Where Are You Living?
Good Morning Friends,
Here we are on the Lenten journey from Transfiguration to Transformation…from Fast to Feast. And there is a message here in the crossing that we need to bring home for its relevance of how we experience Jesus in this life and the next and forgive me for not being better at communicating this elusive thought. It relates to how we can get so caught up in seeking power in traditions and in the habits of life that we lose our creative edge. It relates to our desire for exclusivity. So, it is no longer politically correct to ask, but I ask anyway about our home fires. Where Are You Living?
Scripture: 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.
2 Kings 5:1-15b (NRSV)
And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Luke 4:24-30 (NRSV)
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.
Hebrews 11:24-26 (NRSV)
Message: Sometimes the people who ask where people live are doing so for reasons of discrimination… even subconsciously. The Bible often discloses the places of events and the homes of people as a way of helping us understand how people can be ill-treated by those in power. We all have heard the stories about Jesus, as a prophet being rejected in his own home town of Nazareth and yet finding power and authority a short distance away in Capernaum. Familiarity can stifle all sorts of things. But there is a deeper message here regarding what we accept and what we reject related to our desire for exclusivity. You see, Jesus was not in an elite community power group that Satan all so seductively tempted him to join. So too Moses rejected the temptation of such worldly power looking ahead to a greater reward. We too need to look for something that is more substantive than merely wanting to be in the group of the people in the know and welding power even beyond those in elected and appointed positions of power. In today’s scripture we see that Naaman, a Syrian, desires such power but is frustrated when he is confronted with the reality that his healing of leprosy will not be realized because of position or wealth or worldly power but in being cleansed by the power of God. Friends, there are multiple systems or hierarchies at play in this world and the most seductive are unwritten. C. S. Lewis calls it the Inner Ring. And no, it is not a secret society. And though it is not inherently evil our desire for a position in the inner circle of things derails us on the journey and is tied up in a misguided pride of life. For if we seek this invisible way of power we are not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humor or learning or wit or any of the things that can be really enjoyed. Typically, we just want to belong to power. And that is a pleasure that cannot last and is a bad thing we see on the edges of today’s scriptures. You see, the world is full of delightful confidentialities and intimacies to capture our attention. But if we follow them we come into nothing that is worth reaching and in fact turn into our own worst enemies. When Jesus forces people of his home town to face this humbling reality, it prompted violence much like taking away an addict’s favorite drug. The true road lies in quite another direction. Friends, if you live in the quest for power it will break you if you do not break your desire for it.
Pray we have faith in Jesus. Pray we live into the Spirit of Christ. Pray that our worship experiences never become so familiar that the whole creative aspect of worship disappears leaving only a fleeting worldly pleasure. Pray we keep the fire of a holy purpose alive in us. Pray we be wary of desires to be part of worldly elite power brokers. Pray we understand our longing to identify with a place of power is short lived and shows just how prejudiced we are. Pray we reflect on our anguish when we are excluded from the next inner circle and motivated to choose another path to glorify God. Pray we reject the kind of false pleasures we feel when we are included as part of the “in crowd.” Pray we like Elisha and Jesus focus on curing souls without receiving or expecting the reward be paid by the person being saved.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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