2 Kings 5:1-14
It is probably not wise to shock people right out of the gate, but I’m a pretty straight-forward sort of guy, so here goes: I like okra. Now I know some folks think it is slimy, but that’s just because they don’t know how to cook it. I make a mean gumbo, and breaded and fried, okra is just dandy, not slimy at all.
You want slimy, how about squash, eggplant, raw tomato? So those who know French cooking will not be at all surprised that ratatouille is not one of my favorite dishes. It is a whole dish of baked slime, slices of eggplant, zucchini, squash, and tomato. But Ratatouille sure is a great movie.
For those who are not Disney fans, or who have not been forced to sit through countless hours of Disney with kids or grandkids, Ratatouille was a 2007 Disney-Pixar film set in the Parisian restaurant scene. In it, a rat with culinary aspirations uses a kitchen boy as a front. Much hilarity, drama, and pest control ensue. The main lesson, for there is always a main lesson, is one that appears regularly in children’s literature and film. You can be anything you want to be, even if you are a rat who wants to be a chef.
Now I’m cynical enough to know that isn’t completely true. Nature and nurture do sometimes work to narrow our field of possibility. My childhood dreams did not include Olympic curling, for example, because Virginia Beach was not a real hotbed for winter sports, with or without a broom. Or at least it wasn’t when I was a kid. These days one of the top players in the NHL is from Arizona, so all bets are off.
I probably don’t have the genes for the sort of strength and quickness required to be a professional athlete, even if I’d been raised in an athletic family, and I wasn’t. Neither Mom nor Dad was ever on a team as far as I know. My own youth football career came to an inglorious end when the other kids were roughly double my weight.
My brain does not appear to be wired for the STEM disciplines, or much of anything, really, though had I had the right teachers, maybe.
But it is true that effort can get you a long way, and it is a good positive message. We want to encourage our kids to dream. Heck, we could still use a few dreams, a few less nightmares ourselves, even as we age. But I think there is something else going on in Ratatouille than just that standard dream it, do it motif, something worth noticing.
You see, as long as people think Alfredo Linguini, no seriously, that’s the kitchen boy’s name, as long as they think Alfredo is cooking, everything is fine. But reality does not match their expectations, the good things they are receiving are coming from what they believe to be the wrong place, creating conflict, cognitive dissonance, resistance. Of course, its Disney, so in the end, Remy the rat is cooking, Alfredo is in love, and the late great chef Gusteau’s motto is made real, “Anyone can cook.â€
A similar thing is at play in today’s reading from the Second Book of Kings. Naaman is a great general of the neighboring nation of Aram, a man Yahweh has used to give the Arameans victory over Israel. Aram occupied some of what is today war-torn Syria, while Israel was the northern Hebrew kingdom after the Kingdom of David and Solomon fell apart. Aram and Israel would eventual conspire to attack the southern Hebrew kingdom, Judah, tipping the first domino in a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of Israel and the ten lost tribes. But that is still decades in the future.
Naaman is not just a great general. He is also a man with a curse, a disease that causes scaly skin. This is described in most texts as leprosy, but leprosy was actually a sort-of catch-all term for all skin conditions, not necessarily just the highly contagious bacterial infection we now know as Hansen’s disease. It is possible, based on the text’s description and on John Goldingay’s new translation, that Naaman suffered from something more like psoriasis. We really don’t know. Naaman does not appear to be isolated, as lepers were in that age, as the cleanliness code required, nor does the text report him as missing appendages or limbs, to be expected with actual leprosy.
This is a story of miracle, of the power of the prophet Elisha, and most of all a story of the triumph of monotheism. In the text after our reading ends, Naaman commits to exclusive worship of Yahweh. This reflects the slow theological and conceptual move from Yahweh as a local/tribal God to an embrace of Yahweh as a universal God accessible to non-Jews, something that would culminate in Jesus’ interaction with non-Jews and with Paul’s mission to the Gentiles.
Like most of these stories, there is way more going on in the healing of Naaman than we see with a superficial re-telling. There is the serious question of why Yahweh is using an Aramean general to defeat God’s supposedly chosen people. There is that great exchange when Naaman appears before the Israelite king, who suspects the request for healing is a provocation for more war. And there is the waffling haughtiness and humility of Naaman himself, used to giving commands, but also a loyal subject to his own king, who is left flustered and angry when Elisha won’t even come out to see him.
Because we lift stories out of their scripture context, short readings to fit into communal worship, we also miss out on the rest of the story, for this story has a dramatic reversal. Naaman’s “leprosy†is cured, an affliction removed, but in the second portion of the tale, Elisha’s servant Gehazi seeks to profit from the healing, to claim an undeserved fee from Naaman that his master, Elisha, had refused. Not that we’ve ever seen anyone seeking an unearned and extravagant profit from healthcare…
For his dishonesty, Gehazi receives the punishment of leprosy for himself and for his descendants forever, for this is the age of inherited godliness and inherited sin.
But more than anything, we are struck by Naaman’s initial refusal to follow Elisha’s orders. He has come for healing, and he expects that healing to come in a particular form. God, through God’s prophet, will deliver healing, just not in the dramatic hocus-pocus way that Naaman expects, so Naaman is prepared to walk away.
Now, I don’t want to minimize the fact that there is a legitimate miracle in the story. I’m not going to pretend that the Jordan had some medicinal powers absent in the rivers of Damascus. It certainly doesn’t today when it has been largely destroyed due to human mismanagement. We have, for the most part, abandoned the idea of magic water in our age of science, despite the countless thousands who trek to Lourdes in desperation. There isn’t much of a lesson at the surface of the narrative.
But there is a powerful lesson in Naaman’s reaction and God’s work of healing.
That can’t heal me. Washing in the Jordan? It’s too simple, too ordinary. Better to just walk away.
But here’s the thing. That powerful and mysterious force for growth and healing and creativity and transcendence that we name as God never plays by our rules.
Never.
And sometimes the healing we need is not some big dramatic hocus pocus. Sometimes it comes from the quotidian, the everyday, the ordinary.
Naaman, give it a rest. Enough running around like crazy. Enough having to be in charge and always having to win.
Did you not notice that the answer to your problem did not come from the powerful and the mighty? That it came from a little girl stolen from a neighboring people?
Stop with the franticness. Go bathe in the Jordan, not once, not twice, but seven times. It’s like following those ignored instructions on the shampoo bottle: Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That’ll slow you down for sure.
The healing that comes in to our lives often comes in ways we do not expect, is often surprisingly simple, and we are all too often tempted to simply walk away because we want to be in control and want the world to fit our expectations. About that…
Slow down. Give your spirit and your body time to heal. Go for a walk. Have coffee with a friend. A little dark chocolate might not be so bad. Turn up Barber’s Adagio for Strings and lose yourself. Laugh. That person who wants to drag you out of your rut into the fields of joy may be annoying, but that is healing knocking on the door.
Buffalo Sabres banners hanging in the rafters, the band played the opening cords of “Just Breathe.†My sister and I turned to one another, tears in our eyes. Our favorite group was playing a song about love and end of life, and we had just lost our father to COPD and congestive heart failure. Just breathe, indeed. And there we were, hundreds of miles from where we had laid him to rest, surrounded by thousands of Pearl Jam fans, and it was healing.
There may be scars left behind, maps on our skin and in our souls that speak of our journeys, of illness and injury, of times when we were a bit too scaly, when maybe going down to the river was exactly what the doctor ordered, what the prophet ordered. But those scars are there because today, at least, the blood still courses through your veins, and the divine is at work in you and on you.
And never forget this: if that divine mystery we name as God is offering us healing in forms we do not expect through agents we may not recognize, then you too might be an instrument of healing in the lives of others, through the ministry of simple presence, through laughter and love and ice cream.
Through your prayer, as we seek to align ourselves with the powerful riddle that speaks creation into being, that hurtles us through space, through brief lives made beautiful by love. Go bathe in the lake, Naaman. Do it seven times. Let go. Healing will come. So says Elisha. So says our God.
Amen.