I Came for Healing

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

I can kind of feel Naaman’s pain, right at that moment in his story when he stands on the prophet Elisha’s doorstep, wondering out loud why he just got the brush-off:
Go wash in the Jordan? What’s that got to do with healing? Isn’t the man of God supposed to come and do a ritual, call down the power of God, and directly heal this mess? I came for real help, not this; if washing can heal me, I could do that at home.

 

Now, I don’t normally want to be all that sympathetic to Naaman. He’s a big shot, full of power and privilege; he’s recently defeated Israel in battle, and now he’s come to Israel as a medical tourist, throwing his weight around with his connections, his power, his money. His demands for a showy miracle might be all about his self-image.

 

But something in me this week recognizes something else that might be in Naaman: the pain of carrying around a disfiguring, uncomfortable burden, an illness that limits his life, for which he’s found no cure – only a rumor of treatment available far from home – and a yearning to be healed, be whole. 

 

Maybe that yearning for healing is speaking, too, right along with his ego, as we hear him say: I brought this pain to the one who is supposed to be most powerful to heal it, and all I’m getting is a second-hand instruction to go bathe in the river?  Doesn’t the man of God, doesn’t God, care?

 

If that’s what Naaman’s thinking and feeling, well, I recognize it in myself today.

I’ve come to God recently – with my own privilege and power and access – seeking healing for my pain, for anxiety and grief that weigh me down. 

Pain about people dead in trailer trucks; about people living in fear as healthcare becomes fraught with danger, and established rights are taken away;
about living through the revelations of broken democracy unfolding in Congress on our TV screens.
Grief for the death of a distant friend, for the accidents and tragedies that have befallen several others I love recently;
grief for the things too many of us are still losing to Covid now that as a country, we’ve stopped trying to limit its spread. 

The horrors of beloved grandparents shot at the grocery, of children dying while authorities delayed rescue. 

And that’s not the half of it.

 

I’ve brought my pain to the gospel this week, to our assigned scripture readings this morning, because I need healing. And instead of direct balm for what ails my soul, I get Jesus’ instructions about something… else.

 

Go into all the towns and villages, taking nothing with you, proclaim peace, accept whatever you get, walk away from opposition, heal people and proclaim that the kingdom of God is near.  

 

But… I wanted the gospel to comfort my grief. I’d really like a show of divine power, the visible miracles of reconciliation, healing, justice, trust restored, safety ensured. I want it clear and present and immediate. I would very much like Jesus to wave his hand over our country – and my life – and see us healed.

 

I don’t want instructions about going on a mission trip. As practical directions for dealing with distress, Jesus’ instructions to his seventy apostles sounds just as unappealing to me as Elisha’s “go dunk yourself in the Jordan River” sounded to Naaman.
It doesn’t…feel like healing.

 

And I suspect I may not be alone in that.

Without making any assumptions about what you may be bringing to church today, I am pretty sure that many of the first disciples came to Jesus looking for healing for themselves, yearning for divine power that directly addressed the public and private burdens that crippled them. 

And often, they got it.

But I suspect many felt they hadn’t gotten their full dose of healing and revelation before Jesus sends them out to heal and reveal for others.

 

Modern psychology and centuries of lived experience both tell us that helping other people is one reliable way to start feeling better yourself. That helping someone else bear their burden for a bit makes it easier to carry our own; that sharing good news or helping bring peace helps us hear the good or feel the peace ourselves.  
I actually know it will work. I actively use this tactic sometimes when I’m sad, or lonely. 

 

And still I’m a little cranky today that this is what the gospel and church offer us for whatever healing or refreshment we come needing, today. It is, in a way, such everyday advice. Sharing good news and working to heal others is – or is supposed to be – as ordinary and daily for Christians as washing ourselves clean. 

 

But as I metaphorically stand with Naaman on this doorstep, longing for the powerful, showy, immediate miracle and listening to God direct us to something else, something almost ordinary, I have to suspect that Jesus is giving us something different than good psychological advice.

 

I wonder if perhaps Jesus sends us to work for the healing, renewal, and salvation of the rest of the world, while we’re yearning for our own healing because we can’t be fully healed of the pain the world imposes until the world is fully healed. 

These directions to go proclaim peace and God’s healing among other people are not signs that God doesn’t want to heal us, that our pain is not important, or that Jesus doesn’t care. They are signs that God wants us to participate in our own healing. And that Jesus invites us not to seek healing and renewal for only what’s broken in and among us, but to entrust the whole of ourselves to God.

 

Several commentators point out the vulnerability that Jesus is asking of us, going into a potentially hostile world not alone, but without any of the things that allow us to provide shelter and food or basic security for ourselves; depending on others not only for our physical needs, but for success and even the opportunity to work.
That’s challenging enough when we’re feeling good about the world, or about ourselves. 

And only trusting God without reservation, with absolutely no limits, makes it possible to do this while we grieve, while we seek our own healing.

 

That’s both terrifying, and exactly what we need in order to receive healing for the hurts that go so deep we don’t know how to seek healing, can’t even show them to others to be healed.

 

Naaman – supported by his household – decided to take that risk. To entirely trust God’s word, given second hand, and do the stupid, everyday, task of bathing. And it healed not only his visible leprosy, but the deep space inside him that was longing for an encounter with a God powerful enough to spectacularly heal him. (The next sentence in the Bible, where Naaman returns to Elisha to declare that now he knows God, is inexplicably left out of what we read today.)

 

However they’re feeling about the world and about their own hurts and healing when Jesus sends them, the seventy disciples take that risk, too.  They trust themselves to God in this extraordinarily risky way of everyday being with other people, and come back full of joy, renewed and powerful, to hear Jesus declare the final and ultimate defeat of evil – the healing of all creation, happening now, in their ordinary, risky lives.

 

You and I – whole and healed, or grieving and hurting – are invited to entrust ourselves to God, in vulnerable things we already know we should do:

helping one other person find the care they need;

standing as one among many, or raising our voices, to reject the violence or injustices we see before us;

invoking peace – not the cosmetic absence of conflict, but the gift of deep, shared groundedness and trust – one vulnerable conversation at a time;

doing what feels like too little until it leads you to the opportunity to do a lot;

doing ordinary, risky things to heal and bring joy to others, even as we seek that healing for ourselves.

 

And the peace we give will return to us, we’ll share in its expansion, Jesus promises. We may just find our souls healed of hurts we never knew how to name.

And God will celebrate with us the ultimate defeat of evil, and of the pain the world imposes, as we find healing that is more gradual and quiet, but more powerful, deep, and transformative, than any instant, showy, miracle we ever longed for.