across the room and you hide your head because you’d rather go by a less weird name like Bob. But no, you’ve been baptized. You’ve been initiated. You’ve been claimed. And maybe there are things Christians are doing that make you not want to claim them. Maybe you’ve seen churches riddled with hypocrisy. Maybe you’re not sure you know what you believe about God or Jesus because of things that are going on in your life and you feel like you ought to have it all together before you claim this identity. Maybe you’re afraid of commitment. Maybe the preacher’s a little funky. Get over it! If you’ve been initiated you are welcome even with your doubts. If you’ve been initiated you are part of a family that has some strange members and you’re one of them. If you’ve been initiated it can get uncomfortable sometimes and you will stick out in the crowd. If you’ve been initiated you can turn away and go another direction, but if you’ve got your foot in the door come all the way inside because you’re letting the hot air in and Jesus wants your whole self. This is not the hokey pokey, people, where you put your right hand and in and take your right hand out. Put your whole self in and shake it all about! Let your Jesus freak flag fly.

You have been initiated. You have been incorporated – your whole body. You have been given new birth. Some of you are acting like you haven’t been. Like maybe you are a slave to your bad habits. Like maybe you are a slave to your worst impulses. Like maybe you are a slave to the television or the Internet or your video game or whatever it is that is keeping you from following Jesus more closely. Like maybe you’re a slave to the crowd, to your peers, to your friends. Like maybe you’re a slave to your guilt. Like maybe you’re a slave to your bad diet. But guess what? It’s Independence Day and you are not a slave to any of those things. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul says in Galatians 5:1. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You have been given new birth.

But I came today to tell a story about a little girl. All these important things I need to say came because of the story of a little girl. An enslaved little girl. If you weren’t listening carefully you might have missed her in the reading from 2 Kings.

The story is usually called the healing of Naaman by Elisha, the baldheaded prophet we talked about last week. But it really ought to be called the story of the servants.

Chapter 5 of 2 Kings starts out by telling us about a man from Aram whose name was Naaman. Naaman was a leader of a large army. He was a strong man. A brave man. A respected man. God had worked through him to bring good things to his country, which was strange because Naaman didn't live in Israel where God's people lived. He lived in the land of an enemy nation. But God favored Naaman anyway and God favored him even though he had a terrible skin disease. Maybe leprosy. The text is unclear.

Here’s where he find the little girl, though. In Naaman’s house he had a slave girl who had been taken during a raid from Samaria, which is the part of Israel where Elisha the prophet lived. She saw what was happening to Naaman as he became more and more disfigured by his disease. So one day she said to Naaman's wife, “If only he could see the prophet in Samaria! He could cure him of his leprosy.”

Maybe it was just a passing thought. She had no status in society. She had no goods to call her own. She would not have been given credit for knowing anything on her own. But she said something that gave hope. Suddenly the one thing that Naaman lacked in life, a slave-girl knew how to find. And his wife told him and Naaman told his king.

So Naaman went to his king and he said, “I want to be cleansed. And my slave girl says there is a man in Israel who can do it.”

Now the king must have thought he was crazy - first, that he would listen to the advice of a slave girl, and second, that he would try to find healing in the land of his enemy. But Naaman was a respected man, a man who had brought the king many victories, a man who didn't want to be sick anymore. So the king agreed to the trip and sent a letter with him to the king of Israel.

There was a little problem, though, because the king of Aram wasn't really a diplomat. He may have been good in choosing a leader like Naaman for his army, but he was not too good about choosing his words to an enemy king. He just scribbled out a note that said, “I am sending this note with my servant Naaman. Please cure him of his leprosy.”

When the king of Israel read the note he couldn't believe it. Cure him of leprosy? Who did the king of Aram think he was? Was he God? As the king of Israel looked at Naaman with his horses and chariots - when he saw the load they carried, 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold and ten of the finest sets of clothes he had ever seen, when he saw all that wealth and knew the power it represented, he was sure that the king of Aram had set him a trap. It was all a hoax so that when he failed to cure this monster, he would be blamed and a war would result. So the king of Israel tore his clothes, because that what kings did back in the day when things were looking bad. The king of Israel knew that he was headed for an epic fail.

Here’s the thing, though. All of these powerful people - the king of Aram and the king of Israel – had forgotten that it was not kings who healed - it is only God. The person who remembered this was the slave girl who had nothing. Somehow this girl knew where to find dealing. This girl knew how God worked. As Elizabeth Mitchell Clement, one of my friends at the Fund for Theological Education likes to say, “I want to know what kind of community formed that little girl.” I want to know how she was formed so powerfully that she could turn the lives of kings and generals upside down.

There’s something important to say about that, too, but let’s finish the story, first. So when Elisha heard about the king tearing his clothes, he sent a message, saying, “What are you doing?! Send Naaman to me so that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel, and so that he may know that God is here.”

So Naaman drove his horses and chariots to the house of Elisha. And Elisha didn't come out to meet him. He sent a messenger. The messenger had a very brief message for the monster at the door, “Go and wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times and you will be healed.”

That was it. No great tasks that had to be performed. No big price that had to be paid. Nothing that Naaman's power or wealth or influence could buy. He just had to go down to the local river and take a bath.

So Naaman sat there with his horses and chariots at the door of Elisha's house. He sat there with the 750 pounds of silver and the 150 pounds of gold and the ten beautiful sets of clothes which he was going to offer in exchange for his health. He had travelled many miles into the heart of the nation of his enemy. Now this prophet had sent a messenger to tell him to jump in the river!

He was furious. He was in a rage. He stormed away saying, “This man didn't even have the courtesy to come out and see me. I know how these healers work they come out and they stand over you and they call on their god and they wave their hands over the spots that need to be healed and they cure you! He didn't even SEE me!”

For Naaman this was a serious offense. He had gone for a face-to-face meeting with this prophet. The slave girl had told him he should be WITH Elisha. And Elisha had sent him the equivalent of a text message. And, O, the thing that Elisha had told him. Go dip in the river Jordan? That was like going to Cleveland and being told you could be cleansed by dipping in Lake Erie! Naaman knew that there were better rivers back home. The Abana and the Pharpar would do just fine. But the Jordan? That was dirty. That was unthinkable. That was...foreign.

Suddenly it became clear what it was that really made Naaman sick. It wasn't the disease of his skin. It was the disease inside of him. Because even though he was well-respected. Even though God had blessed him. He couldn't see the way to healing because he was blinded by his own power and his wealth and his prejudice.

Naaman headed for home in a furious rage. He probably would have kept going except for…his servants. Just like the slave girl in his home - they didn't have any status. They didn't have anything to call their own. There was no reason to assume they had anything to say worthy of listening. They took a risk in offering their advice to Naaman - especially when he was so angry. But they called out to him and said, “Master, think about this. If the prophet had told you to do some big task, you'd have done it. So why not give this little thing a try? Why not take a bath on the off chance it might work? You've got nothing to lose.”

So Naaman went down to the river Jordan. And he left behind those horses and chariots he brought from home. He left behind that 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold and ten beautiful sets of clothes. He left behind even his own clothes and, far from home, in the land of his enemy, he went with nothing into the waters of the Jordan. Not once, not twice, but seven times he went under that water. And the seventh time, when he came up it was like being born all over again. He felt alive. And as he looked at his skin it was a clean and new as the day he came into this world. Naaman praised God and ran back to Elisha - and this time Elisha greeted him personally because now he knew the power of God.

Now the Jordan River should ring some bells for you. It’s the river the people of Israel crossed to come into the Promised Land. It’s the river John was baptizing in. It’s the river Jesus went into when he was baptized. People who go down into this river seem to come up with new life and new possibilities. This Jordan River has special waters. This baptismal water is different from all the other waters of the earth. When we are initiated through this water we have a new life.

So here’s the other important thing I have to say about that little girl. She seems to come out of nowhere in the story. But she didn’t come from nowhere. She was formed by a community that had dedicated itself to finding God in the world. She had experienced trauma. She had been ripped out of the fabric of her home by raiders. She had lost all of her possessions and all of her family. But she had not forgotten who she was. The community that formed that slave girl prophet had given her a gift that could not be taken away from her. The community that formed that prophet had given her a faith that she could share even in the midst of tragedy and suffering.

“We will surround this person with a community of love and forgiveness.” Do you recognize these words? “We will surround this girl...that she may grow in her trust of God.” Do you hear what we say as a community in baptism? “We will surround this boy that he may grow in his trust of God and be found faithful in his service to others. We will pray for him…pray for her…pray for them that they may be true disciples who walk in the way that leads to life.

You’ve got things you need to hear as an individual. You’ve been initiated. You have forgotten. You need to go back to the water to remember who you are. But there’s something big you need to hear here, too. You are not just here for yourself. You are here for somebody else. We are getting ready to baptize a slew of babies here in the next few months. We are going to take them to this font and we’re going to say these words. “We will surround this child.” What is that going to mean? It means that you are here to surround Addelyn Henry and Emma Willis and Tate Annon and Emmaline Henderson and every other young person who is initiated into Christ’s holy Church along with you. This is why it can’t take our hokey pokey efforts. It takes our whole self.

Today we are moving into a new kind of understanding of the way we work with children and youth. It builds on the things we have been doing over the past few years but it will not work unless we all remember that our freedom in Christ, just like our freedom as citizens, is built not on the idea that we are free to do whatever we like, but on our freedom to fully participate in the larger body. Peter has a new job description as he works with our age level ministries, but it the work of faith formation for our children and youth is one that will take teams of us, all of us, claiming a role and ensuring that church is more than just a place that is good for you (like cod liver oil!). It is a place where we can discover God for our healing and for the healing of the whole world.

Thanks be to God.

2 Kings 5:1-14 (RSV)

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little maid from the land of Israel, and she waited on Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."

So Naaman went in and told his lord, "Thus and so spoke the maiden from the land of Israel." And the king of Syria said, "Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel."

So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten festal garments. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy."

And when the king of Israel read this letter, he rent his clothes and said, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me."

But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, he sent to the king saying, "Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in the house of Israel."

So Naaman came to with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored, and you shall be clean."

But Naaman was angry, and went away, saying, "Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage.

But his servants came near and said to him, "My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, 'Wash and be clean'?" So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.