Trusting in God's Power to Heal and Make Whole-July 6, 2025

Listen now as we as I read the story of 2 Kings 5:es 1-14 which is a story within itself. Uh it has many pieces but I think this might be uh this one might be entitled if you don't know what you're looking for you probably are not going to find it. It's a very uh very interesting piece in second kings. Now Nammon was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his

master and highly regarded because through him the Lord had given victor victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier but he had leprosy. Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and taken captive a young girl from Israel. And she served name Nammon's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my master would see the prophet who was in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy." Nammon went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. "By all means go," the king

said. I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So Nammon left, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read with this letter, I am sending my sermon, my servant Nammon, to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy. As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, "Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a

quarrel with me? Then Alicia the man of God heard the king of Israel had torn his robes. He sent him this message. Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Nammon went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Alicia's house. Alicia sent a messenger to say to him, "Go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed." But Nmon went away angry and said, "I

thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God. Wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not if Anna and Far are far the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters in Israel? Couldn't I just wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage. Nammon's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet has told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? Well, how much more then when he tells you, wash and be

cleansed?" So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a of a young boy. Then Nammon and all of his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, "Now I finally know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant. Let us now say together the responsive prayer of confession which is also found in your Jesus Christ, you came to serve as you came to

a blind man and gave him sight. Come to us in our darkness and show us the things we cannot see. As you came to a woman tormented for 12 years by bleeding and gave her peace and healing, come to us in our tensions and make us whole. As you came to Lazarus who was dead and brought him from the grave, come to us in our deadness and bring us to the new life now with the living God. Lord Jesus, you came not to be served but to serve. But we see life the other way around. to hit where we do not give, to exploit

who we have not helped, to use what we have not earned. As you have come to a dying thief and promised him paradise, come to us now in forgiveness and give us hope. In your name, Lord, we pray. Amen. Friends, hear the good news. God's grace is poured out like a mighty river to wash us clean from our sins and mistakes. Mercy flows like a neverending stream to make us whole. Friends, believe the gospel and give thanks. In Jesus Christ, we are healed. In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. In Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to

Believing that we have an everpresent companion in God who laughs with us in

joy and weeps with us in pain. Let us share our prayers with God. Loving God, we pray for your earth, for the beauty of creation and all that it entails. We rejoice in the summer months even though they're kind of hot and humid when we can enjoy and explore your creation. At the same time, Lord, we grieve the devastation of the planet, both the de devastation caused by natural disasters and by our own pollution. Send your healing touch upon the earth. We pray for people of all ages, races, genders, religions, and walks of life.

We rejoice in the diversity that brings beauty to our communities and grieve the prejudice that resto that destroys them. We ask that you break down every dividing wall and make us into one people, loving and beloved. We pray for the church throughout the world. Strengthen her in service, witness, and love. Give her energy and vision for the future you are guiding her into. Heal her divisions and save her from isolating fear. grow her into your holy body. This Independence Day weekend, we pray for our nation,

our state, our city. We celebrate the freedoms in our country and pray that they may be protected, valued, and extended to all. We seek a national unity that we would model that we would model Christ's values of sacrificial love and care for the vulnerable. We pray all for all who are sick today who are worn and weary. We pray especially for those suffering illnesses the world would often rather not acknowledge and for those whose illnesses bring stigma and shame from their community rather than support and

healing. Bless the sick with the peace and courage to go on and those who take care of them with energy, wisdom and compassion. We pray for ourselves and for our ministries, rejoicing that you have enabled us to follow your call to love and serve. We ask that you keep our eyes open to the needs and gifts of our neighbors, that we may work in companionship for the coming of your kingdom. We add special prayers for our members who are away from home today. those who are at home ill. Bring them joy

in travels and in healing and return those who are away to us in safety. We bring to you the other prayers of our hearts as we lift them up in your presence, dear God. And now let us join with Christians throughout the world in time and space as we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those our debtors, and lead

us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the king is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. And now friends, we know that we are promised that the harvest is plentiful. There is more than enough to go around. Trusting that God has provided abundantly enough for our needs, let us build up God's church by making our offerings for God's purposes today. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Praise God blessings. Praise him all. Praise him all.

Praise God. Let us pray. Holy God, bless our gifts of money, passion, time, and prayer that they may travel far in your world, blessing your children in every place. Amen. Where do I put them? Maybe instead of you listening finally, it's me trying to get it right. [Laughter] So, you keep coming back, you know, and trying to work on it. Anyway, it's a delight to be with you today and um I'm always happy to help fill in when Brenda needs help. Um today, excuse me, our gospel lesson is from

Luke's Gospel. And if you're following along, I'm adding verse 12 to Luke 10. Um, and I'll explain later. Hear the word of God to us. After this, the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves.

Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house. And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person. But if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from one house to another. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you. Cure the sick who are there and say to them, "The

kingdom of God has come near to you." But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, "Even the dust of your town that clings to your feet, we wipe off in protest against you." You know this, yet know this, the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town. Whoever listens to you listens to me. And whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.

The 70 returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name, even the demons submit to us." He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from the heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. I'm kind of going from one place to

another today. So, I hope I can I I hope I can keep up with myself. And let us pray. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Well, I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July. You know, there are always people on the road and I'm sure you're mindful of folks that are usually in their pew um who aren't here with us today or because it's summer and we're combining the services, it may be harder to figure out

who's not here. But um we're also thinking about those who are unable to be here because of illness or health concerns. Um people such as my friend Brian. Throughout my ministry, I have been reminded of just how much a part of the life of church of the church is involved in healing and wholeness. Granted, it helped that I ended up in hospice ministry where um you know, you have to you're you're dealing with are there other ways to be healed and made whole? But we all visit and support and pray

with and anoint the sick as part of our mission because Jesus was a healer and he called his disciples to continue his healing ministry on their own. The early apostles would say, "In the name of Jesus, I heal you." And they would be healed. God continues to offer us healing and wholeness and abundant life through Jesus. Now, the story of Naaman isn't obviously a story of one of Jesus' healings, but Jesus wasn't the first pe person in the people of Israel who had healed in

God's name. the prophet. Now, we have different pronunciations, and I don't know who's right, who's wrong, or if we're both we're both whistling in the wind, but the prophet Elisha was one of the early healers. And the story of Naaman is a story of God's healing that reached beyond the bounds of the people of Israel, God's people. Just as Jesus healing the 10 lepers reached out beyond Israel to include a Samaritan in Jesus healing. But did any of you think now who was

this Naaman? Anybody remember hearing of him before? Jesus mentioned him in um Luke 4, but that'll come up later. Um Naaman was, we're told, an Aramite. He was a very powerful and important person, the commander of the army of the king. Aram was an enemy of Israel. We're told in the story that the Aramites had come earlier to Israel and taken hostages, including Naaman's wife's um serving girl. So Naaman is a powerful guy, but we're also told that he has leprosy. And as a leper,

he would have been an outcast in a lot of ways. He's a big man with a big ego. as the commander of all the troops. And yet he's also suffering. He has a contagious skin disease. That means his suffering isn't only physical, it's also social. That even though he's a commander, a revered military figure, nobody wants to be near him. In Richard Roar's book, The Universal Christ, he writes that there are really only two things that compel us to spiritual growth. Love and suffering.

These are the primary tools of our transformation. Love, we might understand. You know, I'm in love. I want to be my best self for the person I love. suffering a little harder to see sometimes. But transformation is not found in selfdevelopment or self-improvement, but letting go and in surrendering. Typically, we don't have to look too hard to find what to let go of. As Paula Darcy puts it, God comes to you disguised as your life. Amy Frickholm, a U commentator and regular writer in the Christian century,

said that for Naaman, it was suffering that propelled him to a search. As he attempted to find freedom from his suffering, he was led on a path of spiritual growth. Now, as with many of us, we don't make the journey easily all the time. And I think I've alluded to that in past times that I've been here sharing even a prayer of abandonment with you. But um as Naaman attempted freedom from his suffering, what redeems him, says Frick Holm, to her is his willingness to go on that search even though he was not really

that open to it at first. Don't you wonder what it hurt it took for someone as powerful and um in control as Naaman to ask a servant girl, a slave girl to tell him what she told her wife. be hard to listen to a servant. We don't always listen to the people around us. Maybe the experts, yes, but not always the people that we don't expect to have any ideas. Anyway, Naaman decided finally to listen and to try her suggestion. So she he went to the king who was his boss and said, "King,

I understand that this Elisha is there's a prophet that can heal me in Israel." Didn't say he was Elisha, but It would have been so much simpler if he could have just said, "Okay, let me go to the expert and be healed there." But he's prickly, easily offended, and inclined to abandon his search because he doesn't like the terms. If the story had said Naaman had simply said, "Sure, take me to the Jordan. I'll give it a go." Wouldn't have been a very interesting

and ponderable sermon. It was like, "Yeah, okay." So, he said, "Yes. What makes it relatable is how long it takes him and how much Naaman resists what he's told. And what makes it painful is how Naaman extends his suffering even as it leads him step by step. Naaman's servants. Non did go to the king and the king sent a letter to the king of Israel who had a panic attack because he thought that the king of Aram was trying to stir up trouble and he didn't know how to cleanse

somebody. So, while he was worried and going, "What do I do? Here's this guy. He's brought all of these gifts and everything, and I don't have a clue how to help him." Elisha, a prophet, the one who had taken up the mantle when Elijah was um elevated to heaven. Elisha send him sent him a message and said, "Send him here. Send him here so that he might know that there is truly a prophet in Israel." So he did. And then Elisha wouldn't even bother coming out of his house to talk to Naaman. This

really powerful guy, you know, he says, "Just send him to wash in the Jordan seven times." How happy would you be if you thought yourself pretty important in this particular situation or all the time? You know how how would you feel if somebody just dissed you by not coming out by just saying do this. Naaman was not pleased. In fact, he was very upset. Um and he said, "Look, my own country has rivers that are better than the Jordan." which if I can find it, one of um the G one geography

geographer described this way mostly silent and black in spite of its spread. But now and then, breaking into praise and whitening into foam, the Jordan scour along, muddy between the banks, careless of beauty, careless of life. Didn't sound like some place you'd like to go take a dip. Anyway, Naaman's servants in seeing their master's response understood his ego and his need for control. But they said they came to him and said, "Sir, if the prophet had asked you some to do something hard, he would

have done it, right?" Apparently Naaman liked to do hard things like fight battles. But here's something easy that's asked of him. It's an a switch in the classic fairy tale scenario where the hero must undertake the impossible task. Count all the grains of sand in the sea and separate every grain of poppy seed from every grain of millet. But Naaman isn't a hero, and his task is far simpler. He's just a man in pain, as are some of us. The passage is psychologically astute in

noting the kinds of objections to healing that we come up with. Am I the only one? You know, we think that other people are minimizing our pain or refusing to listen. We want others to notice us and we think we're greater. The greater their attention, the likelier of the chances that we'll be healed. I recently went to Mayo. Part of my going to Mayo was I'd just like to hear from them. I am still praying the prayer of abandonment and knowing that probably nothing's going to help my mild

cognitive impairment, but I wanted to take it to the next level because my doctor had dissed me twice when I told him I had memory problems. If that happens, go to a neurologist fast. Anyway, so I've been catching up with all of those things. Um, and so, you know, you think that you're going to get something really special when the specialists tell you we want to be in control of the who, the how, the when, and where of our healing. And yet, I bet most of you, if not all of you, already know that it doesn't

work that way. It doesn't work that way. So many of our prayers for healing have a certain way that we want to be healed and how that's going to happen. We still want to be in control. And yet it's not in it wasn't for Naaman. It wasn't being in control. It was finally exceeding to the prophets's message going and washing in that dirty Jordan River seven times. And when he came out not expecting anything, he had the skin of a young boy. Sometimes we just can't be in control.

And grace works despite our best efforts to avoid it. The waters of the Jordan, whatever m you may think of them, are still here waiting for us as we search for healing of things in body, mind, or spirit that are broken or hurt in our lives. As we search and continue, we finally hear a small still voice saying, "Go ask, wash." We begin to get it a little at a time and a little at a time and then we learn more. As you learn step by step how to follow your own failures and mistakes and egod

driven refusals are used as the fodder that leads you deeper. It is a story that has a happy ending. Naaman is restored and he seems to understand something new about this miracle. He asks to carry back earth from Israel. Perhaps so that he can remember how he was healed in spite of his prejudices and his uncertainties and his powermongering. But as folklorists Clarissa Estes says, though fairy tales end after 10 pages, our lives don't. We are multi-olume sets. There are always more opportunities to

get it right. The search does go on as long as we'll stay open to it. Now, I have one more point for us to ponder. Jesus in the opening of his ministry in Luke's gospel was in Nazareth and he was in the temple because it was it it was the Sabbath and he stood up to read and was handed the prophet Isaiah, the scroll of the prophet Isaia. Isaia and so he read these words. The spirit of of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for

the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now, they thought that part was great until he said, "Today, this scripture has been um yes. Yeah, that as I fulfilled in your midst, as I said, I have I have I have some little memory glitches." Um, and so at that point the people began to take offense. It was like, "What do you mean? Who do you think you are? You're we know you. You're Joseph and Mary's son, and

you want to tell us that you're the fulfillment of scripture?" When the people took offense, Jesus told them this. He said, "Truly, I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zerapath, that is where Jezebel came from in the region of Siden. And there were many in Israel

with leprosy at the time of Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them was cleansed. Only Naaman the Syrian. Why? Why would this be important? In my Sunday school class a few weeks ago, we were considering who was in in the people of faith. We had a circle and there was us and then there was them outside the circle. And so we listen we we read several scriptural passages and this was one of them. the one where um Jesus said not in Israel only to Naaman. as we talked we kind of like okay um Naaman's in but kind of on the edges or

you know um but we talked about how all of us have impressions of who is part of the people of faith who is worth sharing God's word with who do we think will be receptive and Jesus was saying it's going to surprise you. It's going to surprise you and you may not like what you hear because there are always people who are beyond our view who respond to God's word. The Syrphanician woman who told Jesus, argued with Jesus and said, "You know, you say, "I'm a dog getting crumbs under the table, but or

I'm I'm a dog outside of Israel, but Lord, dogs eat the crumbs at the bottom of the people's table." You know, what about me? What about us? Um, in in this current Not just political climate but national climate where we are doing so much. You're in, you're out. It's us, it's you. Um, it's a really helpful reminder for us to think about whether we are preventing people in need of God's love and healing and care because of the way we draw our circle of who's in and who's

out. Because Jesus who was um suggested the people who were considered to be outsiders outside the fold of faith can receive blessing and healing as well as we can ourselves. So remember as you come up with times when you feel like I there's something broken inside me whether it's body, mind or spirit. Um remember that God is able to provide healing to us in ways that we don't expect. Remember too that as we are sent out like Jesus disciples, we are called to share that good news to any and to all

because God's love is available for all of us. And in God's love, we all pray that we may draw together more closely as one instead of spinning in our different places. Naaman is one of those stories I think that has always resonated with me because I was born in the north but I moved to North Carolina when I was five and found out that I was a damn Yankee and you didn't you don't talk right and so I have always been aware of some of those boundaries that if we have always been part of the in group, we

don't even realize them. This is a passage that makes us consider how we might be limiting our understanding of God's mercy and grace and healing. And so let us pray. Dear friends, we are called to say yes so that nations might gather and dance one great movement for the joy of humankind. We are called to say yes so the rich and poor embrace and become equal in their poverty. Through the silent tears that fall, we are called to say yes that the whisper of our God might be heard through our sirens and the screams of

our bomb bombs. We are called to say yes to a God who still holds fast to the vision of the kingdom for a trembling world of pain. We are called to say yes to this God who reaches out and asks us to share his crazy dream of love. Amen. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Friends, you are being sent out but not to wander aimlessly. You are being sent out with a purpose. Commissioned we call it to tell good

news to be good news. To turn strangers into neighbors and neighbors into companions, to rebuke what is wrong and rejoice in what is so, so right. So go with the love of God who made you, the peace of Christ who saved you, and the courage of the Holy Spirit to lead you forward into this and every day. Amen.