The Measure of Greatness
2 Kings 5:1-15
What is the measure of greatness? Let’s consider some examples of people throughout history to whom greatness has been attributed. Alexander the Great succeeded his father Philip to the throne of the Kingdom of Macedonia when he was 20 years old, and by age 30, through conquest, he had created one of the largest empires the world has ever seen, one that stretched from Greece to India. Oh, and he was tutored by Aristotle! Pretty great!
Wayne Gretzky wasn’t the fastest or the strongest ice hockey player, but his unparalleled ability to read the game and anticipate where the puck was going to go helped him break every scoring record and earned him the nickname “The Great One.”
Beyond the individual level, what about an entire generation? Those born between 1901 and 1927 were known collectively as The Greatest Generation. Many of them came of age during the Great Depression and then as young adults fought off fascism during World War II, either by serving in the military or by supporting the war effort in fields, factories, and the like back home.
Conquest, athletic prowess, collective sacrifice—all different measures of greatness. Greatness is a central theme in today’s reading from 2 Kings. Naaman, commander in the army of the king of Aram, is described as a great man. Aram was a kingdom to the north and east of Israel in what is now Syria. Despite the fact that Naaman commands the army of a rival to Israel, we’re told in verse 1 that the king was pleased with Naaman because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram.
Yes, the Lord, the God of Israel, had given victory to Israel’s rival and glory to its commanding general. You would think that the God of Israel would display divine power by supporting—oh, I don’t know—Israel, but no! In an ironic twist, the Lord gives victory to Aram, Israel’s rival.
On one level, that the Lord gives victory to Aram is a powerful theological claim. It suggests that the God of Israel, unlike the gods of the surrounding nations, is not a national or regional deity but the one God of all creation, Jew and nonJew alike. On another level, it’s the first indication that expectations—both Naaman’s and our own—are going to be challenged and even upended by God.
Another irony is that for all his purported strength as a warrior, Naaman suffers a physical weakness—some sort of skin disease. Of course, this bothers him greatly. As a general, he wants to appear strong and vigorous in front of his troops, but this skin disease suggests weakness.
As men do, he complains about it to his wife, and word of his condition reaches the ear of one of her slaves, a young girl from Israel. Yes, the slave girl of the leading general of Aram is an Israelite. Aram was known to send raiding parties into Israel, and this young girl had been captured during one such raid and brought back to Aram as a slave.
Despite the evil done to her, when she hears of her owner’s lament, she says, “If only my lord were with the prophet in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.” She is referring to the prophet Elisha, who was the protégé of the similarly named Elijah. We read about Elijah a few weeks ago. High up on the mountain, feeling rejected and alone, he encountered the presence of God in the sheer silence. When Elijah retired and accepted his gold watch from God, he passed his mantle to the younger Elisha.
Naaman wants to meet Elisha, but it’s not as though he can look up Elisha’s address in the phone book. To find the prophet, he’ll first need to meet with Israel’s king, who should be able to direct him to Elisha’s location.
Naaman obtains a letter of introduction from the king of Aram to the king of Israel and then packs a Brinks truck worth of valuables to offer as gifts: ten talents of silver, each weighing 75 pounds, 6,000 shekels of gold, and the finest clothing in the latest styles that are all the rage in Aram.
Naaman’s caravan pulls up at the palace of Israel’s king, and he sends a messenger inside with the letter. When the king reads it, he nearly has a heart attack because he thinks it’s a setup. He thinks that Aram’s leading general has come to his front door to pick a fight.
“This man wants me to cure him of a skin disease? How am I going to do that? And when I don’t, he’s going to use that as pretext to start a war!” That’s what’s running through the mind of the king. He thinks he’s being asked to do the impossible, and when he can’t, Naaman will use it against him.
When Elisha hears about all this, he sends a messenger to the king saying, in effect, “Why are you so worked up? Send him to me. I’ll show him what’s what.”
I’ve shared with you before my belief that there is unappreciated humor in the Bible. We heard it a few weeks ago with Elijah’s mocking of the priests of Baal when they couldn’t rouse their god from his apparent slumber. This next scene between Naaman, the great general, and Elisha, the prophet of the Lord, is humorous from end to end.
To begin with, Naaman parks his caravan of horses and chariots in front of Elisha’s house. I wish the author gave us a description of the house. I picture the great general stepping down from his horse, surveying the prophet’s, no doubt, humble accommodations, and thinking to himself, “Is this the right place?” Naaman is likely unaware that there’s little profit in prophecy, not if you’re truly speaking the word of the Lord.
Naaman then approaches the front door and rings the doorbell. Again, we’re not told the details here. We don’t know what Elisha is doing, whether he’s in the shower or in the middle of lunch, but he doesn’t answer the door! He sends a messenger in his place. And this messenger tells the general of the armies of Aram, “Yeah, the boss says you should go wash in the Jordan River seven times and then you’ll be good as new. Have a nice day.”
Now, consider this from Naaman’s point of view. He’s traveled many miles with a full entourage. He’s brought with him gifts galore. He’s expecting that this healing is going to be worth the price of admission. Surely the prophet will call upon the Lord in dramatic fashion, making a sacrifice, praying an impassioned prayer, chanting a special incantation.
We not only want God to fix whatever’s gone wrong in our lives, we want it done on our timetable and in the manner of our choosing.
When Naaman is not given any of that, when he’s told simply to wash himself in the local river, he’s more than a little disappointed. “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 skin disease!” I thought that for me…. The great man wants a great healing. He wants a healing worthy of a man of his stature.
But now he’s thinking, “Have I really come all this way just to be told to take a dip in this drainage canal of a river?” A few years ago I was able to visit the Holy Land with a group from the Korean church that I was serving. One of the sites we visited was the Jordan River near where it meets the Dead Sea. It was unimpressive—muddy, stagnant, small. You could throw a rock across from one side to the other.
Naaman thinks that the rivers of his own country are far superior, and he’s right. “Could I not wash in them and be clean?” he asks. Then he turns and walks away in a rage.
We are all Naaman. We not only want God to fix whatever’s gone wrong in our lives, we want it done on our timetable and in the manner of our choosing. It’s as if we think we know better than God does.
I know I sure do. Last week this church took two more financial hits. The taekwondo school that’s been renting the gymnasium downstairs told us they found a new home. Much more concerning, AT&T told us they want to renegotiate the terms of their lease of the clock tower or else they’ll find a new space for their antennae.
Sandy will tell you, I was about ready to give up. I mean, how many more blows can this church take? Don’t worry. I’m past it. I went through the five stages of grief in about 18 hours:
Denial: This can’t be happening!
Anger: God, how could you let this happen?
Bargaining: I’ll do whatever you want, God, just do something to fix this!
Depression: We’ll never recover from this.
Acceptance: It is what it is.
Now, what I want is for God to remedy this situation, the sooner the better (tomorrow would be great). But I don’t know if that’s what I need, let alone what this church needs. Maybe I, maybe we, need to cultivate patience and trust in the Lord. Maybe we need to table what we want and wait for God to give us what we need.
Back to the reading, Naaman wants to be healed, but what he wants and what he needs are not the same thing. For Naaman, his healing is an end in itself. It’s all he’s interested in. But for God, Naaman’s healing is just the starting point. It’s the means by which the Lord, the God of Israel, draws the top general of a foreign nation into relationship.
After Naaman is healed, he doesn’t hightail it back to Aram. I’m sure that’s what he would have done had he been healed in the dramatic manner that he was expecting. But then he would have missed the whole purpose of God’s plan for his salvation. Instead of heading straight home, Naaman goes back to Elisha with his entire entourage and declares, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
Naaman had gone to Israel expecting to buy his healing, but he returns home having received much more than he bargained for. Not only has he been healed, he has been made whole. He has come to know the living God, the God who calls all people—even the commanders of foreign armies—into loving relationship.
And the way that God does this is truly remarkable. We’ve been looking at this story primarily through the eyes of Naaman, but there is another player in this story without whom Naaman’s conversion never happens…the Israelite slave girl. A female slave, she is at the absolute bottom rung of the social ladder. She is, for all intents and purposes, invisible. What’s more, she was taken from her homeland and forced into slavery. What reason has she to be anything other than resentful?
And yet, when she hears of her slave master’s plight, she takes pity on him. She informs Naaman’s wife that there is a prophet in Israel who would cure her husband. She shows him a mercy that she herself has not received.
Whether it’s a young slave girl, a crucified Messiah, or a financially challenged church, God’s power and presence are proclaimed through the most unheralded and unexpected means. What the world regards as of little value is the means through which God does not only great things but good things. For in goodness lies God’s greatness. Greatness in the eyes of God isn’t about military power, worldly riches, or misplaced nostalgia for some bygone era. Greatness is about goodness.