RevPeterLougheed
Taking risks
Posted on: 02/17/2009 17:53
When I was 16 years old I had an accident playing football. I got tackled running back a kick and broke both bones just above my ankle. I spent nine long weeks in a hot, heavy and unwieldy cast, which encased most of my leg.
When they cut off that cast, it felt like I had dropped an overloaded pack sack after a long, and weary hike. I was so tired of walking around with crutches, books under one arm, trying to open doors with the other, taking for ever to get up and down stairs.
Friends had warned me how much it would hurt when I put my foot down for the first time, so I braced myself, but there was no pain. I thought to myself, “This is great. Now I can get back to my old life.”
Wrong. The leg had no strength whatsoever. I tried to play hockey that year but I got demoted to a lower league. I had to learn to walk and climb stairs all over again. The nine weeks in a cast was the easy part; it was six more months before the leg began to feel normal again.
Many of us here know what that is like. We think, once I get over this operation or this treatment, life will be as it was and then we realize this isn’t going to be quite so simple. The exercises and therapy are monotonous, the testing interminable and the progress, exasperatingly slow. It’s a long, meandering road towards healing.
Naaman had that same idea. Naaman was the head of the Syrian army, the second most powerful man in the nation, after the king. He was a celebrity of his time, a hero, lauded for his numerous victories. But Naaman had a health problem and it wasn’t orthopaedic. Naaman had leprosy, a word the bible uses for a whole host of skin disorders. It is quite unlikely that this refers to modern day leprosy.
Today when we refer to leprosy, we mean Hansen’s disease, an illness which destroys nerves to the extremities and deforms the body. According to the World Health Organization there are 6 million people suffering from this disease today. It is completely curable with an inexpensive antibiotic.
We know from skeletal remains that Hansen’s disease was not even present in Syria when this story was written down. It didn’t arrive in the middle east until centuries later, when Alexander the Great’s soldiers brought it back with them from India.
What Naaman most likely had was a serious case of psoriasis, bad enough to threaten his career.
Naaman was seeking a quick fix. He had sought the help of every physician and miracle worker in Syria, but nothing had helped. Naaman was desperate enough to try anything. He even listened to his wife’s servant, a girl captured on one of his campaigns through Israel. She said there was a prophet in Samaria who could cure him. So off he went.
The story as we have it, is full of irony. Although the young girl tells him to go to the prophet, Naaman is far more comfortable dealing with the powerful, so he has his people talk to their people. The king of Syria write a letter to the king of Israel to make the arrangements.
The letter throws the King of Israel into a total panic. Here comes General Naaman with his chariots and armed guard, asking to be healed. Could his powerful neighbour be looking for an excuse to attack? He’s over his head on this one. What does he know about healing?
Relief comes when the old prophet Elisha calls to offer help. Even here there is tension. The prophets were the government’s only opposition party. They did not pledge allegiance to the flag. They were loyal only to God and to the vulnerable and poor of the land. They constantly criticized those in power and suffered the consequences. Elisha’s predecessor and mentor, Elijah, had a price put on his head by the last royal couple, Ahab and Jezebel. Elisha, was similarly unpopular with the royal family.
But in this case the king of Israel can’t believe his good fortune. If Naaman does not get well, then he’s off the hook. It is the prophet who will be be blamed.
Naaman finds his way to Elisha’s house. As he draws near, his expectation builds. The old prophet will probably repeat some magic incantations, or sacrifice incense to his gods, wave his arms over the damaged skin and restore it to cleanness. Naaman is impatient to be well. There are troops to train, battles to fight. This prophet had better be worth the trouble.
When five star General Naaman arrives with all his entourage, Elisha is nowhere to be seen. Naaman has brought ten fine garments, 900 pounds of gold and silver to impress the prophet, and now he is being snubbed by this country hick. Elisha’s servant gives Naaman instructions. Naaman’s anger grows as he hears the prescription, wash seven times in the River Jordan. He had come all this way to be told to go jump in a muddy river. He should have stayed home and bathed in the much more lovely rivers of Damascus.
Naaman stalks off in a rage. As he sulks in his tent, Naaman’s servants talk him into giving the remedy a shot. After all, they’re here now. Naaman reconsiders. Seven times he bathes in the Jordan.
This is not as odd as it may sound. Could Elisha have sent Naaman to the south end of the Jordan where it enters the Dead Sea? Since ancient times the SaltSea’s mineral springs and black mud were widely reputed to promote healing. Today the spas of Ein Gedi are hugely popular with those who suffer with psoriasis or other skin problems.
We don’t know where Naaman bathed, but according to the story, his flesh was restored to its original health.
To Naaman’s credit he listens and learns. Naaman rages and sulks, takes offence, then risks changing his mind, eats crow and gets well.
For Naaman, healing is a very uneven process. It happens in fits and starts. Reluctantly the proud man overcomes his prejudice and listens to the underclass. First of all he listens to his wife’s maid, then to Naaman’s servant and then finally, he accepts the wisdom of his own servants.
In his film, GosfordPark, Robert Altman shows how difficult it is to listen to those whom we consider to be below us in class but the message applies also to those we consider to be below us in understanding, intelligence or experience.
None of us are immune from that perception. How well do parents learn from their children? Too seldom are strong believers willing to learn from other faith groups? Do the decision-makers of the world take any advice from their critics? It’s so much easier to dismiss those who question our choices.
Naaman offers us hope. He is a very human example of a person with power willing to risk the uneven path to wholeness.
Isn’t that how God’s healing happens? When a limb is broken or disease invades, when a heart is broken or injustice undermines a life, and our spirit is broken, God is at work making wholeness, but not usually on our timetable.
Unlike the promises of faith healers on television, God does not make us better in glamorous ways, not in instant cures, but in gradual, hard-to-notice-the-progress cures. Not in instant recoveries but in slow, repetitive dips in muddy waters. And it may be that the wholeness comes, not to our bodies but to our spirits.
Kathleen Norris writes about her own struggle with prayer for life to be better than it is at the moment. She says,
“Sometimes people will say things like, “Your prayers didn’t work, but thanks,” as if a person could be praying for only one thing, a miracle, a cure. But in the hardest situations, all one can do is ask for God’s mercy: Let my friend die at home, Lord, and not in the hospital. Let her go quickly, God, and with her loved ones present.
One Benedictine friend, a gentle, thoughtful man who has been in constant physical pain for years and is now confined to a wheelchair and says of prayer, ‘Often, all I can do is to ask God, ‘Lord, what is it you want of me?’
...prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been. People who are in the habit of praying - and they include the mystics of the Christian tradition - know that when a prayer is answered, it is never in a way that expect.”
with thanks to: Kathleen Norris, Leonora Tisdale
15 February, 2009
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Comments
Eileenrl
First of all - welcome to
Posted on: 02/17/2009 20:41
First of all - welcome to Wondercafe - I hope you enjoy the time you spend here.
WaterBuoy
What if ... in the taboo of
Posted on: 02/18/2009 09:54
What if ... in the taboo of speaking of things in the body ... Naman had a sickness of the bones of his mind?
It is a common problem of the Roman empirical type that the support pyre/piers of the nonexistent mind are devastated by a blind power (emotion?) ... like the story of Samson when he felt the pain of what he had created without thinking ... do we really know the meaning of Sem (Shem, sham, s'm) as translated from the Semitic? If you hate thought, why would you transcend a word with care ... unless you meant to corrupt it for ulterior motives? Test all things a hidden Gem/Jinn in a story of great chaos ... no contraditions? Wait until the light of Michael catches up to your shadow ... Gabrea*eL!
In the beginning was the word ... all the rest is a deliniating story for the subconscious bean that we choose not to know! That's the dirt on isolated Mann ... sod'O'Mei? The carnal mind is always in the dirt when translating a solar spirit of a story ... the shadow can't stand th' Light! Did you know 'th' is an old cymbal of the concept of word ... a communicable spirit sic (approximately) for those who decide to use ID! I say approximate as it changes on the whims of the carrier, scourge of the earth ... keeps it movin! That's the devil in it ... Goan*awanda Land, always on the move.