How to Become a Saint

2 Kings 5:1-15a; Matthew 8:2-3

Naaman the Syrian general returned to the prophet Elisha, his flesh restored, his body cleansed, and he stood before the prophet and said: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”

The last two Sundays we’ve heard stories of the early kings of Israel – David and Solomon. Well, their successors didn’t have their grace or their wisdom. The kingdom was divided into separate kingdoms of Israel in the north, with its capital at Samaria, and Judah in the south, with its capital at Jerusalem.

And, as the Bible tells the story, most of the kings were pretty bad. They were not devoted to the Lord, they did not practice justice, they were much like the pagan kings around them. And increasingly faith in the God who freed the ancestors from Egypt and brought them to the land and gave them the law to live as God’s own people became one option among many for the people of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

And so faith increasingly became identified not with the official leadership of the kings, but with holy individuals called “prophets.” A prophet is not necessarily someone who predicts the future, but someone whose faith is strong enough, whose relationship with God is close enough, whose insight into God’s ways is deep enough, that they are perceived as speaking God’s word, channeling God’s truth in the here and now. Sometimes these prophets advised the kings, but they also spoke directly to the people and acted independently, especially when the kings didn’t listen to them.

The greatest of these prophets was called Elijah, who was born about 20 years after the death of Solomon, and who lived mostly in the northern kingdom of Israel. Today we have a story about his successor, Elisha, which takes place somewhere in the mid-800s B.C.E. But the central figure in the story is a Syrian general called Naaman. And in keeping with theme of All Saints Sunday, while Elisha is the holy man who knows the ways of God and how to access the power of God – and therefore clearly a saint – Naaman is most certainly not a saint, Naaman gets everything wrong, he’s as wrong as you can be about who God is and how God works – but through Elisha, and through the work of other saints whose names are not told to us but who also seem somehow to know God and God’s ways, Naaman not only receives healing but begin to understand and to believe in God, and so to become something of a saint as well.

So Naaman is a Syrian general – he’s the commander of the Syrian army, in other words, the top enemy of Israel. He’s the bad guy, General Rommel or Tojo in World War II, someone no one in Israel would trust or have the slightest sympathy for. He had been successful in battle against Israel and other enemies of Syria – but now, he has a skin disease. Which is not just a misfortune, but could jeopardize his career, his standing as a leading man of Syria – if he has to be quarantined as a leper, how is he supposed to enjoy his success and his power?

Well, there is a young Israelite girl, captured by the Syrian army on a raid, now enslaved and working as a domestic servant in Naaman’s household.  We do not know her name, we can only imagine the trauma that she has experienced in her young life.  She is aware of Naaman’s disease and his worry, and she says, according to the text we just read, “If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.”  I don’t know how she means this.  Maybe it’s sarcastic – “You know in Israel we have a prophet who would help you … if only you hadn’t made yourself such an enemy to my people.”  Maybe she’s genuinely concerned and trying to be helpful.  But either way, Naaman the great man, the powerful general doesn’t know how to solve his problem. But a poor, unnamed, enslaved, traumatized girl, she knows. That is how it is with the wisdom of God.

Well, Naaman takes his idea to the king of Syria, who writes a letter to the king of Israel asking him to help Naaman with his skin disease, and sends him off with a large entourage and plenty of money and valuable gifts.  But when the envoys reach the king of Israel, the king of Israel panics.  What is this – I’m supposed to heal the enemy general of his disease? And what if I don’t? What kind of ultimatum is this?  This must be some kind of a trick!  That’s how kings think, it’s all about war and who’s getting one up on whom.  But the prophet Elisha sends word to the king – Don’t worry. Let me handle this. Just send them to me.

So the entourage, with the horses and chariots, brings the great man to the humble home of the prophet Elisha.  Now, of course, the Middle Eastern tradition is to welcome a visitor to your home with a meal and generous hospitality. Especially a visiting dignitary like the famous General Naaman. But Elisha does not invite Naaman into his home. Elisa doesn’t even go outside to meet him. Elisha simply sends Naaman a message – Go and wash seven times in the Jordan River, and you will be clean.

And Naaman is furious.  Now Naaman thinks he’s the one who has been tricked.  The man doesn’t have the decency to even leave his house to greet me!  Doesn’t he know who I am?  I thought he was going to come out here and wave his hand and pray to his god and heal me in front of everybody!  Wash in the Jordan River?  I came all this way for that!  Don’t we have bigger and better rivers back in Syria?  What an insult!

Naaman actually understands nothing of the ways of God.  He tried to get access to the man of God by getting letters from one king to another, by bringing many expensive gifts, and it would have backfired unless the man of God had intervened on Naaman’s behalf. Then Naaman thinks the prophet is going to be impressed by his fame and his power, and it turns out the prophet could not be less impressed.  Naaman thinks he knows how the prophet is going to heal him, and when the prophet doesn’t do what he expected, Naaman is angry.  Naaman expects a dramatic healing, like in the movies, and when he’s asked to do something simple and (to his mind) completely insufficient, he’s insulted.

That is how someone who doesn’t know God thinks God answers prayers. They expect God will be impressed and ready to listen because of what they’ve accomplished – or they’re afraid God won’t listen to them because of their failings, so they need some powerful patron saint to intercede on their behalf.  And even we who should know better, how often we think we know what we want God to do about our problem and are disappointed when God has a different plan. As if prayer were about informing God of our opinion as to the best way to solve our problems – as if God needed our advice! And we often expect God to ask us to do something dramatic – when in fact God usually asks of us something simpler, less obviously impactful.

Naaman doesn’t get it – but fortunately, some unnamed members of his entourage do.  They wait for Naaman to finish venting and then they ask: If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it, right?  So what’s the harm in trying what he said?  Once again, it’s the ordinary people, not the powerful, not the self-important, who understand God’s ways are not our ways, who know that just doing what we’ve been asked to do with humility and faith is more conducive to receiving God’s grace and healing than any dramatic or heroic deed we might have imagined God wanted of us.

And so, against his initial response, Naaman decides to listen to the word of God. The word spoken through the famous holy man of God Elisha, the word spoken through his unnamed friends. And in listening, Naaman is healed, and returns to Elisha with a true confession of faith: Now I know that there is no god in all the world except the Lord, the God of Israel. And this time Elisha comes out of his house and greets Naaman and receives his confession in person, face to face.

The gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus mentioned the story of Elisha and Naaman when he visited the synagogue at Nazareth early in his ministry.  When the people of Nazareth demanded a miracle from their hometown boy Jesus, he said, remember that there were many sick people in Israel in the time of Elisha, but the only one who received a healing was not an insider, but the ultimate outsider, Naaman the Syrian general.  Jesus recalls this story, not as an example of a miracle that a powerful man of God like Elisha could perform, but to pose the question to the people of Nazareth – why does God sometimes perform miraculous healings and other times not? Why, when we expect a miracle, does God not provide one, when other people who seem so much less deserving receive healing?

This word from Jesus helps us to see that the story of Elisha and Naaman isn’t really about the power of Elisha to do great things for God.  It’s really a story about the conversion of Naaman.  Naaman starts out not just a man without faith in God.  He’s completely clueless about how God works and in fact thinks of himself as an enemy of God’s people – and yet Elisha leads him to understand that he was thinking about God all wrong, that slave girls and unnamed extras in the entourage understand God better than the famous and powerful. The healing of Naaman’s skin is simply the means by which Naaman’s heart can be healed, how an enemy of God’s people can become a friend of God, by trusting in God’s word that brings healing and life on more levels than one.

In today’s reading we also remembered another man with a skin disease who came to Jesus with a confession of faith: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Notice that this nameless man doesn’t actually ask to be healed.  He simply says, “I believe you have the ability to make me clean, if you want to. I trust that you can make me clean, or not, as you will. Your will be done.”  If Jesus does heal him, or not, this man will trust Jesus either way.  As it turns out, the man was healed – but he might well not have been, although his story probably wouldn’t have been passed down to us.

Why are some people healed, and not others? More importantly, how can I be one of the ones who gets healing, or whatever else I think I most want and need from God?  I think the story of Naaman and Elisha is meant to tell us that this is the wrong question.  The miracle of healing by Elisha or Jesus is secondary to the journey of faith that is taken, improbably, by Naaman the Syrian general, by an outcast and leper in the days of Jesus. Just as Naaman didn’t like Elisha’s answer to his request at first, and had to be persuaded to accept it anyway, we might not like God’s answers to our prayers at first either.

But if we trust that God has our best interests at heart, if we are willing to put our trust in a loving God and accept whatever God gives us, it turns out that amazing things can happen. And it is often the unnamed, least powerful, most unexpected people who see best how God is actually present and at work. To let go of our preconceptions and expectations and be willing to discover where God is already busy and at work, wherever that may be … this is how to become a saint. And to get connected to those who already are.