Pastor Karen Karpow
July 4, 2010
Independence Day
Communion
Freedom Isn’t Free
V V V
Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message
may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. Ephesians 6.19
V V V
Today, I have a wonderful story to tell you from the Hebrew
Scriptures. It’s full of irony and
revelation, and I want to make sure you don’t miss anything. To really follow it, there are a few
things you need to know.
The story is about the healing of a man called Naaman. He is a real big shot, the commander of
the army of the nation of Aram (Syria), enemies of Israel for generations. Back then, as still today, people were
fighting over the crossroads that is the Promised Land. Naaman is a very successful commander,
wealthy and powerful, fortunate in every way—but one. He has a terrible skin disease.
Several years before this story takes place, almost 3000 years
ago, Naaman’s army kills the father of the current king of Israel. His name was Ahab, and you might
remember him—he’s the one who married Jezebel, who convinced him to erect
temples to Baal throughout all of Israel.
Very bad idea. God
was not happy about this. The
scripture tells us that God uses Naaman to punish Israel, including killing
their most wicked king, Ahab.
As part of the spoils of war, Naaman brings home an Israelite
slave girl. We don’t know anything
about her, though she may have come from the upper classes in Israel, since she
is qualified to serve Naaman’s wife—such an honor would not go to a farm
girl. She must be well-connected
in Israel, because she knows of the miracles being worked by a prophet named
Elisha. And she is both generous
and bold, telling her mistress that she knows someone who can cure Naaman.
Naaman tells his lord, the king of Aram, about the potential
cure. He wants him cured of this
disease so he can go back out and fight!
The king of Aram writes to the king of Israel, Ahab’s son, and tells him
to cure Naaman. Understandably,
the king of Israel freaks out, because he knows he can’t cure anybody of
anything. He thinks Aram is just
picking a fight.
Nobody sees it yet, but God is at work. The prophet Elisha, the one the slave girl was talking
about, hears what has happened, and he thinks this is a great opportunity to
become better known. He tells the
king to calm down and send Naaman to him.
Naaman arrives at Elisha’s door, in all his splendor, and is incredibly
ticked off that he doesn’t get the welcome he feels his wealth and status
merit. Instead, Elisha gives him a
prescription: go wash seven times
in our local river, the Jordan.
This makes Naaman even more angry—if washing would fix this, then
surely the rivers that run through his home town, Damascus, would be far
superior to the muddy Jordan.
None of the famous people in this story are listening to God, but
the servants are. Naaman’s
servants convince him to try it—having come so far, why quit in a hissy fit
now? Naaman goes down to the river
Jordan, washes seven times…and it works.
He is healed.
Finally, finally, somebody in this story “gets it.” Naaman recognizes where his healing has
come from, and gives glory to the one God, our God.
Here is the scripture.
(2 Kings 5.1-15a)
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram,
was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man,
though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. 2 Now
the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land
of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said
to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He
would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 So Naaman went in
and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. 5
And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to
the king of Israel.”
[Naaman] went, taking with him ten talents of
silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. 6
He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this
letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you
may cure him of his leprosy.” 7 When the king of
Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death
or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to
pick a quarrel with me.”
8 But when Elisha the man of God
heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the
king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn
that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came
with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 10
Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven
times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” 11
But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he
would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand
over the spot, and cure the leprosy! 12 Are not
Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and
be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. 13 But
his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded
you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when
all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
14 So he went down and immersed
himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his
flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
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;…”
May God add a blessing to this reading from the Holy Scriptures.
V V V
Imagine,
if you will, a bunch of white girls, twelve or thirteen years old, sitting
around a Girl Scout campfire somewhere in the Midwest in 1969. Somebody has a guitar, and they are
singing,
Freedom isn’t free
Freedom isn’t free
You’ve got to pay the price, you’ve got to sacrifice
For your liberty.
Not
realizing that this song was from the squeaky-clean and super-cheerful Up With
People repertoire from 1965, these girls feel like rebels. They think they know something
important. Freedom isn’t free! Vietnam, you know. Richard Nixon and secret bombings in
Cambodia. Student protests. Chappaquidick. The first moon landing. Woodstock!
Freedom
isn’t free—a cliché, but like most, true.
On this Independence Day, we can think of many people who paid—a lot—for
our freedom today. From the
Revolutionary soldiers to our troops today in Afghanistan and Iraq, freedom
isn’t free. But it’s true on many
other levels as well.
Naaman
wants to be free of his skin disease.
What does he have to pay for that freedom? He wants to pay with money, but that doesn’t work. He goes to the prophet Elisha, who is
so completely unimpressed by his resume and his money and his fancy clothes and
horses and chariots that he won’t even come out of the house. He just sends a message: go wash in that river over there.
So: what does Naaman have to pay for his
freedom? He pays with his
arrogance and his pre-conceptions.
He has to let go of his ideas of how he will be cured, how he will be
treated, what is a good river and what is a bad river. He has to stop listening to himself say
what a big shot he is, how important he is. His cure is brought about by a slave girl and his
servants. Letting go of his
arrogance, his pride, and his pre-conceived notions: that is the price of Naaman’s freedom.
What
do we have to pay for our freedom?
Depends on what we want to be free from, I suppose.
·
If we want to be free
from certain problems, we may have to pay with some of our pleasures. If we want to weigh less, for instance,
the price is eating less and exercising more. We all know that.
·
You may know someone who
has to pay with abstinence from alcohol, for the freedom to have a happy family
life.
·
If we want to be free to
live on an earth that supports abundant life for future generations, it’s
starting to look like the price will be giving up our addiction to fossil fuels
of all sorts.
Once
I started to think along these lines, I came up with lots of examples. You can do it too. What do you need to be free from? And what would it cost?
Christians
say that the price for our freedom has already been paid, on the cross, by
Jesus. But that leaves out one
very important thing: we have to
accept it. And what does that cost
us?
A
recent Barna poll says 9% of adult Americans identify themselves as having no
faith. That’s 20 million people,
of the 220 million adults in America.
And the percentage is increasing with every generation. Why is it so hard to believe in
God? Maybe it is because we, like
Naaman, misunderstand what God does.
Our expectations are out of whack.
If
we expect God to be our Big Daddy in the Sky, who makes everything all right,
on our timetable and in our way, then every time things are not all right, we
lose a little faith. And if my
life is anything to go by, there are plenty of times when things are not all
right. But that is making our own
expectations the measure of God’s work—and that’s a mistake. God doesn’t work that way. God does not reward “good” people and
punish “bad” ones. God does not
create some people who are immune from tragedy (as invincible teenagers would
like to believe). But God also
does not leave us bereft of support when tragedy strikes.
Freedom,
even (or maybe especially) spiritual freedom, isn’t free. We have to let go of our ideas of how
things are supposed to be. The
freedom of life with God costs us our pride in ourselves, our sense of control,
our delusion that if we worry and scurry we can fix it ourselves—as well as the
delusion that something is hopeless and we might as well give up.
William
Sloane Coffin, former university chaplain at Yale and senior minister at
Riverside Church, said something brilliant on this subject. He said, “There is nothing
anti-intellectual about the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without
proof but trusting without reservation.”
Trusting
without reservation. Trusting that
everything will be all right, even if it’s not the way we want it to be. Trusting that God will take care of
us. Trusting enough to move out
and give up the things that are bad—or even the things that are not-the-best—so
that we can have the best.
Trusting
without reservation doesn’t mean sitting around and waiting for God to fix it,
whatever it is. It means trusting
God to work in and around us, even if we don’t understand what dunking
ourselves in a muddy river seven times could have to do with anything. Trusting without reservation.
Trusting
in God, would you please join me in the prayer of confession?