This week’s Bible story for the kiddo’s is Naaman. While I’m telling the story today, I realize I can’t remember if its Elijah or Elisha (cause who can, really?). So, I look it up. This is how I imagined this whole thing to go in my head:
Messenger (in bored, can’t believe this is my job voice…actually, similar to the one I use at the blockbuster): If you want to be healed of your leprosy, Elisha says you must wash yourself seven times in the Jordan river.
Naaman: WHAT!!!!??? Does he not know who I am? He is supposed to come out here, call down God, wave his hand over me and heal me! Now he wants me, ME, to wash in the nasty Jordan river SEVEN times! There are better rivers! Can’t I just wash in them!
(Then the ESV actually says he ‘turns away in a rage’.)
Servant: Ummm….did he really say wash and be healed? Wash and be healed, man!
I was struck by the simplicity of Elisha’s request and the level of Naaman’s rage. Wash. He told him to wash. And, Naaman, commander of the army of the King of Syria could not be bothered to dip in the Jordan river. That is, until, a humble servant pointed out his silliness.
Sometimes, I really do just open my Bible and read wherever it opens. Today, it fell open in James. Holy Moses! It is blowing my mind! I already read it twice today. But, James 5 caught my attention in particular, just because it so ties in with Naaman’s story. The chapter talks about how the rich have stored up their gold and silver, but these things have corroded. Their garments are moth eaten and their riches have rotted. Naaman had status and wealth. He had high favor because of all the victories he had won. But, Naaman was a leper. He was going to die. And, all of the status and wealth and favor were rotting, and still he couldn’t bring himself to dip in the Jordan River seven times. He was offended because he thought that his status and wealth and favor had earned him a personal audience with the prophet, where he would simply wave his hand over him and his leprosy would be gone.
As I’m reading this, I’m thinking ‘what arrogance! Get a little dirty and healed you crazy!’ How many times I have let myself believe that I didn’t have to obey? Because it wasn’t about the water, it was about obedience. I’ve let myself believe that because I have 27 years of church in me, I can skip a few weeks. Or, because my job is a ministry, I don’t have to be involved in a home church. Or, a little gossip can’t touch me, or a little lie won’t hurt anyone, or a little lapse in reading my Bible won’t hurt since I’ve got so much of it memorized. What arrogance! And, what disobedience!
What rotting wealth have I been clinging to? What vestige of status or moth eaten garments have I been hiding behind? James 5:3 says that this ‘corrosion will eat your flesh like fire.’ And then in verse 5, that these wealthy have fattened their hearts in a day of slaughter. Just like Naaman, I need to wash myself clean of this corrosion before I literally die from it. It is time to recognize that I am storing up this false wealth in a time when I should be humbling myself before God in a way that I never have before. My flesh has become fat, while my spirit cries out for slaughter. I just can’t ignore those cries anymore.
Slaughter sounds pretty painful though. I wonder if God will let me dip in a river instead?
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Good stuff.
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