The Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

SECOND KINGS 5:1-14: Naaman, general of the armies of Aram, that is, Syria, is a powerful man with a great problem. He had leprosy. He was able to conquer opposing armies with dispatch, but he can do nothing to defeat this dread disease. The result: he is an alien and outcast in his own land and in the court of his king.

As Naaman struggles with the question of his leprosy, the first bit of help comes from an unusual and insignificant source. In his battles, he had defeated some Israelites. One of his captives, a young girl - and who in this day is more insignificant than a captive Israelite girl - who is serving his wife tells him of a prophet in Israel who can cure leprosy. On that hopeful note, Naaman rushes in to his king and told him what the girl from Israel had said. The king of Aram promises to send a letter to the king of Israel asking his aid in curing his general, Naaman.

Why the letter went from king to king is one of the ironies of the story. Did kings control prophets in Israel, could the king of the land, unnamed here, command Elijah or his successor Elisha to cure the man? Hardly. Prophets confronted kings in Israel, not the other way around. But kings deal only with other kings, so the king of Aram sent the letter to the king of Israel. Naaman set out to Israel bearing the letter. Befitting his station in Aram, he took with him both armies and wealth: ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, ten sets of garments. As Walter Brueggemann said (PWP), Aram wanted Israel to know that their visitor was "a great man who arrives in a great procession of limousines with police escort."

The king of Israel did not know what to do with the request. He knew he had no power over disease. "Am I God," he said, "to give life or death, that they would ask me to cure the man!" He even suspected a plot. Perhaps the Syrians were using this moment to pick a quarrel with the Israelites. The king of Israel tore his clothes in anger and despair.

Word of the visit spread through Israel and came to the attention of the prophet Elisha. He sent word to the king of Israel, "Let him come to me, that he might learn that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his armies and chariots and his wealth to Elisha's rude hut. Elisha did not emerge from the hut to see this great sight. He sent a messenger instead. "Go," said the message. "Wash in the Jordan river seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be made clean." Naaman, great man that he was, was insulted by this treatment. How dare this insolent prophet send only a servant to tell him what to do! How dare he say only, "Go, wash," and in an Israelite river. It is only a natural thing that Elisha asks Naaman to do: wash in the Jordan and be clean. Naaman had expected something more elaborate: calling out to the name of the Lord, the prophet waving his hands, sacrificing a sheep, anything but this! In a rage he ordered his escort to turn around and march back to Aram.

But again an insignificant one intervened. One of his own servants approached him, threw himself on the ground in the presence of the great man, and spoke reason 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?'" Cleansing came first through a slave girl of the Israelites and then from a menial in his own command. Naaman thought better of his rage and immersed himself seven times in the River Jordan.

And he was cleansed of his leprosy. Says Scripture: "His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean." We do not know what the leprosy was. Most likely it was merely a skin disease that could be cured by continued and deep washing. Persons of those days used oils and a stick to remove dirt. Hardly anyone bathed seven consecutive times in any river. It was not the River Jordan that was magic; it was not Elisha who knew a mystic formula. It was the use of God's natural means that restored the man to family and friends, and to his military duties and political ways. God made Naaman a new man.

This story from the Old Testament takes its place beside the account in the New Testament of the leper who was healed by Jesus. We will turn to that story at the proper time.

PSALM 30: I was just reading an article on the changes that have taken place in Americans in the last one hundred years. In 1900 the typical American was a pre-teen boy named John who lived with his parents and sisters on a farm in New York or Pennsylvania. In 2000, the typical American was a young woman, 25 to 34, Lisa, living in a California suburb with a daughter named Emily. John's family had no indoor plumbing, no phone, no car. He probably would not finish high school. Lisa has a household income of $45,000, two cars and cable TV. Lisa has been to college, of course. John could expect to live to be 46, Lisa's life expectancy is 79.

The psalmist of Psalm 30 has undergone similar radical changes, except that most of his have been spiritual changes. As the Psalm begins, he (or she) recalls that his foes were rejoicing over him; that he was ill; that his soul was mired in the Pit; that his life was one of mourning; that his soul was silent. What a change had come over him. Now

He extols the Lord that his foes no longer rejoice over him.

He has been healed.

His soul has been raised from the pit.

His mourning has turned to dancing.

His soul cannot keep silent but praises the Lord.

The last is the key, of course. Americans credit their changes to good diet, public health policies, the scientific and technological civilization in which we live. The psalmist credits his changes to the God who made him and who has restored him to life.

This did not come to the psalmist without a struggle. When he had his moments of prosperity, he assumed that he had done it all: "I will never be moved," he said. "You had established me as a strong mountain." Then the psalmist realized that the Lord had hid his face from him. "I was dismayed," he said, in a statement as simple as it was profound. Until the Lord's face shines upon us again, we remain dismayed.

The psalmist had also faced the anger of the Lord. But, he said as he thought of it, "His anger is but for a moment, his favor for a lifetime."

The Psalmist had spent his nights in weeping, but that too had passed. "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning."

The psalmist had argued with the Lord. "What profit is there to you, Lord, if I go down to the Pit? Will my dust praise you?" He received his answer: "You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me instead with joy."

The beginning and the end of the Psalm tell of the reason for the change. "God has done it, and God needs to be extolled. God has done it for me, and I will give thanks to God forever." This psalm, almost a series of haiku-like verses strung together around the themes of God's healing and restoration, cries out, "Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones. Give thanks always to his holy name."

GALATIANS 6:1-16: This is Paul's conclusion to the Letter to the Galatians. He includes a number of injunctions to the members of the church.

Be forgiving, he says. If someone has transgressed, restore that one in a spirit of gentleness.

Do not be tempted yourself - Paul could mean, do not be tempted to be circumcised and hence to follow the false teachers who have tempted you so heavily with their message.

Bear one another's burdens. In this way you fulfill the "law of Christ." The "law of Christ" stands opposed to the Jewish Law. That Law wanted the Galatians to be circumcised, to keep the food laws, to practice the sabbath. The Law of Christ is opposite to those ritual practices that separate neighbor from neighbor. It enjoins us to bear each other's burdens.

Don't be deceived by those who think too highly of themselves. Paul is obviously referring to those Law-observant teachers and missionaries who are trying to win the Galatian Christians to their side.

If you must have pride, said Paul, let it come in testing your own Christian practice. Not only do you bear one another's burdens. You must also carry your own load.

Pay your teachers and preachers well. Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teachers.

Don't treat God with contempt, for God sees to it that you reap what you sow. Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for the harvest is coming in which we shall reap what we have sown.

When you have opportunity, work for the good of all. Work especially for the good of those in the family of faith.

Verses 6:11-18 contain Paul's final exhortations to his churches in Galatia. Whereas the rest of the letter was most likely dictated to a secretary, these lines were written by his own hand. They were written in big letters so that all could read them. They were written by his own hand so that they would know that the letter was authentic. In these final words, he summarizes what he wants them to remember. These are his major themes.

1. No one finds righteousness in the law.

2. His glory --- his boast --- is not in himself but in the cross of Christ. The believer who is inseparably united to his lord has died on the cross to the kind of life that belongs to this world.

3. In place of our old life stands a "new creation" of God.

We are now in a position to sum up the whole letter.

Paul's letter is an attempt to prove that those who are justified on the ground of faith are the real inheritors of the righteousness that was promised in Scripture to Abraham, a righteousness which precedes the righteousness that comes through law. Apparently Paul's position has been attacked by some who insist upon circumcision and upon keeping the law of Moses in addition to the new law of freedom in Christ Jesus.

With this in mind Paul tries to show, using examples from his life before and after conversion as evidence, that his gospel was given to him directly by a revelation of Jesus Christ and that it did not come to him as from men. It was given to him; he did not receive it on the basis of his own particular righteousness and good works. Breaking off this argument in the middle, and expanding those things that he was saying to Peter at Antioch, he suddenly plunges into the positive portion of his letter, in which he does the following things:

He tries to show that the Galatians had received the spirit without ever having been circumcised, and consequently the spirit cannot be the result of keeping the law.

He shows that the promise was given to Abraham on the basis of his trust that God would keep the promises God made to him and not on the basis of his being circumcised or doing any manner of works of the law. God's hand cannot be forced.

He shows that the law came to convince us all of our sin and became our tutor or supervisor (for it was not a teacher but a restrainer) for the time of Christ. But the law was connected with the curse.

When Christ came, he fulfilled both the curse and the promise. The curse, being fulfilled, is no more operative; one does not have to keep the law. But the promise, being fulfilled, is now certainly operative, and one can live in or by spirit. But to go back to the law is to go back under a curse which is no more operative upon those who live in spirit.

Life in the spirit, which works power and miracles among us, is life in which we have put on Christ. All are one in Christ -- not in the world, surely, but just as surely one in Christ. For God sent his son, when that which fills the time had come, to redeem those under law (a picture of a slave being manumitted because someone paid his ransom -- it does not mean that Christ redeemed us from an angry God. For the gift of Christ is from God.) And to prove that we are God's children, and inheritors of the promised righteousness, God sent the spirit of his son among us, so that we could cry "Father," as a true son should; and so that we could look with eager longing for the promised righteousness.

In the face of this, the Galatians are again turning to the elemental spirits, those beings that are not really God, where they have faith in angels, and days and seasons, and where they do not have true knowledge of God because they do not know him through Christ.

So Paul pleads with them, pointing out how the Galatians treated him before, pointing out that they stand under the same tension between flesh and spirit under which everyone stands and that they are in danger of dropping back under the power of flesh, pointing out that they were freed by Christ for freedom and not to make this freedom an opportunity for the flesh.

Following this climactic passage, Paul gives instructions about discipline within the church, and exhorts the "spirituals" to bear one another's burdens. He also gives a word, mentioned above, about paying those who instruct them in the word. He requests that they be not weary in doing the good to all, and especially to the household of faith.

By his own hand, he writes the things that are most important to him. Those Law-observant Christians who want to circumcise you do it only so they will not be persecuted by their fellow Jews for their belief in the cross of Christ. These people do not observe the whole Law; they only hold to those practices called "works of law," circumcision, food laws, sabbath. He says the issue of circumcision is not worth fighting over, really. Circumcision doesn't count for anything, and neither does uncircumcision. The real issue is that you become God's new creation in Christ. He gives a final warning against these judaizers, those who would turn Christians into Jews before they can become Christian, saying that he does not want to be troubled any more by them because he bears the marks of Christ in his body. He offers all Christians a final benediction: Peace be upon you and mercy, he says to the Law-observant ones. To his own people he adds, "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you all."

Before we close our study of the Letter to the Galatians, I want to talk about a passage from this sixth chapter that has become more important to me than any other verse of Scripture. I will give the passage in the way that I learned it long ago: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." This is my story of how -boy and man -I have had a personal encounter with a particular text of Scripture. I met this text on one of the three most important days of my life. The first day was that of my birth -- when I was given life. The second day was that of my marriage -- when I was given a life-mate, who has shared my life with me in a full and intense way, and who has brought concern and caring and love to everyone she has ever met, family and parishioners and friends alike. The third day was the day of my confirmation into the Christian church -- the day I was given a life vocation.

Even before the time of my confirmation, I had thought about being a minister of Jesus Christ. There is not a day I can remember when I had not thought of that. Family influences played a large part in this -- Mother and Dad were both active in our church. and I was there, in church school and pew with them. for as far back as I can remember. A major influence was the man who was our pastor. He was our neighbor. lived only two doors away, he was a scholar, musician, athlete, friend, person of God -- all of this --yet there was always a dignity about him that I at least could not penetrate. There were summer camps and conferences that touched me; God will always be associated in my mind with the solemn beauty of the sun setting on Lake Erie during the evening vespers and us singing together in hushed voices, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and earth are full of thee, Heaven and earth are praising thee, O Lord most high.

When the time came for confirmation into full membership in the church, ten other young people and I studied with this pastor, two nights every week, two years, learned the catechism, sixty or more questions, I think, spent time trying to understand what each answer meant; memorized sixty or more Bible verses, learned them well enough that I can still recite most of them by heart. It was an exciting learning experience for me.

The moment of my confirmation was the moment of my call to ministry. Confirmation was an important event in this particular congregation. Each young person went individually up to the chancel and knelt before our pastor, who welcomed us, gave us a special Bible verse to remember, had a prayer in our behalf. I went up in my turn, he took my hand, I knelt, and he quoted the verse he had chosen for me. In the prayer that followed, he said, "If anyone from this class will be a minister, I think you will be the one." I said to myself, "I will." That was it. His voice was my call from God and Christ. My answer was my affirmation of that call. I was delighted in that moment -- there is no other word to describe it -- so overjoyed that when I returned to my seat I just sat there beaming inwardly. Only when the girl who went up after me returned and bowed her head to pray did I remember that I was supposed to have done that, too. From that moment to this, I have set myself to nothing else than being a minister of Jesus Christ.

But there was one jarring note in this otherwise idyllic event. It was the Bible verse I had been given. "God forbid," it said, "that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." That was a strange verse, I thought: "World crucified to me, I to world, what could that mean to a thirteen year old? There were other verses the pastor could have chosen for me, Love the Lord your God with heart, soul, strength, mind, take up your cross and follow me. Strange that he had chosen this one. I have spent a lot of my life pondering this question: what was that odd verse of Scripture supposed to mean to me?

For the next few years, through high school and college, I pretty well put the verse out of my mind. I did not forget it, clearly, but it did not mean much to me. In seminary I did learn that it came from a letter Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia. The churches in question, I also learned, were in Asia Minor, near Paul's hometown of Tarsus, also in Asia Minor, the three little towns called Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium. I found out that there was a big struggle going on in the synagogues in these towns between those who thought that the old Jewish way of life, with its Law and its rituals of circumcision, would make people right with God and those, like Paul, who said we didn't have to have a law to get right with God --that God wanted us so much to return to God's divine fellowship that God sent Christ, who died and rose from the grave to bring us back into God's friendship, God's act in Christ that redeemed and healed us. I learned also that whereas Paul had dictated most of his letter to a secretary, he had written these words out in his own handwriting -- they must have been important to him. I thought, if this was important to Paul, it might be important to me as well.

As I left seminary and entered upon my ministry, I learned something more about this text. I learned that people other than myself were also attracted to it. Two hymn writers were particularly drawn to it, and they built hymns around it. "In

the Cross of Christ I Glory"; "When I survey the wondrous cross On which the prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride. Forbid it. Lord, that I should boast Save in the death of Christ my God; All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. Were the whole realm of nature mine That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all."

As I sang these hymns each Lent, my verse of Scripture began to mean more and more to me.

Then, some years ago, I cannot date it exactly, I began to think about my verse again, and I saw something new in it: it really is a standard of life to live by. There is much we glory in life: family, jobs, possessions, lifestyle. Ministers, too, can find much to glory in: strength of churches served, their size and importance; people moved by what we say from the pulpit, or helped by personal counselling; degrees attained and honors bestowed; men and women won to Christ and called to serve him. But as I thought of this, I looked again at the text. It said to me, We can be pleased with our life, what we have done with it. But none of this is not to be gloried in, because Christ himself did not glory in such things as these. Christ served his God in heaven, and in that God alone Christ found the glory of his life. And you, Mr. Minister, that is your glory, too. You are dead to size and strength and honors and accomplishments, that you might be alive to God, the God of Jesus Christ. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord.

Even in retirement this verse continues to hang over me like the sun and the moon, and I ask myself daily, What will it mean for me yet in the time of earthly life still in front of me? What will it mean that the world is crucified for us - this world with all its allures and power arrangements and entanglements designed to take us from God - this world crucified to us, dead to us? What will it mean that we are crucified to this world, in order that we might be alive to God in Christ, fully alive as never before to Christ's call to us, and Christ's love for us, and Christ's sacrifice in our behalf, and Christ's marvelous presence with us in his spirit? May it do that, and more. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20: On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus sends out his followers to proclaim the gospel. They are sent to each of the villages to which Jesus shall come on his journey to the Holy City. They are to prepare the way for him to come, to let the villagers know that he casts out demons, cures illnesses, and proclaims the good news that the Kingdom of God is about to come upon them.