Naaman, Paul, and Jesus

Jim:

2 Kings 5:1-19
This was the passage on which I wrote one of my very first sermons in seminary. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since. Today I underlined verses 11-12a, “But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me (the prophet) 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 wasters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’” Eventually Naaman washes in the Jordan and is healed, just as the prophet said he would be, but it took some convincing to get him to do it. How often do we allow our expectations or our assumptions to govern the way we respond to God? How often do we miss out on experiences of grace because they don’t meet our criteria? It’s worth thinking about.

1 Corinthians 4:8-21
Paul writes, “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. We are fools for the sake of Christ.” I’m sure he was speaking from his own experience., from the hardships he had faced and the difficulties with which he had dealt. And it is interesting that he says, “as though sentenced to death” as, according to tradition, a number of the apostles, Paul included, were executed for their faith. But it shows both the dedication of Paul to the work God had given him, and the lengths to which he was prepared to do to fulfill his calling. Nor was it about authority or power for Paul. It was about servanthood and self-sacrifice, about the willingness to seem foolish to the world in order to serve God.

Matthew 5:21-26
Verses 23 and 24 struck me this morning. “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Notice that Jesus says “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you…”, not “if you have something against your brother or sister”. In order to follow this admonition we have to pay close attention to our relationships, to what we say and do, to what others may be feeling. Otherwise we may be unaware of a situation that needs addressing. And it’s not about what others do to us; that’s for them to worry about. Our concern is to be about what we may have done that caused harm or hurt to them. Jesus may as well have said, “pay attention to how you act and what you say and make sure you don’t cause harm without doing your best to cure it.”