Wash And Be Clean
2 Kings 5:1-14
by Jim Westmoreland
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, " We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?" One child blurted out, "Aces!"
This morning we are talking about a higher power that brings healing and wholeness to us physically, emotionally and spiritually. We will journey to 2 Kings, a book of history from the 1st Testament, to hear about a Syrian named Naaman.
Do you know what a stepwell is? Many are found in India. The stepwells of India are known as precious sources of life-giving water, but there is a problem. They require people to journey down into huge underground cisterns. The cisterns may be 25, 50 or 100 feet below the level of the ground. It may be dugout or rock lined, and there are steps that you go down to reach the water. A stepwell is a well in which you get water, not by pulling up a bucket, but by walking down some stairs. They're most common in India, where water has always been a precious commodity. They teach us that you have to step down, in order to step up.
Between the 11th and 16th centuries, stepwells were built in India to ensure accessibility to water even during the driest seasons. Slowly walking down these steps, however strenuous or inconvenient, was required if one was to get the water necessary for survival, especially during dry times. Actually, the small reward at the bottom was the architectural beauty of the cavernous space at the foot of the steps. There was coolness provided by the water, by the depth in the ground, and by the walls and often the roof that covered them.
We would assume that the traditional well would be much easier to simply pull up the water from the well and carry it away, rather than descending to the depths of a cistern and walking back up those steps with a heavy vessel full of water on your back. This may have been the reason why these stepwells fell out of use during the last century. But now, when the world is once again recognizing the preciousness of water, these stepwells are returning to favor.
It's never been easy or convenient to gather water from an Indian stepwell, but during dry seasons they are the very best source of this life-giving liquid. You simply have to make the effort, and walk slowly down the steps.
Which brings us to this question: How far would you go to get what you need the most?
This is the conundrum that confronts Naaman, the overly proud Syrian commander afflicted with leprosy, in this story from 2 Kings (5:1-14). He was insulted by what he though was an overly simplistic answer for his situation. He wanted his leprosy problem solved. He was told to wash and be clean. It wasn't the answer that he wanted. The solution did not have the seeming importance and magnitude that his problem and status demanded.
Naaman needed water, actually he needed to wade in the water, not once, but seven times, if he were to be rid of his dreaded affliction. His pride nearly got the best of him, almost kept him from the baptismal-like drenching that would render him clean. What is it that nearly gets the best of us? What choices confront us when faced with the choice of new life or remaining stuck with the old? Will we angry insisting that new life and inner peace come according to our design? When we beat ourselves up for not keeping everything neat and tidy and for keeping everyone happy, what does healing and new life look like for us? We could become cynical knowing full well that our body is wearing out and wearing down and that we will eventually die, how do we choose life when the trends are more negative than positive?
In story after story, in Scripture water is everywhere that life abounds. We shouldn't be too surprised. Water is after all creation's most precious resource.
The well is still the center of community life in villages on every continent, much the same as it has been for centuries. In Ethiopia, twice a day, Felicete, a mother of three children, walks several miles to the nearest well simply to have water for cooking and bathing. Her neighbors do the same, and their experience is not uncommon throughout the developing world. In Port-au-Prince, missionaries often bring water with then to share in the villages they visit. Most of us fortunately don't know these extreme conditions, but, when a water main goes bad as it did about ten years ago, causing all the water to be shut off and everyone having to rush out to buy bottled water to drink, forcing us to give up our baths and showers, then we are shocked into remembering how much we depend upon water.
To our own peril, with an abundance of water we may forget how precious it is. When one does without a hot shower only in dire emergencies, it is hard to conceive of descending all the way down those steps to retrieve what you cannot do without. We would rather call a plumber or the water department.
Yet the stepwells, for all their cultural ingenuity and architectural beauty, provide an opening for some other lessons, too. In the stepwell is wrapped a deeper truth. The spiritual life requires stepping down to get what is necessary to step back up again healthy and whole.
In our reading from 2 Kings, clearly, Naaman had issues. Would he rather be dead, physically, functionally, and spiritually, than to make the changes necessary to live? Without water he might as well be dead. What will he do? What will we do when faced with a similar choice?
Here's the situation: Naaman, a proud Syrian commander, afflicted with leprosy, faced a dilemma he could not escape (5:1-14). He was informed by a servant girl that the prophet of Israel, Elisha, could cure him of his leprosy. An appeal was made on a diplomatic level, which failed because the king of Israel assumed it was all a ruse. Soon enough the prophet Elisha offered his services so that this man and all the Syrians would come to know the power of the living God.
But Naaman, whose army had conquered Israel and whose military prowess was matched by his pride, wanted that healing to occur on his terms only.
When Elisha instructed him by messenger to go down into the River Jordan, not once, but seven times, Naaman angrily balked at the suggestion. In a rage, he screamed, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy" (v. 11).
Why should he have the inconvenience and humiliation of going down to the water with all the rest and in a foreign river at that? His pride threatened to block him from taking the one necessary step to find healing and new life.
All God asked of him was to step down dirty so that he could step up clean.
Eventually, Naaman took the advice of his counselors, let go of his pride, and lowered himself into the waters precisely as the prophet of God instructed. After the seventh dipping, he rose up, sopping wet and alive, as clean as a young boy (v. 14). The RSV translates this as "clean as a child." Listen to the echo of Jesus' teaching his disciples: except you become as a child, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.
Naaman was given an opportunity to receive the very thing that he most wanted in life, to be cleansed of a dreaded affliction. He would have to lower himself into the water before he could rise up healed. His pride and his desire to have life on his terms nearly got the best of him, but in the end, he humbled himself, kneeled into the waters and rose up again. There was no other option for him if he wanted new life and not merely continue on in his same condition of dis-ease.
Neither is there any other option for us who desire new life.
What are the things that we seek most in our lives? When we come to our senses and forget about acquiring one more thing, doing one more thing or never being bumped or bruised in life, we begin to talk about relationships, forgiveness, a new perspective on life, reconciliation and about healing of the wounded heart. But they are not available if we insist on having them on our terms, rather than the terms that are offered. What is required is some version of stepping down, becoming humble and opening ourselves to receiving what is offered.
Each gallon you bring up out of a stepwell weighs 8.3 pounds. You need enough to avoid dehydration for you and each member of your family. You need some to cook with and to clean with. In a stepwell, you must walk back up with a heavy burden. The Good News is that, in our spiritual life, it is God who does all the heavy lifting. We do the humbling, God lifts us up!
Remember the woman at Jacob's well? She came carrying the shameful weight of multiple broken relationships, but when the conversation was over, she carried away the promise of living water that would heal her heart and quench the deepest thirst of all (John 4:15). What Jesus required of her was simply letting go of her preconceived ideas of worship and to be willing to embrace a whole new understanding of God's presence.
Such a change of belief is no small thing to ask of this woman,
of course, but the same thing is required of us if the gifts of the
living God are to be received. Do we insist on living our lives
as if there is no God? Maybe we verbally assent to there being
a God, but our lives our lived in such an independent way that
our actions say that either God does not exist or that He doesn't
matter. If we act as if He doesn't matter, then we have chosen
to live without Him as if He doesn't exist at all.
Like the healing waters that Naaman dipped in and the waters
that the children of Israel passed through, the living water of
Christ and the waters of baptism that we receive is offered only
by letting go and going under.
The question that Naaman faced, we face one more time: What would we let stand in the way of receiving what we need the most? Is it Pride? Anger? Fear? Can we let go of all this baggage as we step down, allow God to heal us, bless us and renew us with the living water? Or, as the old spiritual puts it, can we:
Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God's a-gonna trouble the water.
It is a simple image of faith and trust and obedience, taking the next step, going into the water. When God troubles the water, He wants to make us well. He calls to our troubled, confused and rebellious hearts with a simple message that is easily overlooked or made light of: He says to each of us, Wash and Be Clean. Amen.
Century Christian Church, July 8, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
