Sermons

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Washed

by Teresa Anderson Franklin
for Mount Hermon Presbyterian Church
February 12, 2012

2 Kings 5:1-17

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. 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. She said to her mistress, “If only 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 just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. 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.” 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.” 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.”

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 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.” 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! 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. 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’?” 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.

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; please accept a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!” He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord.

The first dog I ever loved was Lassie, of “Lassie, Come Home” fame. Only, I found out recently that the collie I adored as a child, whom I always thought of as “Girl,” was really a male canine actor named Pal, who died before I was born. Oh, the miracle of film.

But I grew up thinking Lassie was the perfect companion – smart, beautiful, and loyal as the day is long. Is it any wonder then that I’ve spent the last 45 years measuring all the people in my life against an ideal, but fictional, dog?

Some of the most significant characters in today’s story from 2 Kings are unnamed servants. Like Lassie, though, each plays the role of faithful companion to his or her master, in this case Naaman, the General of Aram.

Naaman is an important man. He commands the army of one of the most powerful nations of the world of his time – what we know today as Syria. Naaman probably lives and works in Damascus. His life is almost perfect. He has credibility, influence, and the ear of his King, but Naaman also has leprosy. His greatest desire is to be healed of the ‘dis-ease’ that plagues his body and weighs heavy upon his hopes and dreams for the future.

Enter a little servant girl, a captive from the land of Israel. She serves Naaman’s wife, and she knows of her master’s longing to be free of his affliction. So she tells her mistress one day of a powerful prophet in Samaria who is able to heal leprosy. The unnamed servant girl becomes the initiator of hope for the mighty commander of Aram’s army.

Naaman pursues the opportunity with his King, who sends him with written petition and payment in silver and gold to the King of Israel for healing. But the King in Israel is not the man who possesses the power to heal. That power belongs to another – the prophet of God. Not only can the King not heal Naaman, he shrinks from the very idea that his Aramean counterpart expects this service of him. Fortunately and just in time, Elisha comes to his rescue, “Send the man to me that he may learn there is a prophet in Israel.”

But when Naaman arrives at Elisha’s house, he doesn’t get what he expects. He is accustomed to personal attention from the one in charge. He expects dramatic words, powerful signs, and immediate relief from suffering. He expects to be given what he has come so far to get. Instead, he’s met at the entrance by a messenger with a prescription, “Wash in the River, and you will be clean,” and the door closed in his face.

Naaman is a powerful man, and unaccustomed to being dismissed with instructions, like a servant. Wash indeed, as if he were dirty and in need of a bath. He leaves in a huff and plans not to stop until he reaches Damascus. Naaman would miss his healing altogether but for his own servants who are brave enough to stand up to their master’s stubborn refusal to obey.

“Dear Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it?”

If he’d said, “Climb a mountain,” wouldn’t you now be climbing?

If he’d required you to defeat an army, wouldn’t you now be fighting?

“How much more willing should you be, when all he’s said is, ‘Wash, and be clean’?

I imagine a proud and perplexed General Naaman, stopped in the road, considering his dilemma:

What is being asked of me is humiliating. I would have been pleased to scale the heights, or do battle with a foe, or accomplish any number of worthy tasks to earn my healing. But to bathe in the river like a child (or woman or slave), to degrade myself in front of my men is surely beneath me. ….But to be healed – would that not be worth a single moment of humility? Two minutes, three, long enough to immerse myself seven times, and it will be over. Either I’ll be healed, or I’ll stand dripping wet and humbled in a foreign land.

Naaman chooses obedience over defiance and is rewarded with the outcome. When he emerges from the river, his skin is like that of a newborn baby – healthy and smooth and clean.

Still, he means to pay the prophet for the miracle that has been wrought for his benefit. He returns to Elisha’s house and attempts to do just that, but the prophet won’t take his silver or gold. Elisha refuses to take credit or payment for the healing mercies of God.

There the story stops in today’s scripture lesson, but it isn’t really the end. And I think the remainder is more than just interesting. I believe it’s instructive, in the way that pain is instructive. If we couldn’t feel pain, in our fingers, for instance, we wouldn’t realize the need to protect our hands from heat, or cold, or crushing force. That’s the biggest danger to lepers, by the way. They lose feeling in their extremities and fail to realize when they’re burning, or pinching, or cutting themselves, because they can’t feel the pain that should be there but isn’t. Pain instructs, and in that way, it serves as protection from further damage. So I want to tell you the rest of the story of Naaman.

The prophet Elisha has a servant named Gehazi, and Gehazi has observed the departure of the pleased Aramean General with his silver and his gold – the payment Elisha refused for Naaman’s healing. And Gehazi decides the General has been let off much too easy – only a dipping in the Jordan River? Surely a cure for leprosy is worth more than this. So Gehazi follows the caravan headed for Damascus. He catches up and tells Naaman that the prophet has reconsidered because guests have arrived, and he’s decided to accept a small gift as compensation for the healing. Naaman is more than happy to pay in silver; then he continues his journey home. But Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, returns to the house of the prophet and promptly hides the money he has taken from Naaman.

Elisha is God’s prophet, and he’s anything but unaware. He knows exactly what has transpired and confronts his servant on his return, “Where have you been, Gehazi?”

“Me? Where’ve I been? Master, I haven’t been anywhere at all.”

But Elisha has seen his actions, seen through his deception, and knows of his ill-gotten gain, and he asks him, “’Gehazi, is this a time to accept money and clothing, orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, and slaves (as payment for what God has done? Because you did not resist the opportunity for personal gain) the leprosy of Naaman will cling to you, and to all who are yours, forever.’ And the servant left (Elisha’s) presence leprous, as white as snow.” (2 Kings 5:26-27)

It amounts to a double reversal. The proud and powerful leper chooses humility and is healed, while the lowly servant with high ambition gives in to greed and becomes afflicted.

I’ll pose a question to you this morning that I believe is suggested by this story from the Old Testament:  Where is God when life turns around on us? Is it God’s will that we be whole, or that we suffer?

Perhaps it is that we come to wholeness through our suffering.

Thanks be to God who makes all things new.

source: greggibsonblog.com

Holy Time

by Teresa Anderson Franklin
for Mount Hermon Presbyterian Church
February 5, 2012

Mark 1:29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told (Jesus) about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

In the home where I grew up, it was unusual for anyone to be awake and walking around before 6:00 in the morning. The one exception was the day the family left on our annual vacation – usually to the beach. On that day, and only on that day, we would get up while it was still dark and start early on the long drive to Panama City or Daytona Beach or maybe Charleston. My dad is a pretty smart cookie, and he discovered early in his parenting career that if you wake children three hours before their normal getting up time and put them in the car in the dark with a pillow, about 90% percent of the time, they’ll go back to sleep for a while.  The strategy worked, and Daddy got a couple of peaceful hours of driving before any of us woke up to ask, “Are we there yet?”

Today’s Gospel Lesson from Mark 1 is set, in part, in the wee small hours before dawn, when people with reasonable lives are still sleeping, or at least walking the floors of their own homes. But Jesus is up and out of the house, about some business he isn’t yet ready to share with his disciples. He’s gone off to meet Someone in private, in prayer.

But let’s back up a day or so and put this meeting in context. Sometime yesterday Jesus and four of his disciples arrived at the home of Simon Peter and found Peter’s mother-in-law in bed sick with a fever. Jesus held the woman’s hand and healed her. Then she got up and served them supper.

Obviously, word got out in town that there were interesting visitors at Simon and Andrew’s house, because at sundown people started arriving – so many they were soon crowded outside the door – sick people, sad people, suffering people. They all came to see what was going on at Simon’s house, and to try to get close to the healer who’d recently come from Nazareth.

Jesus is suddenly getting lots of attention, and it’s so early in his ministry that his clothes have barely dried from baptism, and the disciples’ hands still smell like fish and lake water. Miraculous healing tends to draw attention of people looking for help, and word of his power is spreading quickly.  Already Jesus feels the need to slip away unnoticed.

Most of us have had the experience of caring for a sick loved one, either at home or in the hospital. It’s hard work to be on call around the clock. It’s exhausting when well-meaning visitors arrive at all hours and ask the same questions the last ones asked. It’s tedious to recount symptoms and treatment ideas, diagnosis, prognosis, and immediate concerns over and over again to caring people who feel they have to ask and then listen attentively while you respond - quietly, patiently, endlessly. Do you know the feeling of wanting to escape those demands, to be alone with your own questions and thoughts and worries in a small, dark closet, even if it’s for only five minutes? If so, then I think you already understand what drove Jesus out at four in the morning to a quiet spot under a still dark sky.

It struck me this week that Jesus isn’t particular about whom he heals. Sure, he starts with Peter’s mother-in-law, a relation of a relation, I guess we’d say. But after her, it’s just people who come. And they all come! Every sick person in town made it by Simon Peter’s house last night. The line snaked out the front door and stretched down the street. He didn’t ask for names or pedigrees. He was moved with pity for each and every one and didn’t stop healing until the last person who’d come had gone.

In the face of real and endless need, it’s hard to call time-out for self, but even Jesus Christ knew when to take a break to recharge. And I think we can learn a useful lesson from his habit of retreating alone to pray.

I think it’s wonderful that we meet together every Sunday morning at Mount Hermon Church for worship, praise and prayer. I love the fact that we take time to speak the names of those we know who have needs and pray for them. I believe God calls us to such prayer. When we remember people to God, it strengthens them and encourages us. It invests us, too, in their suffering and in their healing. Praying for one another is a way we come alongside our brothers and sisters who are struggling, who need an extra shoulder to lean on or arm to bear them up. It’s a way of being faithful together before God.

But I don’t think that’s the kind of prayer Jesus is praying under an early morning starlit sky in Galilee. Jesus is new to ministry. Here in Mark 1, he’s just getting his feet wet in the ways of bearing the burdens of others, of taking pity and reaching out with all the power of compassion with which the Holy Spirit of God can reach. And he’s finding out what it takes, and takes, and takes to give so much without counting the cost.

Doubtless some Christians wouldn’t agree with me. They would say that Jesus doesn’t discover anything - that Jesus always knew the cost precisely and was prepared from the beginning to pay every drop of sweat and tears and blood, whatever it took to address humanity’s need for reconciliation with God. But I don’t think so, and I don’t think Mark says so. It seems to me that Mark is showing us that Jesus experienced it all for himself – the revelation of God’s calling, the power of God’s Spirit, the heady sensation of almost instant celebrity among his people, then the depth, and expanse, and weight – the enormity - of human needfulness. It’s overwhelming.

The Gospel of Mark simply tells us he got up early in the morning to pray. We don’t hear the content of his prayers. But in the telling of the story, Mark gives us a glimpse of the human being bearing up under the pressures of the circumstances in which he answers the call of God.

I don’t know what he prayed. But I can imagine myself in his place and what I would have prayed, probably something like, “Lord, there’s so much suffering, so much need. How can one person bear it? You’ve called me to proclaim good news and heal the afflicted, but how can I touch them all? There are so many!”

Fortunately, God is infinitely patient with faithful seekers. We may not have all the answers, but we move when God calls us to ask the next questions, test the next waters, or set out on the next journey. Somehow, God is able to sustain us with courage, hope, and endurance sufficient to the task we are called to do. We need only seek God’s face, enter into God’s presence. Like Jesus, we can do that in prayer. Perhaps alone, in the stillness of the night, under a glistening, star-filled sky, but always from the purity of a willing heart and a mind open to the mind of God.

One day Jesus will teach his disciples to pray, “Our God, wherever you are in the universe, you are the Holy One. Whatever it is that you will for us, let it be here as it is where you are. Give us enough today to sustain us for today, and forgive our failures, in the same measure that we forgive the failures of others. Please don’t lead us where we shouldn’t go, and take us off the paths that would lead us there anyway. For you are the power above us, beyond us, and within us. And may it always be so. Amen.”

And when he finished praying, Jesus stood up and said to his disciples, “Let’s go on to other places, so I can teach and preach good news there also; for that’s what I came to do.”

Thanks be to God. 



copyright Johnson Wax

Recognizing Jesus

by Teresa Anderson Franklin
for Mount Hermon Presbyterian Church
January 29, 2012

Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, (Jesus) entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Today’s lesson from Mark 1 is a difficult text for our time and culture, because, for us, demon possession is practically a foreign idea. We no longer say things like, “You know he has a demon,” or “I hear the exorcism didn’t work.”  Now we talk about diagnoses and medical specialties, treatment plans, drug therapies, and surgical procedures. Whereas we have illness and treatment, Jesus’ day had only demons and healers. Whereas today we talk about disease invading a person’s body, twenty centuries ago in Galilee they assumed a different kind of invasion – that of an unclean spirit.

But there are similarities, and parallels between the two. Just as the medical profession has made great strides in the last decades in its efforts to separate the human being from his disease – we’re encouraged to say, for instance, ‘the person with epilepsy’ rather than ‘the epileptic’ – the man that Jesus healed in the synagogue clearly ‘had’ a demon; he wasn’t the demon. There was, and is now, an understood distinction between the person and his or her affliction, because we all know that healing is often possible. Certain kinds of disease can be made to leave. Some forms of cancer can be surgically removed. Bacterial pneumonia can be cured with antibiotics. In the First Century, a demon could be cast out.

But it was not an easy thing, nor was it common. It certainly wasn’t something ordinarily witnessed in the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath.

I’m suggesting that primarily, we should view the event in today’s Gospel lesson as a healing. I believe this is a story of a miraculous healing – the first in Mark’s gospel. But there is a unique aspect to this healing: the affliction recognizes the healer.

It’s a little like the animated Raid commercials some of us remember from the sixties. Roaches are crawling, feasting, laughing behind the walls of someone’s home when suddenly a cloudy vapor seeps in through an opening, and the bugs scream, “Raid!” and try to run. But they can’t outrun the fog that has come to exterminate them. “Raid: Hunts bugs down like radar, kills bugs dead.” (Copyright Johnson Wax) A more recent example is a Mucinex commercial where instead of roaches, the unwanted residents are mucus blobs causing congestion in someone’s chest or sinuses, then “Mucinex in. Mucus out.” (Copyright Reckitt Benckiser)

The principle is the same in Mark’s story. Many maladies can be removed with the right treatment. The Spirit of God in Jesus just happens to be the right treatment for the unclean spirit that inhabits the body of the man in the synagogue. And the unclean spirit immediately recognizes the threat to his continued habitation. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are.”

I wouldn’t be making such a big deal of this recognition factor if I wasn’t convinced that it’s an important part of the author’s intended meaning here. Yes, I think the healing story is meant to depict the authority of Jesus, “Even the unclean spirits obey him.” But equally significant here, the unclean spirits know him.

In Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan, when “…(Jesus) was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him,” the preposition Mark uses isn’t most strictly translated ‘upon,’ but ‘into.’ (Mark 1:10) Mark seems to say that Jesus sees the Spirit descend and ‘enter into’ him, not ‘rest on’ him. Contemporary Christian author and theologian Brian Blount contends that this seemingly slight variation in translation makes a big difference in an authentic interpretation of the Gospel of Mark. (Preaching Mark in Two Voices, Brian K. Blount and Gary W. Charles, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2002, p. 21.) Dr. Blount explains that Mark characterizes the Spirit’s arrival as a dramatic in-breaking, a sudden injection of the creating Spirit of God into that which is created. So that as Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted, and as he goes to Galilee to preach repentance, it isn’t simply the man Jesus who goes, but also the Spirit of God who dwells within him.

As Jesus enters the synagogue on the Sabbath and begins to teach, it isn’t simply the man Jesus who teaches, but the Spirit of God who teaches through him. And as the man possessed of the unclean spirit comes forward to challenge Jesus, it isn’t simply the man Jesus who is challenged, but the Spirit of God who lives within him. And it isn’t the possessed man who recognizes Jesus as “the Holy One of God,” but the spirit who possesses the man who comes into the presence of Jesus.

I don’t blame you if you’re not particularly comfortable with this interpretation and its spiritual implications. I admit, I am not entirely happy with it myself. It raises some difficult questions – questions I’m not ready to deal with. How does God’s Spirit dwell within humanity? Are we born with spiritual capacity? Are human beings like containers that can be spiritually filled or emptied? I don’t know the answers to these questions. Maybe someday I will, but I don’t today. What I do perceive in this first healing story in the Gospel of Mark is that the spirit that is unwelcome in the life of the possessed man recognizes the power and authority of the one who possesses the Spirit of God. And it knows immediately that it’s in trouble. The afflicting spirit recognizes an enemy and goes on the defensive: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

I hope you’ve already realized, before today, that my sermons don’t attempt to answer every question they raise. But I think that’s okay. I think good sermons should pose difficult questions with which Christians can wrestle. After all, why should preachers have all the fun? You, too, can enjoy a good tussle with a tidbit of ancient text. Mark wants us to see that the man afflicted with the unclean spirit has an advantage of recognition over everybody else who meets Jesus. The unwelcome spirit needs no faith at all to clearly see who Jesus is or to experience the power which Jesus has at his disposal. This is completely unlike every other encounter with Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. Everybody else requires faith to see what the evil spirit sees at first glance: Jesus is operating under the power of the Holy Spirit of God.

So are we to interpret this advantage of recognition as a privilege of spirits only? What about us?

I once had a friend who suffered from cancer. Over eight years, my friend fought cancer in her breast, her liver, and her brain. Eventually, she lost a great deal of her eyesight. But as her vision dimmed, without any intention on her part at all, her hearing developed to an incredible level. Though she could no longer walk on her own or take care of her basic needs, she was able to hear the faintest of sounds. I remember visiting her in the hospital following surgery to remove a brain tumor. Her first request of me when she was able to talk was to take the clock down off the wall and remove its battery. The ticking was driving her crazy. I hadn’t noticed the ticking. And she couldn’t stand for people to whisper outside her door, because she heard every word and knew it was not the intention of the whisperers to be overheard. But she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to hear every conversation taking place on the fifth floor of the hospital, but she could not turn off her hearing. It was just there – all the noises, all the sounds, all the voices that the rest of us take for granted and ignore, she couldn’t ignore. Her heightened sensitivity to sound was a consequence of her affliction.

It has occurred to me this week that Jesus belonged in the synagogue on the Sabbath early in his ministry. He was there to teach. But did the man with the unclean spirit also belong there? Was he there to receive healing or to challenge the Spirit of God? I think it could be both.

Jesus teaches in the synagogue, and his audience is astonished. They wonder and question, “What is this? A new teaching!” But the unclean spirit doesn’t wonder. “I know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth,” as if it can’t help but know. The afflicting spirit recognizes Jesus, or the Spirit of God in Jesus, in a way that human beings, even his disciples, are unable to recognize him. It will take a good deal of time and experience for Jesus’ disciples to come to the point of recognition, by faith, that the unclean spirit comes to immediately, by sight. Could the author’s point be that though the unsuspecting crowds are amazed at Jesus’ teaching and his miracles, they are as yet unable to see his true identity? But it isn’t their fault; they just don’t possess the perception for it. It almost makes me wonder if Mark isn’t setting us up to see at the last that the greatest miracle of all is for a human being to finally recognize God among us.

Amen.