Where Have You Been Traveling?
Good Morning Friends,
The expectations, the anticipation, the anxiety and the strange emotions are hard to escape regarding the coronavirus news. In some ways it is like waiting for a hurricane to hit but the time frame is stretched from five days or so to fifty or perhaps more. It is not the effect so far but the potential of what might come in the future that is bothersome. We are not yet in the eye of the storm and yet we all know things are serious when sporting events and schools are closed. Virtual schools, sporting events and churches will be part of the story. Interestingly, the Bible has a lot to say about plagues. The Biblical counsel would suggest that we exercise prudence and common sense but also faith. So here we are on the Lenten journey from Transfiguration to Transformation…from Fast to Feast and we are facing a worldwide epidemic that might well go down in the history books. We are washing our hands and keeping social distance and avoiding large crowds. And if we begin to panic, we seek the peace of Christ. We must be humble and pray realizing that this can be an opportunity to serve God in a powerful way. We need to trust the Lord’s power to deal with this situation, but we also need to be aware of our bias as it relates to our desire for exclusivity in gaining a cure or avoiding the disease in the first place. So, Where Have You Been Traveling?
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)
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
Psalm 91:3-12 (NRSV)
But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people live, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I the Lord am in this land.
Exodus 8:22 (NRSV)
Message: Sometimes the people who ask where people have been or 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 hometown 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 in a crisis. 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. If you come from that place or even visit it there is a problem. 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 hometown 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. Know this in preparation for what is to come. For the storm is coming.
And So, come from the right place in your thinking. And believe that if a crisis and our response to it causes people to turn to God and receive salvation and healing, something very good has come out of it. We of course seek the Lord for His mercy, protection, and healing but also be aware of our potential for abuse of power to discriminate against others in a crisis. At the same time, we are concerned about our personal health, even while we know the most important issue for everyone is salvation. The question is how we should react in a crisis with this priority. I am not sure I would, as Christians in Wuhan China, go out on the streets proclaiming Christ when everyone else was hunkering in and afraid to go out. But perhaps we can take the example of their sentiment and creatively adapt it for service. So, pray for our actions to support the work of the Holy Spirit for the souls of people. Very often it is in times of trouble that people become more open to hear about God. When those opportunities come, we will, by the grace of God, proclaim the gospel to the lost in ways that are prudent. When we are in the center of God’s will, there is nothing to fear. But friends, it is not in the Lord’s will that we do anything foolish. As with hurricane recovery, there will be a need for God’s people to respond to the fall out of the crisis. For this we should be planning even now. In preparation check out this resource https://pda.pcusa.org/pda/resource/disease-guidance-for-congregations/
Pray we have a balance of prudence and faith. Pray we live into the Spirit of Christ in a crisis. 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. Pray we help others in times of trouble.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 