It's God's Work

2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Naaman’s story is one that might be told with great effect by a late-night talk show host, if they’d had those 2800 or 2900 years ago. It’s full of great opportunities for caricature and funny impressions, and it’s rich in obvious irony. It makes all kinds of social, political, and religious points, without being heavy-handed.

Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert could tell it today, enjoying and making much of the irony of this big important Aramean general, stuck with an embarrassing disease no one can cure. Of the “little people” who know the answer the Big Man needs; the “big” people – kings of Aram and Israel – who grasp at straws and mistake themselves for God.

When the late-night host tells it, we’d all enjoy laughing at the spluttering shock of Naaman, who’s never in his life had his own importance questioned, standing on the doorstep of the prophet, griping about being deprived of a great, dramatic, miracle show and told to wash in the river of a one-horse Judean town instead of in his own much better native rivers.

And when Naaman is finally talked down by his driver to a final chuckle from all of us, and cooperates, and is cured….

Well, the obvious moral to this story is that God is not nearly so impressed with our wealth and power and self-image as we ourselves are.

But there’s a whole other point or five lurking in this story.

The one I noticed this week starts with the very first sentence of the story the way it’s printed in your lectionary inserts today. Naaman is successful and famous and great because…. what’s the reason you see?

“Because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram.”

Before Naaman ever hears of the prophet Elisha, ever even considers coming to Israel for a cure, God is already using Naaman for God’s purposes. God is already at work in his life. 

Naaman’s relationship to God, and more importantly, God’s relationship to Naaman, doesn’t start with Naaman looking for a cure. God is at work in Naaman’s life, using him to defeat God’s chosen nation, for God’s own purposes, long before Naaman starts looking for God’s power.

And that insight helps me make sense of some of the other ironies and curiosities in the story. Like the way that Naaman actually seems to listen attentively and openly and regularly to the lowest and least important people in his household. He takes the second-hand advice of a captive from his recent conquest seriously. He yields naturally and quickly when other staff tell him to put aside his defensiveness and pride about the cure the prophet recommends to him, and obeys.

He takes advice, he does what the man of God says, and then – in the sequel to this story – is converted to deep trust in and worship of the God of Israel; making clear plans for how he’s going to commit to that worship and balance his professional life with his spiritual life when he gets home.

He’s not cured by and converted to a God he’s just met.

Naaman is cured by and drawn closer to a God who has been working in his life all along.

And Naaman’s community – his employees, his captives, his wife, his boss, along with Elisha the prophet of God – they’re simply helping God’s work along. It doesn’t depend on any of them to cure him, or save him, or fix what’s wrong in his world or their own. All they – all we – have to do is cooperate with what God is already doing, mention out loud how they see God at work, or sometimes just get out of the way.

That’s the mistake the king of Israel makes, by the way, in this story. He sees this message expecting a cure for Naaman, and gives up in despair because he knows he can’t do it by himself. He mistakes his own limits for actual impossibility. He gets in his own way, in Naaman’s way and God’s way. He even asks the right question – “Who does he think I am, God?!” but can’t hear that this question is the answer.

It’s God’s work.

God’s work to convert, or heal, or make peace, or transform lives. It’s God’s work, and we – you and I, Elisha the prophet and the king of Israel, the slave girls and the chariot drivers, the hyper-capable leaders and the least-competent followers – we are all along for the ride. It’s God’s work, and we are invited to cooperate with it, but it gets done whether we help or hinder; proclaim it or ignore it.

Saving souls or lives isn’t actually up to us. Neither is providing success for our kids or professional proteges, or providing perfect safety for our fragile loved ones. Perfecting our own spiritual lives, healing our own emotional or spiritual wounds, isn’t actually up to us either.

We can help or get in the way, but God is already at work, and inviting us to cooperate with God, not expecting us to do it for ourselves.

This is what Jesus is teaching his early apostles today, too, sending them out without money or supplies to spread peace, cure the sick, and preach good news – a job that the whole story up to this point has shown that they are woefully unready for. He sends them out to every place where he himself intends to go.  That’s an important thing to notice. They aren’t responsible for bringing God to those places. That’s Jesus’ job. The disciples are just helping out.

He tells them he’s sending them like lambs into the midst of wolves. Which is frankly terrifying – until you remember that lambs in wolf territory are generally there under the protection and direction of a shepherd. The disciples out in pairs in the countryside, just like you and me making our daily way through the pastures and wilderness of our lives, are actively being guided and guarded by Jesus, whether any of us notice or not.

And he tells them to let God do the work. Offer your peace when you enter a house. If God has already prepared people for shalom, your peace will rest there. If not, your peace is undisturbed, and returns to you.

Don’t burn yourself out on rejection, on healing those who don’t want healing. Instead, go where the energy is (as our Bishop is fond of saying); respond to the spiritual hunger where it already is – answer the questions of those who are asking, respond to the transformation God has already begun.

The kingdom of God comes near to everyone, whether you succeed with them or not.

Essentially, Jesus is sending the disciples out, sending us out, to look for and notice what God is already doing in the lives of the people we encounter. To share whatever peace and health, hope and meaning, God has already given you, yes, but to share it as if it depends on God for success in anyone else’s life, not as if it depends on your skill with words or actions or leadership.
To pray for healing as though it depends on the work God is already doing, not on how good you are at prayer. To receive food for your own soul and body from those in whose lives God is already working, because you’ve been sent to simply notice and celebrate God’s activity among and within them.

This may sound like “taking it easy”, and in a way, it is. But it’s not letting us off the hook. This is a profound exercise in trust, an active commitment of our hearts and selves to let go of working for ourselves and instead be steered by and used by God.

It can be hard to do that in a culture that rewards visible independence more than obvious dependence on God. It’s hard, sometimes, to depend on God rather than ourselves, when we or someone we love is in deep, essential need of direction or protection or help.

It can feel unnatural to many of us, conditioned to succeed by our own efforts, to let ourselves succeed dramatically or appear to fail completely based on what God is doing, instead of on what we’ve added to the process.
It’s a shift, and it’s also a gift.

The seventy, after all, returned with joy, discovering that Jesus had succeeded in healing and saving beyond their own wildest hopes, in all these places where he had sent them. It’s a delight we are invited to share with the apostles, with Naaman and his community, as we notice and respond to what God is already up to, and cooperate as best we can, as God fills the world with healing and our hearts with joy.