That Surprising River
Peter JB Carman
July 7, 2013
II Kings 5:1-14
Luke 10:1-11; 16-20
There is a river of cleansing love that flows somewhere near here. There is a surprising
wind of grace that blows. These are signals from a God who does not pound down from heaven
but surrounds from beneath. These are the methods of a liberating God as likely to speak through
a child who has been captured or trafficked as through some preacher in a church. This is where
we find the God whom Jesus showed us: through this spirit of grace; by this river of love.
A long time ago, a powerful general went desperately looking for a cure. Afflicted with a
terrible skin disease, he found that when the doctors got done, he still wanted to live: was willing
to take suggestions from wherever he could. He was going to need to take control of his own
destiny. He found himself listening to his wife—who is not significant enough to be named in
our story. She in turn had been listening to her slave girl, an Israelite child, captured from the
land of Samaria—also unnamed. In her childlike way the slave girl pointed Naaman to the only
truly strong person she knew of, a prophet in her home country, someone who had a direct line
on the divine. Here is the story: An unnamed slave girl gave a hint to an unnamed servant-wife
who gave a hint to one of the most influential people in the world….
Now this is a great story! Because it is a truthful story. It is truthful about power and it is
truthful about weakness, it is truthful about how the powerful do business, and it is truthful about
how a very tiny person can turn the course of history—with the passage of breath, with the flutter
of words, with a tiny gesture of kindness all unexpected. Something in the words the slave girl
spoke and his wife heard conveyed some great strength Naaman had not even conceived.
Perhaps he sensed God.
A girl spoke; a general listened, and then, surprisingly went about following her advice!
Only instead of humbling himself to go on a pilgrimage of healing, he responded by employing
the usual methodology of power that got things done. He went straight to the top! He started with
his boss who would speak with Elisha’s boss, the King of Israel. Then he put together a formal
diplomatic mission. He was not going on a tourist visa. “I’ll have my people speak to his
people.”
General Naaman went to his king—who needed him more than his own right hand, and
would do anything not to lose him. King sent general to the much weaker king in the land of
Samaria. And that king dutifully received the warhorses and the chariots and the mighty general
who was so obviously torn by this disease. The poor king of Israel tore his clothes apart, because
he had no idea what was going on—and he knew his options were not good. “Am I God to play
with life and death? The only thing this can mean is the King wants to pick a fight with me….”
Fortunately Elisha the prophet, who lived some distance away, said he would take care of
things. So off went Naaman, with his horses and chariots. Can you imagine? The moral
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equivalent of an ancient motorcade drew up in all its glory with its armored vehicles, in front of
Elisha’s house. But this was Elisha’s house: Elisha who knew a different kind of power.
Elisha sent word out through one of his…people. He instructed Naaman to go wash seven
times in the waters of the Jordan River, not the world’s most dramatic river, not the rivers of
Aram not the rivers of Babylon. The Jordan. Local waters. Seven dips. That was it.
Powerful men do not enjoy being trifled with and dying people do not enjoy being
humiliated. Naaman’s desperation and pride got the better of him. He flew into a rage, and
prepared to tromp off. The doctor wouldn’t even come out and see him face to face after his long
journey. And the prescription wasn’t even for a decent river. Anger, frustration, humiliation,
fear.
Enter more surprising messengers: people who knew the path of humility because it was
the only way they survived. It was Naaman’s servants that again calmed him and suggested he
might as well try the cure.
This whole story is about delegation. Only this is God’s delegation, not the delegation of
general’s and kings. You want power? Ask the captive slave girl where it comes from. You want
power? Go to the Jordan. You want power? Ask the nameless people in your own service. You
want power? Don’t look up, look down. Look in the surprising river. Feel for the slight breeze
that blows.
You want power, turn to the spirit of love that picks its own river, chooses to empower its
own broken people. You want power? Try for grace instead, because the castles will crumble and
the chariots will rust and fall, and the generals and the governors will go down to the dust like
the emperors of old. Go to the riverside. Only love will keep flowing; only healing will be
remembered; only the winds of grace will prevail.
Naaman, Naaman! You want real healing? Then strip off the trappings of false authority.
Walk away from your chariots of bronze and your swords and your war horses. Make your way
down by the river bank, and walk into the river and cover yourself with its waters: seven times.
The text doesn’t tell us what the seven layers that needed removal were. Do they go like
this? Once, to wash the grime off. Twice to wash your fear away. A third time, to wash all the
pretense off. A fourth to wash away your ambition. The fifth time washes way your old gods,
your old talismans. It’s the sixth time that it takes to confront and find forgiveness for the guilt of
so much killing. And the seventh time you wash there is just you and God, you and the healing
river, you and grace, there in the river that prophets divide and fugitives cross, the river that
marks the place of entry into the promised land. This surprising river.
We look for cures in the wrong places. We look for solutions where we should ask
questions and we ask questions where silence in the face of mystery would do. You and I, we too
tend to trust the horsepower and chariots, and we get blinded by false power. So here’s a hint for
you and me…we are all one.
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We are all made from the same clay: we all bleed, we all love and we all have the
capacity to hate. We all eat and drink, cry and die. We all know that there is more to life than
what we have, what we can take, what we can beat. Deep within there is this light, we have this
wholeness, we have this capacity to live the love, instead of living the lie. Deep within, covered
by seven layers of protection, seven layers of pain: light and healing and promise.
So let us pay attention. Let us feel the wind, let us go down to the river. Let us take off
our armor, and dive deep, down to where the source is, until at last all that is left is you and me,
and the God of love who shows up from below, the God who stands with the little people, who
transforms the unmentionable, who secures these weary feet and will heal this difficult land. A
poet (Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur) puts it this way:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.
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