Oscar Wilde said that a cynic
…knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Cynics have abounded in life since time immemorial: people who assume that money can buy happiness, and that it’s OK to use whatever means are at your disposal to get ahead in life. Today, we heard the story of Naaman, who started out with this life view.
It’s not hard to feel sorry for him. Not so much that he had a nasty skin disease: that doesn’t seem to have impeded his career much. But, poor man, everything he assumed about how to get a cure got tossed out the window.
He was a powerful man, a great general, the trusted confidant of his king. He moved in the corridors of power, and was used to getting his way through the “usual channels”—using money, political influence and force, if the other means don’t suffice. He assumed that everything has its price—and was willing to pay.
Naaman set off with an enormous amount of money and goods, determined to buy a cure from the “prophet…in
But there was a cure available, through the ministry of the prophet Elisha. Now things really go wrong for our general. He expects a royal reception from the holy man—and gets an offhand message from a servant. He expects some great holy ritual—and is instead told to take a few dips in the river. And what a river—nothing like the fine streams running through
His money can’t buy the cure, and the prophet offers him nothing befitting a man of his stature. Nothing seems to be working the way he expected.
He’s about to go home in anger—maybe there really is another war in the offing—when his servants (no doubt in fear and trembling) advise him to do what he had been told.
Go and wash.
Is that so hard? Why not give it a try?
Swallowing the hardest thing anyone ever has to swallow—his pride—Naaman goes down to that muddy stream, immerses himself seven times, and is made clean. It is a bit of a shame that the lectionary ends the story there, because for me the real point comes right after:
Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in
Having thus affirmed his faith in the God of Israel, Naaman does the “right thing,” and tries to pay for his cure, but Elisha refuses, because he serves the Lord. What Naaman has received is beyond price, not just the cure of his bodily ailment, but faith in the one true God.
What he was asked to do was not so hard—or was it? Taking a dip in a river is not a big thing to do. But giving up his assumptions about how the world worked, and surrendering his pride to obedience to a prophet who wouldn’t even meet him—that was hard!
We are baptizing two babies today. It’s not a hard thing to do: parents and godparents will make promises; a little water will be poured over a child’s head. Simple!
But entering into the waters of baptism requires the same surrender as Naaman made—giving up our assumptions about the price of things, letting go of our ego and pride, putting ourselves under the discipline of the one in whose name we baptize.
What is required in baptism is beyond price—but of incalculable value— our whole selves, heart and mind, body and soul. But what is offered in baptism is equally beyond price—new life in Christ.
Having washed in the
Every time we celebrate baptism, and every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we recall our own baptisms, when we entered into full fellowship with Christ. Every time we recall that washing clean of sin, that rebirth and entry into new life, we are sent forth as changed people, sent out to reap a harvest for God, sent “like lambs into the midst of wolves,” bringing God’s peace to all who will receive it.
We are sent from this place to do God’s work, to say in every place we enter: ‘Peace to this house!’
Is that so hard?
With God as our helper, let it be our joy and our delight to be his people.