Hearing God in the Noise 2 Kings 5:1-15 Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B, February 16, 2003 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi These days, I find myself both addicted to and terrified by the evening news: noise of terrorist threats, calls for war, division among allies, a faltering economy. I suppose one cannot always choose one's noise. Instead, one chooses to hear it or to pretend it away: keep on keeping on - building houses, having babies, making plans, pursuing careers, bickering with colleagues, dreaming of love - as if we could fight a war, dodge terrorists and have a predictable future, all without missing a beat. By hearing the noise I don't mean enduring mass media's manipulated "catastrophizing." I mean engaging the noise, accepting it as our new reality. Not the only reality, we hope, but certainly a new and demanding reality. Hearing the noise means looking beyond keeping on keeping on, beyond the world order as we have created it and want it to be. Hearing the noise means discerning the face of God both in what brings us pleasure and what disturbs us. Hearing the noise means allowing God via the Holy Spirit and Scripture to show us both the good and evil in what we consider good and the good and evil in what we consider evil. We do not have to look far. We can begin to hear the noise by engaging today's reading from 2 Kings. As we did not choose today's world conditions, neither did Naaman choose his disease. Naaman, a proud man, the top general of the most powerful nation of his time - a Patton, Eisenhower or Colin Powell type of a general - falls victim to dreaded leprosy and then muddles toward health, toward a restorative knowledge of God and himself. But he makes progress only by ragged fits and starts. He goes to the king of Israel, people he has conquered, bringing a letter instructing the king to cure him of his leprosy. Not to appear too audacious, he also brings a great gift of silver and gold and rich clothing, and probably a SONY DVD player and a Dell laptop computer. He recognizes his illness but the pull of other passions almost derails him. Naaman craves respect almost more than he wants health. He is so sure he knows what he needs, he almost refuses what God wants to give. Naaman approaches Elisha as any proper general would, showing up with horses and chariots and jeeps, and a few helicopters hovering overhead to ensure security. The prophet, surely, will check the most recent New York Times analysis of animosity between Aram and Israel, drop whatever he is doing and respectfully rush out and heal him. But no. Not Elisha who just stays in his easy chair and sends a messenger out to say, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed." Naaman goes off in a huff, probably after instructing his helicopters to settle over Elisha's house and roar in his ears for a while. All Naaman wants is a proper healing ceremony, one with a touch of grace and class as befits his stature, and all he is getting is a remarkably irritating and demeaning run around from a God who refuses to be bound to his expectations. Even if Elisha got away with ordering a seven-fold dip in a river, the least he could have done was to suggest it be carried out in some mighty river like our own Mississippi River, rather than that mere creek, the Jordan! When Naaman doesn't get the attention he thinks is his due, God waits, letting him vent and strut. No lightning bolt consumes him in mid-rant, no disapproving angel descends. Once again from unexpected quarters, from Naaman's lowly servants, comes the suggestion that he certainly would have tried some great and heroic healing process commanded by Elisha, so what harm could it do to simply get wet in a river, even if it is a puny one? So, God waits until Naaman acquits himself of the odd human propensity to work against one's own good. And when, after stalking off, he relents and dips himself in the Jordan seven times, we see in him what God has seen all along - a man of faith. God has been unpredictable and elusive, but God has come through as Naaman has allowed the bottle of the preconceptions within which he has tried to tame the divine to be broken. And so it was all along. We'd be wrong to regard his healing and conversion as something completely new, a miracle. What God waits for in Naaman is the fitful progress of a transformation under way in Naaman even before he sets foot on the soil of Samaria or in the Jordan - a slender opening, first apparent when the great warrior takes advice from his wife's servant girl and subdues his disgust at needing help from an enemy's god. Grace has established a pulse in him - irregular, perhaps, but not arrested by his unchecked rage. When he finally gives up, lets go, obeys his servants and washes in the water, there isn't a lot more healing for the river to do. All that remains is for Naaman to meet, knee-deep, the One who engineers his victories and presides over his life. Awash in the revelation, Naaman, "a great man" from the start, becomes Yahweh's man for good. Naaman has come a long, ragged way. The man who derided the stupid river in Israel now claims the God of Israel as the only God. There's still a long way left to go. It's not as if Naaman will never scream or sulk again. For now, however, God seems to think he's made enough progress. It's as if Yahweh takes whatever Yahweh can get. Given the erratic character of the human procession toward the holy and the deadly pitfalls lining the road, God is not touchy about the now-and-then concession to the status quo. Are name calling of others as "infidel" or "axis of evil" and calls for "holy war" not shouts of self righteousness and only noise to God? These questions twist in my mind as I encounter the strange and unsettling story of a mighty soldier called Naaman. We know Naaman. We know all the irritating and endearing, weak and tenacious behaviors in this story - altruistic aims, big ideas, bad tempers; smelling a rat, taking offense, throwing tantrums, pleading and cajoling, seeing reason, changing your mind, eating crow. Pride prevents us from going to the Jordan River. I sincerely pray that God awakens to our noise and moved with pity sends us a lowly servant saying, "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'?" We clearly cannot save ourselves. We cannot even talk with each other. Our cultures seem isolated. Our generations and neighborhoods seem isolated. Salvation-worthy issues like war and peace, justice and equity, food and shelter, hope and love seem too dangerous to address directly. We need God to make us cleaner than we can make ourselves. But we, like Naaman want a predictable God, a God who will act the way we think best. We've all asked for brazen blessings on unavoidable compromises. But just when we think we have squeezed God, like a genie, into a bottle from which he will emerge only upon our command, God lets out a great roar and shatters the bottle. Dealing with human weaknesses is part of everyone's daily struggle. Muddling along is too. It's what we do, and we hope God will have mercy on us for it. So to watch God leave Naaman alone while never leaving his side is a huge relief. It is also a strong antidote to perfectionism, a reproach to a thousand daily judgmental impulses, a cause for gratitude and praise. But hearing the noise makes us afraid. So, God out waits us while in weakness healing begins. God out waits us while we choose to hear the noise - and learn to breathe the Spirit's air. We change and grow, believe and love by grace, the best we can. We are going to the river, whatever the reason or unreason that moves us; we are going to wade right in. Knee-deep in unconditional love, we'll meet the One who gives us all our ragged victories and presides over our life. So this morning, God calls Christians to rethink all those circles we create to include some people and exclude others. Jesus calls us to re-examine the barriers we create to ensure that only the "right" people come into our fellowship. The Holy Spirit calls us to remember that the systems of power that we construct do not limit the power of God's action to heal and transform this world. The Scriptures teach us, time and time again, that Jesus comes into the world not to support the "centers" of the powerful but to touch and heal the people on the "margins" - the powerless, abandoned, excluded, degraded, exploited, and disregarded. These are the ones with whom "right" people do not associate but righteous people recognize as fully God's own. The challenge of the Gospel is not to include them into "our circle" but to allow God to expand that circle until it most fully reflects the richness that God alone has created. We must allow the Spirit of God to guide the relationships within that circle to the place where they mirror the love that God has for all. So let us come to the Table of Grace hearing in the noise the voice of God at work in our fellowship of faith, the voice of Christ calming us in our fears, and the voice of the Holy Spirit instructing us to grow from strength to strength in the service of the God who has loved us all into life.