2 Kings 5:1-14
Years ago, during my first parish internship, the well-intentioned volunteers running the Sunday School chose an all-ages curriculum based on the Books of Joshua and Judges in the Tanakh. The problem, of course, is that these books tell the story of divinely-sanctioned genocide, stories like the fortunately-mythical ethnic cleansing of Jericho.
One boy in the Sunday School, with the very biblical name Jonah, took exception, not only to the slaughter, but also to the bad science, like the sun stopping in the sky until the Israelites had finished slaughtering the Amorites, which, as the boy pointed out, would mean the earth had suddenly stopped rotating on its axis.
I am not sure how Jonah might have felt about my favorite Elisha story from the Second Book of Kings, for I have a favorite Elisha story, and assume you do as well Mine is still gruesome, though at least in the realm of the scientifically possible. It goes like this:
Elisha went up from there to Bethel. As he was going up the road, some children came out of the city. They mocked him: “Get going, Baldy! Get going, Baldy!” Turning around, Elisha looked at them and cursed them in the Lord’s name. Then two bears came out of the woods and mangled forty-two of them.
Talk about consequences!
The Elisha story in today’s reading is definitely less bloody, though it still contains a valuable lesson. Naaman, a great general in the neighboring country of Aram, learns from an Israelite slave in his household that a prophet in Israel can cure his skin disease. Naaman appeals to his own king, who sends Naaman with a royal letter and expensive gifts, asking the King of Israel for a cure.
Naaman and his entourage are eventually directed to the prophet Elisha, who instructs him to bathe in the River Jordan seven times. The general is outraged that the cure is not more dramatic. Fortunately, his advisors have better sense, the general eventually follows Elisha’s instructions, and Naaman is healed.
The whole affair reminds me a little of the story of hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin, more commonly known under the brand name Febreze. The product really was a remarkable invention, a molecule that traps volatile hydrocarbons, the kind that cause odors. Revolutionary and effective, it didn’t sell at first. The reason is two-fold.
First, people become nose-blind. When I walk into a home with multiple cats, I immediately smell multiple cats, litter box and all. The folks who live there do not. They’ve become accustomed to the odor. In the same way, were you to enter my home a few months ago, you’d have probably immediately smelled old man and dog, though I only really noticed when it was wet dog. It will smell like dog again at some point, though not yet. I once interviewed with a church near a Spam factory, the meat not the email. The whole town smelled like Spam, though I doubt the locals even noticed.
But the second reason Febreze didn’t sell is more interesting. The product has no odor of its own, which is sort of the entire point. They had to add scents like Febreze Bora-Bora Waters and Febreze Vanilla Suede, both of which raise a whole second set of marketing questions, like who is chewing on suede that tases like vanilla? But let’s just leave those aside.
The thing that made things not smell didn’t sell until they made it smell because we associate cleanliness with smells.
Crazy, right?
In a story I’ve shared before, from Shankar Vedantam’s book “Useful Delusions,” a surgeon named Bruce Moseley started to have questions in 1994 about the effectiveness of a common orthopedic procedure on the knee called an arthroscopy, used to treat arthritis. He was able to convince administrators at the VA Hospital where he worked to authorize a clinical study, and found willing patients. Some received the traditional procedure, which included a saline wash for visibility, as well as mechanical scraping of residue from the knee. Some only received the saline wash, the effective part of the procedure in Dr. Moseley’s hypothesis. Some received neither. All had a video monitor in the patient’s view in the operating theater that showed Dr. Moseley performing the traditional procedure.
Two years later, all three groups reported marked improvement. There was zero difference in outcome between the three, those who had mechanical scraping, those who had only the saline wash, and those who had incisions but no actual procedure. Given the shocking results, the study was replicated on a much larger scale. Again, the study confirmed that all benefit from arthroscopies performed to treat arthritis in the knee is the result of the placebo effect.
Now, the River Jordan probably didn’t have any therapeutic effects. You probably couldn’t find a natural spot to bathe in the Jordan today, for like all of the watersheds that feed the world’s terminal lakes, agriculture has destroyed the river. But we are in the world of the story, and General Naaman demands more drama, or he simply can’t believe.
He needs the video of the knee surgery. He needs the odor eliminator to have an actual odor. He needs to feel important enough for the prophet to come outside and personally arrange for divine healing. “A messenger, really? Does this Elisha guy know who I am?”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love those transcendent moments, speak about their value here in the pulpit, moments when the majesty of creation pulls us out of ourselves, ocean waves and fresh snow, the changing leaves of autumn and the windswept desert, the thin spots where we are more because we are less. I am moved by great music, Barber’s Adagio and Pearl Jam’s “Breathe,” by films that tap into the universal story, by canvases that are not the thing, but point to the thing, and the thing beyond the thing, not the starry night, but the swirling sky and the fields of France and the midnight blue.
We craft worship to draw us in, to mark off this hour as a time to attend to the holy, though honestly it isn’t that much different than the work of good theater or the queue for a Disney theme park ride, all meant to cultivate a time and space apart, in the case of church, to remind us of the sacred that is already here. We’ve used our creative and social skills in this way since the first stories around primeval campfires.
But sometimes, things just aren’t that complicated. Sometimes, you don’t need to be such a drama llama, to repurpose an internet meme.
Sometimes, simple and quiet is enough. Sometimes, instead of a photo-op, you just hand the homebound senior the meal, then get in your car and go to the next house on your list. Because it isn’t about you.
Like our sisters and brothers in the Buddhist tradition, we are looking for the “middle way,” for enough drama and ritual to construct meaning, to offer catharsis and transcendence, but not so much that it swallows up our original purpose. Enough drama to open the door to holiness and healing, and not so much that it distracts from the holiness and healing.
This is something Jesus spoke about and practiced. He criticized those who made a public display of their giving and their prayer, praised the widow quietly putting what she could in the collection place, advised praying in private, as he did in the Garden the night he was arrested.
In a few minutes, we’ll come to Christ’s Table, in a ritual shared across all movements that follow Jesus. We’ll tell a story, shared bread and wine. Even this was purposely simple, not a dramatic sacrifice in a gilded Temple controlled by priests, but a daily meal for the people of the ancient Near East. And so it is, or can be, if you choose, each time you break bread with intention and love is a moment of grace, a sacrament of peace.
May it always be so. Amen.