The Graciousness of God: Naaman and Elisha, Cornelius and Peter

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

Feb. 10, 2013

Before I get to the actual sermon, I want to share with you some of my own story.  Growing up Christian, as I did, and as perhaps some of you did, resulted in my getting the Gospel message mixed up with the Christian culture variation I grew up in.  I made God like my parents and other adults I was around, the negative as well as the positive.  I did not have much understanding of the enduring love of God, and how that is a part of God's character, nor of God's grace.  I lived in fear of the Rapture catching me in an imperfect state.  I feared God would abandon me for mysterious reasons.  

Because God is love, God began tutoring me about how God loves when I was in my teens, a rebellious and sincere spiritual seeker.  God met me at various times, never insisting I be all perfect first.  And a few years ago, when I was so angry at God for messing up my life, I was in church during our time of silent waiting, and I heard God say, "Look at me." Just like a little kid, I kept my head down in sulky anger.  I felt God take my chin and tip up my head and God looked into my eyes, and I saw nothing in God's eyes except love.  This is what I want everyone I know to experience.  God loves me, God loves you, even if or when we don't like it. 

When I took this denominational job, God placed these words of Jesus in front of me: "Come to me, all you who labor and are carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke on you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in my spirit, and your souls will find rest.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." When I have found the load heavy, I try to off-load it onto Jesus because of this promise of partnership and because Jesus is strong and smart. Jesus wants to partner with each one of us.

The two stories that caught me as I prepared for today’s sermon were the story of Naaman and Elisha and the story of Cornelius and Peter.  One from the Old Testament, one from the New.  Listen to the stories in a slightly free-range version, and then later you can read them in 2 Kings 5 and Acts 10.  To be sure, there are some differences, but those seem minor compared to the liberating and grace-filled similarities.

Naaman was the commander of the Syrian forces, which at this time were successful in battle against Israel.  He took prisoners, and one of those, a young girl, became a slave in his house.  Naaman also had the skin disease the Bible calls leprosy, which is different from what we call leprosy today.  It was a disease that disfigured people by turning parts of their skin white and was believed by Israelites to be an outward sign of a failure to care for others’ needs and share their hurts—gossip, murder, stinginess, theft, pride.  The little Israelite girl said to Naaman’s wife, “If the master were in Israel, he could go to the prophet Elisha and be healed of his leprosy.”  Naaman’s wife told Naaman, he told the king of Syria, and the king said, “Go to Israel and tell their king I want you to be healed.”

Naaman took some gifts with him, entered Israel and told the king there that the king of Syria wanted Naaman healed.  The king of Israel was scared and suspicious: “He just wants to pick a fight with us so he can invade us again.”  He was so upset he tore his clothes apart.

But Elisha, the prophet of God, heard about the problem and sent a message to the king of Israel.  “Send Naaman on over to me.  He’ll find out there is indeed a God to be respected in Israel.”

Naaman journeyed to where Elisha lived.  Elisha sent his servant out to meet the Syrian captain.  “My master Elisha says that you should go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River and you will be healed.”

Naaman was so offended.  “The prophet won’t even come talk to me himself?  The nerve!  And to wash in the Jordan?  That river is filthy, not like the sparkling waters of my rivers back home in Syria.”  He turned around and started home, angry and disappointed.

Some of his followers came to him, probably cautiously, and said, “Sir, if the prophet had asked you to undertake a dangerous and difficult quest in order to be healed, wouldn’t you have tried it?  Why not try this easy thing?  What could it hurt?”

Naaman saw the sense of this.  He drove to the Jordan River, walked into the water, and washed himself seven times.  When he came up after the seventh, his skin was clear of leprosy, as unblemished as a baby’s.  “Now I know that there is no other God in all the world except Israel’s God,” he said.  “I will never worship any other God.” He went back to thank Elisha, who came out to meet him this time.  “Let me give you a thank you gift,” he said.  “No need,” said Elisha.  “Then do me one more kindness,” said Naaman.  “Let me take dirt from Israel so that I can build an altar to your God on it and worship only your God from this day on.  But please ask the Lord to forgive me for my duty to my king—entering the temple of the Syrian god Rimmon and bowing down; I will have to bow down also.  May God forgive me for this.”  “Go in peace,” replied Elisha.

Notice these things:  Naaman was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  His healing came about as he was able to humble himself to do a simple task prescribed by one of the lowly Israelites.  The healing was free—an example of God’s graciousness. Naaman was convinced on the spot of the supremacy of God and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  He went home to his job and family and resumed his duties, again covered by the graciousness of God.  He is a sign of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and implicitly a rebuke to those who wanted to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in Luke 4:27, “there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” This comment maddened the Nazareth folks to the point where they wanted to kill Jesus.

This story focuses on Naaman, the foreigner.  We don’t see much of what Elisha was thinking or how God prepared him for the encounter.

In the New Testament, we do see this preparation in the story of Cornelius the Roman and Peter, Jesus’s disciple.  Acts 10 tells this story, and it is so important, it is retold several times.  I’ll tell it just once.

Once again, the foreigner is a political enemy of Israel, a Roman military officer, part of the occupation forces.  But Cornelius reverenced God, gave to the needy, and prayed regularly. One day he saw an angelic messenger from God, who told him to send for Peter from Joppa.  The angel even gave Cornelius Peter’s street address.  So Cornelius sent three of his people to get Peter.

The next day in Joppa, around noon, Peter went up on the roof to pray.  He became hungry and asked someone for something to eat, but while he was waiting, he too had a message from God.  He saw a sheet full of animals, reptiles, and birds coming down from heaven, and he heard a voice tell him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”

Peter was horrified.  “You know I have never eaten anything unclean.  I can’t do this!”  The voice replied, “Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.”

This happened three times.  Peter was amazed and wondering what it meant when God’s spirit said to him, “Go downstairs and find the three men who are looking for you.  Don’t hesitate to go with them, for I sent them to you.”

Peter went downstairs and found Cornelius’s messengers.  “I’m the one you’re looking for.  Why have you come?”

They told him about Cornelius and his message from God.  Peter invited them in for the night.  (This was a big deal, by the way, since at least one of these folks was a Roman soldier.)

The next day, Peter and some other believers went to see Cornelius.  The whole family met them along with close friends.  When Peter entered the house, Cornelius bowed down to him, but Peter made him stand up.  “I am only a human,” Peter said.

He addressed the crowd.  “You all know it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person unclean or impure.  So when I was sent for, I came willingly.  Why am I here?”

Cornelius told him again the story of the heavenly messenger, and how glad he was to see Peter in person.  “Now we are all here in the presence of God to hear what God has to say to us.”

So Peter spoke:  “I now realize how true it is that God doesn’t have favorites.  Instead, if you revere and respect God and do what God says is right, God accepts and welcomes you. So I’ll share what I know about God.  God sent to Israel the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who owns everything. God set Jesus apart and filled him with the Holy Spirit and power to do good and defeat the devil.  God was with him.  I know because I saw this myself.  I also saw Jesus murdered—crucified—and then I saw how God raised Jesus out of death.  Many of us saw the risen Jesus, who sent us out to tell this story and preach that Jesus is appointed and ordained by God to judge the living and the dead.  All the prophets point to him and bear witness that everyone who trusts in Jesus and relies on Him receives forgiveness of sins.  That is the nature and character of Jesus.”

While Peter spoke, the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles and they spoke in unknown tongues, just like the Jews earlier at Pentecost. 

Peter’s Jewish companions were surprised by this.  Then Peter asked, “Can anyone forbid taking these folks into full fellowship with us through the ceremony of baptism, seeing that God has graced them just as God graced us with the Holy Spirit?” And no one could.

When Peter went home, he was in trouble with the other Jewish believers, so he told the whole story again (see Acts 11).  “The voice spoke from heaven, ‘Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.’ So who was I to think I could oppose God.”

Then Jewish believers started preaching to Gentiles, and Gentiles believed, and Barnabas went and got Saul, who became an apostle to the Gentiles, and even later, in Acts 15, Peter stood and again told the story of Cornelius being graced with the gift of the Holy Spirit even prior to baptizing him. Peter said, “God, who knows the heart—the will, the emotions, the imagination—bore witness to their faith by giving them the same Holy Spirit we received.  God made no difference between us and them.  God cleansed them by faith, by their conviction that Jesus came from God, and that by means of Jesus, we are saved for eternity and welcomed into God’s kingdom. Now then, why do you test God’s patience by requiring Gentile believers to come under the law of Moses which neither we nor our ancestors have been able to obey.  We Jews are saved through the grace of our Master and Owner Jesus just as the Gentiles are.”

James stood in agreement and quoted some prophets who pointed to the inclusion of Gentiles. He concluded, “We should not put obstacles in the way of Gentiles who turn to God.  We will ask them to refrain from sexual immorality, from eating food sacrificed to idols, from eating or drinking blood, and from practicing strangulation (a puzzle that may refer to the common practice of infanticide, see David Instone-Brewer's sermons on the web). These four behaviors scandalize Jews, and we want to reach them, too.“

Notice these things:  Cornelius was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  Unlike Naaman, he was able to humble himself, even bowing to one of the lowly Jews.  The gift of God’s Holy Spirit was free, not requiring any kind of ritual—an example of God’s graciousness. Peter was convinced on the spot of the graciousness of God to all human beings, and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  Peter went home to his fellow Jewish believers and taught them about the graciousness of God.  Cornelius and Peter are signs of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and they are an implicit rebuke to those who want to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in John 10:16, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I am commissioned by God to bring with me to God, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.”

We don’t read in the history that the conversion of Naaman had any far-reaching effect on ancient Syria, but we do read that the conversion of Cornelius, and because of him, the convincement of Peter, had an enormous effect.  Christians now understand God through the work God did in the heart of Peter.  Salvation is not through rules but through the graciousness of God.  The law of God’s kingdom is the law of love.  As Micah puts it, “What does God require of us but to do the right thing, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.” And as Paul says, “The secret is this, Jesus Christ in, beside, and with you, your hope and expectation of glory.”

Some queries to think about:

How can I exemplify to those inside and outside the church the character and nature of God’s graciousness? 

How have I cleared away barriers so that others can trust and love Jesus?

 How have I imposed my rules on others in ways that are hurtful and ungracious?

Pay Me What You Owe Me

Ezekiel the prophet lived during the time of Israel’s exile to Babylon, an exile God brought about to purify and restore Israel to a faithful relationship.  Chapter 20 tells us that the history of Isarel is the story of Israel’s unfaithfulness, idolatry, and disobedience.  It is also the story of God’s faithfulness, outrage, and patience.  God says to Israel through Ezekiel: I will not allow you to ask me anything.  You have made up your minds to be like the heathens around you who worship nature.  But I will not allow it.  Angry as I am, I will rule you with a strong hand.  I will gather you and speak your doom to your face.  I will make you obey my covenant and I will send away those who continue to rebel and sin.  I will act with honor despite your wicked, evil actions, so I will not deal with you as you deserve. 

There is a true mystery in the relationship of our free will and God’s free will.  How is it that God makes space for us to choose against God’s will?  Just from looking around us we see that God does make this space, and the consequences ensue.  At the same time, the freedom to choose against is the freedom to choose for, and I want to encourage each of us today to choose for God and do what we know is right to do that lies immediately before us today and each day.  When you choose to ask God into your life, God takes you very seriously and will do all God can to make you resemble your elder Brother Jesus.  But, of course, you are still choosing whether or not to cooperate with God. 

In this post, I am going to focus on what the Bible tells us is the will of God for each of us with regard to our opponents, our enemies, our adversaries.  

Matthew 5

I haven’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.  Anyone who breaks the least of the commands and teaches others to do so will be least in the kingdom of heaven, but anyone who practices and teaches these commands will be great in the kingdom of heaven.  You have to be more righteous than the professionally righteous people around in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Not only can you not murder someone, you also must not hold another person in contempt because of being angry with that person.  You can’t offer a gift acceptable to God with contempt for another person in your heart.  God will be sure your heart is right, so cooperate as quickly as you can.

Not only must you limit revenge to the harm done you, but you must be generous with those who harm you or want something from you.

Not only must you love your neighbor, but you must love your enemy and pray for those who make your life unpleasant.

Try being more like God, your Father, who sends sunshine and rain to both evil and good people.  Extend your love to all.

Matthew 5:25 (Luke 12:59)

Be well disposed, of a peaceable spirit, wish well toward your opponent, your enemy, your adversary without delay while you are still traveling together on the same road so that your opponent will at no time deliver you into the hands of the judge and the judge turn you over to his officer who will throw you into prison, into confinement, where your every move is watched. Amen.  This is the truth. I tell you, you will never by any means go freely from that jail until you have restored what you owe that opponent to the very last penny. 

I owe a lot of how I understand this passage to George MacDonald, a 19^th century preacher who often focused on holiness.

First:  do today what you know you will have to someday.

George MacDonald, “The Last Farthing,” Unspoken Sermons.  “I think I do know what is meant by 'agree on the way,' and 'the uttermost farthing.' The parable is an appeal to the common sense of those that hear it, in regard to every affair of righteousness. Arrange what claim lies against you; compulsion waits behind it. Do at once what you must do one day. As there is no escape from payment, escape at least the prison that will enforce it. Do not drive Justice to extremities. Duty is imperative; it must be done. It is useless to think to escape the eternal law of things; yield of yourself, nor compel God to compel you.

Second: this parable does not threaten punishment so much as it explains the natural consequences of God’s nature and of human nature.  Our response to it reveals our own hearts.

“To the honest [person] the word is… sweet as most loving promise. He who is of God's mind in things, rejoices to hear the word of the changeless Truth; the voice of the Right fills the heavens and the earth, and makes his soul glad; it is his salvation.

Third: God will judge between us if we will not come to agreement by our own choice.  This satisfies our love of justice even though we ourselves will be judged as we judge others.

"If God were not inexorably just, there would be no stay for the soul of the feeblest lover of right: 'thou art true, O Lord: one day I also shall be true!' 'Thou shalt render the right, cost you what it may,' is a dread sound in the ears of those whose life is a falsehood: what but the last farthing would those who love righteousness more than life pay? It is a joy profound as peace to know that God is determined upon such payment, is determined to have his children clean, clear, pure as very snow; is determined that not only shall they with his help make up for whatever wrong they have done, but at length be incapable, by eternal choice of good, under any temptation, of doing the thing that is not divine, the thing God would not do.”

…

Fourth: therefore, choose to do the right thing now.  And you know what it is.

“I read, then, in this parable, that a man had better make up his mind to be righteous, to be fair, to do what he can to pay what he owes, in any and all the relations of life--all the matters, in a word, wherein one man may demand of another, or complain that he has not received fair play. Arrange your matters with those who have anything against you, while you are yet together and things have not gone too far to be arranged; you will have to do it, and that under less easy circumstances than now. Putting off is of no use. You must. The thing has to be done; there are means of compelling you."

MacDonald includes the following dialogue.  I've put the words of God in bold italics to clarify the parts.

'In this affair, however, I am in the right.'

'If so, very well--for this affair. But I have reason to doubt whether you are capable of judging righteously in your own cause:--do you hate the man?'

'No, I don't hate him.'

'Do you dislike him?'

'I can't say I like him.'

'Do you love him as yourself?'

'Oh, come! come! no one does that!'

'Then no one is to be trusted when he thinks, however firmly, that he is all right, and his neighbour all wrong, in any matter between them.'

'But I don't say I am all right, and he is all wrong; there may be something to urge on his side: what I say is, that I am more in the right than he.'

'This is not fundamentally a question of things: it is a question of condition, of spiritual relation and action, towards your neighbour. If in yourself you were all right towards him, you could do him no wrong. Let it be with the individual dispute as it may, you owe him something that you do not pay him, as certainly as you think he owes you something he will not pay you.'

'He would take immediate advantage of me if I owned that.'

'So much the worse for him. Until you are fair to him, it does not matter to you whether he is unfair to you or not.'

'I beg your pardon--it is just what does matter! I want nothing but my rights. What can matter to me more than my rights?'

'Your duties--your debts. You are all wrong about the thing. It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not; it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts grievous wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not. We have a good while given us to pay, but a crisis will come--come soon after all--comes always sooner than those expect it who are not ready for it--a crisis when the demand unyielded will be followed by prison.'

Fifth: God can use the consequences of our bad choices to move us toward redemption.

“The same holds with every demand of God: by refusing to pay, the man makes an adversary who will compel him--and that for the man's own sake. If you or your life say, 'I will not,' then [God] will see to it. …

“If the man acknowledge, and would pay if he could but cannot, the universe will be taxed to help him rather than he should continue unable. If the man accepts the will of God, he is the child of the Father, the whole power and wealth of the Father is for him, and the uttermost farthing will easily be paid. If the man denies the debt, or acknowledging does nothing towards paying it, then--at last--the prison! God in the dark can make a man thirst for the light, who never in the light sought but the dark.”

My Experience

I share this with you because my own experience makes clear to me how true this is.  When I identify someone as my enemy, essentially I am saying, “You are not giving me what you owe me.” Often this is true. However, if I do not choose every day to align my will with God’s will as much as I can that day, I am choosing to be imprisoned by my own sense of having been wronged.  I can’t ever get out of that prison by focusing on how right I am.  A friend of mine described this as putting a barrier across the neck of an hourglass.  My state of mind freezes time at the point where my sense of being treated unfairly or unjustly occurs.  Every day my mind rehearses how badly my enemy has treated me.  It comes into all my significant conversations and colors all my relationships with others.  I had a high school friend who cut herself to remind herself of how other people had betrayed her.  She did it on purpose to prevent herself from accidentally forgetting the wrong.  This is a picture of how we treat our souls when we refuse to obey God's will to reconcile with our opponent.

I usually have to start by asking God for justice.  Essentially, I am turning my opponent over to God to judge.  I also, against my own inclination but with my will, start praying for God to bless my enemy.  I hate this part but I do it.  I try and fail to let the person off the hook.  But I’m trying.  I am by sheer act of will removing the barrier in the hourglass so that time can move on from the moment of injury.  So that the cut can heal from the inside out and then scab over.  God honors my efforts, feeble and incomplete though they are.  God loves me in them and lets me know it.  Often I end up blaming God for how things have gone so wrong: "You could have stopped this, you could have done something, I hope you know what you’re doing."

My experience, and I am not lying to you, is that God shows up when I express honest anger toward him.  It is a lot like the book of Job—Job insists that he did not deserve the suffering he received, he blames God for it, and God shows up and is friendly.  I will tell you two stories.  I was complaining out loud to God and added, “And on top of that, you have let me have a hemorrhoid. Don’t you think that’s piling on.” And God said, almost aloud, “Piling on—that’s funny.”  You see, the plural of hemorrhoid is piles. I laughed out loud for about 10 minutes, and something deep inside me eased up the pressure.  Because God showed up when I got really honest about what I was feeling.

The second story came after a huge disappointment, when it looked like I wasn’t ever going to achieve what I dreamed of.  I was in church, with my head bent down on the pew in front of me, crying with rage, really, and asking God why God favored my enemy over me.  God said to me, very clearly, “Look up at me.” I kept my head down.  And I felt as if God placed a finger under my chin, lifted my head, and made me look into God’s eyes.  “What do you see?” God asked.  “Love, nothing but love,” I replied. I cannot get over that experience.  I hope everyone reading this knows what is in God’s eyes for you. 

Finally, as things turn out, God helps me get to a place where my heart is no longer at war with my enemy.  God pinned me down in the car once to tell me that simply saying “You can let that so and so into heaven if you have to, but I don’t want to sit close to him,” was no longer the best I could do, and God, unsurprisingly, was right. I said, “OK, God, please let that so and so into heaven,”

That’s a good place to end.  Dear God, please let our enemies into heaven.  If you can’t get there yet, start here: Dear God, please decide justice between me and my enemy.