The two books of Kings include lots of talk of lots of kings, in Israel, Judea, and Samaria. I freely admit that I am not fully keep up on who’s who, and which nation broke off from which, and who conquered what. And historically, that’s all probably important to understand deep seated motives and historical perspective of the early God followers.
And I also freely admit, that’s neither my passion or skill. I’ll trust there’s history, and have some vague sense of it, hopefully not tromp all over it, and bring the story to my current day. That, to me, is the beauty of Scripture. There’s something in these ancient stories that’s relevant to me, even if leprosy isn’t my problem, or I haven’t ever thought about tearing my clothes in anguish.
So today’s story involves Naaman, army commander of someone, on some side of some battle. But unfortunately, Naaman has leprosy. A slave girl, from Israel but in captivity serving Naaman’s wife, said that if only Naaman talked to the prophet from Samaria, he could be healed. When Naaman learned of this, he appealed not to the prophet, nor even mentioned the prophet. Instead, he sent lots of riches to the King, asking to be healed. Never mind that the girl had mentioned the prophet.
The King said he couldn’t heal, and apparently with great anguish, tore his clothes. Luckily for both the King and Naaman, Elisha heard about this – Elisha, the very prophet the girl had referenced to start with. So Elisha tells the king to have Naaman come to him.
Naaman comes to Elisha’s house, and sends a message in, asking for healing. Elisha returns a message, telling him to go wash in the Jordan River. Naaman, mighty warrior is slighted. First, Elisha didn’t even come out to see him. Second, aren’t there better rivers in his home land? Why would he need to come all the way to Elisha and wash in a river that was foreign, and inferior?
His servants come, and talk him in to doing what Elisha had suggested, arguing that if Elisha had suggested something much harder, wouldn’t Naaman have done it without grumbling? So Naaman washes in the Jordan, and is healed.
So much in this story – aside from the details relevant to that time – are telling, aren’t they?
The first thing that strikes me is that Naaman doesn’t ask about the prophet, but tries to curry favor with the King. Maybe he was just following protocol, but he doesn’t even mention the prophet. With flourish, he appeals to the King to be healed. I’ve probably done my share of that, overlooking the lower level folks who could truly help, and instead appealed to those more powerful. With any luck the powerful turn me back to the folks who could have helped all along. More stinging, though, is when I’m the one overlooked. Plenty of times, I’ve been the prophet in the story, the person who could genuinely help, and instead others appeal to those around me with more power or prestige. In either case, it’s uncomfortable and not right. Note to self, give credit where it’s due.
The second thing this little story illustrates is that frequently, we look for the hard or complicated solution, when something easy would do. Naaman doesn’t want to just wash in the Jordan. He’s expecting something more in his healing. It’s his servants that remind him that he’d willingly comply with the counsel of Elisha if it had been hard or complicated. Why is it that we try to make things complicated? A 14th logician figured this out, and there’s a theory named for him, Occam’s Razor. The simplest solution is usually the right solution. This story of Naaman tells us something about human nature that causes us to need Occam in the first place. We look for the complicated. We think the bigger and harder our problems, the bigger and harder the solution. Or at least we tend to dismiss the simple.
This morning, I’m thinking about how human nature hasn’t changed. How I can learn about my nature, by reading about army commanders and slave girls 3000 years ago. And today, what I’ve learned from them is that it remains incredibly easy to overlook the genuine helpers and dismiss the easy solutions. From all the riches of this brief-and- historically-dense-but-current-day-relevant story, today, I want to seek the simple solutions, and strive to not just dismiss them because they’re too easy. Who couldn’t use more simple?
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