For
the majority of us, the most anticipated messenger in our day
is the mail carrier, a figure extolled in an inscription carved some
eighty years ago on the West Pavilion of the main Post Office in Washington,
D.C. It describes our mail carrier
in this way: “Messenger of sympathy and love, servant of parted friends,
consoler of the lonely, bond of the scattered family, enlarger of the common
life.”
And
you know, despite the fact that today’s carriers leave behind far too many
bills and circulars and pieces of junk, and far too few handwritten letters in
scented envelopes, whenever the top brass in the postal services threaten to cut
mail deliveries to just five days a week, a cry rises from deep inside me:
“Please! Don’t take away my
carrier’s Saturday visit!”
Anticipated
messengers—yes, their coming is comforting and welcomed.
But unexpected messengers—well, they can be quite unsettling: in the
old days the guy who knocked on the door and shouted, “Telegram,” and still
today those pairs of Mormon missionaries and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who seek to
offer us glad tidings.
Unexpected
messages and messengers—well, this morning’s two scripture lessons are full
of them.
The
story of Naaman in our First Lesson is a favorite of mine.
In the space of just fourteen verses, we encounter no fewer than nine
identifiable characters, a plot that’s filled with several ironic twists and
turns, and a number of keen insights into human nature.
Top that off with a satisfying outcome and a significant theological
message, and what more could you want, even if the lectionary does contrive to
stop the story short of its actual ending— indeed bringing it to a halt at its
midpoint. You see, the full story
extends right through vs. 27, so I invite you to go home and read the rest of it
sometime this week! It will provide
you with a rather disquieting laugh or two!
Naaman
is the commander of the army of Aram, which is to say, ancient Syria—a nation
that’s one of Israel’s traditional enemies.
Yet, as exalted and mighty as Naaman is, he suffers from a skin disease
that renders him ritually unclean and socially repugnant.
Now,
on an earlier raid into Israel, Naaman’s men have captured a young girl whom
he has pressed into service as his wife’s slave.
This Israelite girl has every right to hate Naaman, yet when she learns
of his repulsive disease, she’s not driven to loathing but moved to pity, and
she seeks to send him a message of help through her mistress, Naaman’s wife,
an unexpected messenger—unexpected, because of the huge role reversal involved
in a mistress playing a messenger for her slave!
Here
a powerless young Israelite slave possesses and passes along freely the precise
information her powerful Syrian master needs but does not have.
“If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria,” she says.
“He would cure him of his
skin disease.” If only Naaman
were to journey to Israel’s capital and find there God’s prophet, Naaman
could be healed and restored to well-being. How ironic this is: a slave telling her master what to do—a
quite unanticipated kind of message carried by a most unexpected kind of
messenger!
Well,
Naaman receives the slave girl’s advice, and immediately reports it to his
king. And the king quickly sends Naaman off to Samaria with an
offering of treasure and a demanding letter that fails to mention the report of
a resident healing prophet yet still requires of Israel’s king a cure for this
foreign commander.
The
King of Israel tears his clothes in anguish.
He hasn’t a clue as to how Naaman can be cured, and he fears that the
Syrian king’s demand cannot be met and is just a pretext for war.
Irony again, for a simple Israelite maiden is shown to know more about
Israel’s resources and personnel than the King of Israel himself.
But
God’s prophet—who is at last named for us—comes to the rescue!
Elisha has heard of Naaman’s dramatic arrival in the city, and the
prophet sends to his desperate king an unanticipated messenger with an
unexpected message: “Why have you torn your clothes?
Let Naaman come to me.”
So
Naaman’s caravan of horses and chariots and treasure-bearing carts sets forth
from the palace and processes until at last it comes to Elisha’s humble home,
where again, quite unexpectedly, we encounter a messenger!
One would expect that Elisha himself would come forth from his house to
speak personally to so great a man and his entourage.
Had not even the King of Israel done as much for Naaman? But no, Elisha chooses to send a messenger to this man
who'swho’s sitting no more than fifteen feet away, astride his stallion—a
messenger with this upstart message: “Travel
some forty miles back toward Damascus, down to the Jordan River, and there
immerse yourself seven times. That’ll
cure you!”
Naaman
explodes in anger. How
dishonorable, to be addressed at Elisha’s own home through a lowly emissary!
And how preposterous, to be told that seven dips in that dinky, dirty
dribble of water that passes here in Israel for a real river could cure him,
without the power of accompanying rituals and mantras and portentous
thunderclaps and lightning bolts. Naaman
turns right ’round, and rides off in rage.
But
once more this lofty man is rescued by the lowly.
Several of Naaman’s servants pursue him and offer him counsel (again,
the irony of it all: servants counseling a commander!)—as I said, they go
after Naaman and counsel him thus: “Father,
if the prophet had commanded something difficult wouldn’t you have done it?
So what’s to be lost by trying such an easy prescription, one that, in
any event, can be fulfilled as you’re journeying home?”
So
Naaman heeds their advice. Detouring
ever so slightly, down to the Jordan, he immerses himself seven times, as Elisha
had prescribed. And voilŕ, God
heals Naaman, and his skin becomes as smooth as a child’s.
By
offering us this last ironic narrative detail, the storyteller reminds us that
it’s because of the wisdom and caring concern of a young girl that Naaman’s
been restored to the flesh of a young boy. Well-being has returned to this
Syrian commander because, through a chain of unexpected messages and messengers,
a lowly Israelite slave has fulfilled God’s commandment to love her neighbor,
even a neighbor who's her enemy. This
girl, too, is deserving of a pavilion inscription, for she also may be described
and extolled as a “Messenger of sympathy and love, … consoler of the lonely,
… [and] enlarger of the common life.”
The
theme of unexpected messages and messengers begun in the First Lesson continues
in this morning’s Second Lesson, from the Gospel of Luke.
Luke
is the only gospel to tell us that Jesus, in addition to sending out
his inner circle of the Twelve as messengers and emissaries (9:1–6),
alsounexpectedly sends out seventy other disciples as messengers. As I said,
this account is found in no other gospel, and Luke may well be symbolizing for
us his understanding that just as Jesus needed to send out the Twelve to preach
the good news to the twelve tribes of Israel, so Jesus needed to send out the
Seventy to proclaim the gospel to those seventy other nations that, according to
Jewish tradition, existed in the world.
The
task Jesus assigns to the Seventy is this: to be the kind of messengers who
arrive unexpectedly in every town and village to announce their master’s
coming and to prepare his way.
Jesus’s
messengers will be like lambs in a world of wolves.
Many in the world will be unprepared to acknowledge as good news the
coming of persons with a message like Jesus’s.
Some will even lash out at advocates of justice and proclaimers of peace. So the lives of the Seventy will be neither secure nor easy,
They’ll need to travel light, carrying no possessions, so they can swiftly
shake the dust of one place from their feet and move quickly on to the next,
where once again they are to invoke God’s blessing on each home to which they
come by uttering these gentle words: “Peace to this house!”
The
message that the Seventy are to proclaim in every town and village is the
unexpected promise, “God’s reign has come near to you!”
So the message that the Seventy are to carry is identical to the one
Jesus himself has been conveying. Therefore,
listening to the Seventy is the same as listening to Jesus and rejecting them is
the same as rejecting Jesus. For the master, the messenger, and the message are
all one.
In
commissioning the Seventy to be his messengers, it seems probable that Jesus,
quite unexpectedly, is commissioning folk who are the likes of us—not just his
all-star team but his second- and third-stringers as well.
Indeed, the historical Jesus in order to send seventy may well have been
emptying his bench, commissioning every last follower he had. For nothing in the
gospels suggests that Jesus had many more than seventy disciples altogether.
So
if Jesus is unexpectedly commissioning folks who are the likes of us to be his
messengers to every town and village in the world, what is it about God’s
approaching reign that we are to declare on his behalf?
Are we, like the Israelite slave girl, to offer persons of other cultures
and faiths good news as to where healing for humanity’s ills can be found?
Are we, like the mail carriers idealized on the West Pavilion, to be
messengers of sympathy and love, servants of parted friends, consolers of the
lonely, bonds for scattered families, and enlargers of the common life?
Well, the answer is, of course, yes, and yes!
Yes,
we are to offer persons of far-off lands help with healing.
And if in our First Lesson the lowly can mediate wellness to the lofty,
how much more ought the wealthy to mediate wellness to the poor.What greater
modern challenge could we have had presented to us than the one Janet Parker
spoke of last week—the challenge of helping the millions of AIDS-afflicted
African children for whom modern Western medicines can be as miraculous as seven
baths in the Jordan.
And
yes, as Christ’s messengers, we are also to carry news on behalf of Jesus to
such towns as Washington, the news that God’s desire is for peace now and that
the time is here now to stop the bombing of Vieques.
And we are to carry news on behalf of Jesus to Albany, the news that
God’s concern is for children and families, and that the time is here now to
fully fund both the Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program and the Kinship
Guardianship Program. And we are to
carry news on behalf of Jesus to City Hall, the news that God’s sympathy and
love is with the homeless, and that the time is here now to provide thousands of
additional units of affordable housing.
In
this morning’s Second Lesson, Christ, quite clearly and unexpectedly, calls us
to be the messengers who are to go forth into every town and village, carrying
his unsettling messages.
But
I suspect that for most of us the most unsettling message of all is that it is
we, us, that Christ is expecting to be his messengers.
That’s unsettling, for, let’s face it, to be a messenger is to be out
there, exposed and fully public as a follower of Christ.
Well,
(knock)
“Telegram!” (open
envelope and unfold telegram)“Dear disciple [stop] Christ is calling you
to active duty [stop]”
Let
us pray:
O
Christ, You are calling. Through
this service of communion this morning and the presence of Your Holy Spirit with
us daily, grant us the grace and strength we need to be out there with Your
message and fully public as Your messengers.
Amen.
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