Wash and Be Clean: Sermon on God and Ordinary Stuff
There’s a story told of one of the Desert Fathers, those monks who lived in the harshest of conditions back in the fifth and sixth centuries, who really wanted to understand a particularly difficult passage of scripture. I would love to know which one—there are plenty that leave me scratching my head—but that isn’t part of the story. The monk decided that he would give a year and a half of his life to focus on this passage. He fasted heroically for seventy weeks, eating only once a week for the whole time, hoping that by the end of this marathon fast, he would understand.
He reached the end of the seventieth week, thought hard about the scripture, and realized that he still didn’t understand it—God had not revealed it to him in all this time. “Look at the work I have done without getting anywhere!” he said to himself. In utter frustration, he got up from his cell and walked out, deciding he would try asking one of the other monks if he understood it. As he slammed the door behind him, an angel appeared:
“The seventy weeks you fasted did not bring you any closer to God,” said the angel, “but now that you have humbled yourself and set out to ask your brother, I am sent to reveal the meaning of that text.”
The angel shared the meaning and vanished.[1]
It’s a strange little story, but maybe a little closer to home for most of us than it might seem at first. Have you ever persisted in taking a difficult route, simply because it was difficult, when a simpler one was available all along? Have you ever found yourself going it alone rather than asking for the help that was right at your side? Have you ever imagined that the solution to a problem in your life must come from somewhere mysterious, when in the end, it came from somewhere very ordinary?
The story we heard from the Old Testament this morning points to these tendencies for many of us, and—more importantly—points to the God who often works in surprisingly ordinary ways right here by our side.
The scene opens in Aram (modern-day Syria), a kingdom that is not on particularly good terms with Israel. We get a picture of this hostility right away—the story’s main character is a guy called Naaman, whose wife has an Israelite girl as a servant, kidnapped on one of Aram’s recent raids into Israel.
Naaman is a powerful and respected sort of guy: he’s the commander of Aram’s army, a close friend of the king’s, a great man and a mighty warrior. He’s a towering hero, but—the story tells us—there’s a crack in this fine exterior. He’s become afflicted with leprosy and no doubt suffers from both the discomfort and the social isolation that came with the disease in this time. He may be respected, but it’s another thing to be accepted—leprosy left you quite literally untouchable in the ancient world.
One day Naaman’s wife makes a comment in passing, maybe as they’re unwinding at the end of a long day: “You know my servant, the Israelite girl? She said the funniest thing today—she says there’s a very strong prophet in Israel. She said that if you went to see him, he could make you well again. Probably a load of nonsense.” Naaman is a respectable sort of guy—he knows it’s probably just a story, coming from a child—and an Israelite child at that. But something stirs inside him anyway. He’s tried every cure the doctors know; he’s scraped and fasted and washed, and nothing has worked. So what if this girl is right? What if she knows something he doesn’t?
The king knows better, too, of course. He knows better than to trust this silly hope from an Israelite child. But maybe he sees something behind Naaman’s sheepish request for a leave of his duties to travel to Israel and find this mysterious prophet. Maybe he can knows just how desperate his general is.
So off Naaman goes, armed with a letter from the king and no small care package to boot: ten talents of gold, six thousand shekels of silver, and ten sets of garments. This is a royal gift; he’s prepared to pay top price for his cure. And after a wrong turn at the king’s palace, Naaman finds himself standing outside Elisha’s little hut with his horses and his chariots and his attendants and his gifts.
The scene is a little awkward, to say the least. Naaman and his entourage shuffle uneasily in the morning air, and someone comes out of Elisha’s hut—only it’s not Elisha, but a messenger with a very simple message: “Go wash in the Jordan River seven times, and your flesh will be restored” (2 Kings 5:10). He passes on the message and heads back inside.
Washing in the river is an easy thing to do. It requires no exchange of payment, no great quest to find some rare medicine on a distant mountaintop, no flashy miracle. And that’s just what makes Naaman so mad. “I thought for me he would surely come out and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” he says (5:11). I thought we’d get a miraculous show here—I thought it would be magical and amazing—something worth the long trip. And now he just wants me to go and wash in a dirty old river down the road? We’ve got rivers at home that make that thing look like a dried-up creek. Some prophet this is. And off he storms.
Sure, Naaman seems like a bit of a hothead—but does his reaction sound a little familiar? Millennia later and on the other side of the globe, our culture is also one that seems to trust difficult and costly solutions over very ordinary ones:
- Television stations are full of shows of extreme makeovers, stories of people getting new wardrobes, new bodies, new lives. It’s much flashier than learning the simple rhythms of daily gratitude.
- Books and media can make it seem like miraculous overnight spiritual transformations are the only way people grow in faith, even though they only happen for a few. It’s much more striking than the daily disciplines of prayer, and scripture reading, and digging into life with a faith community.
- Exotic travel and elaborate vacations can look like the only way to discover the world. It’s much more glamorous than learning to appreciate the grace and wonder right where you are.
Poets are always calling us back to the present, back to the ordinary world around us, back to our senses in the here and now. Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” is just that—a summons to pay attention to the beauty at our fingertips:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?[2]
The poets are always calling us back to the here and now, to learning how to pay attention and kneel down in the grass right where we are—and so is our faith. Naaman is called to accept the gift of ordinary grace before him in the cool water of the river; the prophets are always reminding the people that doing justice here and now is always the call of God; and Jesus sent his disciples out with that simple message: “The kingdom of God has come near” (Luke 10:11). It’s the message of the gospel, really: God shows up in ordinary stuff. In human life; in words and in water; in bread and wine, broken and poured out.
God shows up in these ordinary things, and what if that’s what we need most? Not some new exotic cure for our restlessness and our need for purpose, not some hip new guru promising quick enlightenment and success, not some complete makeover of our life—but the simple promise that God is here for you, in the meals you share, in the community of which you’re a part, in the dirt and the sky outside your front door?
The Naaman inside each of us balks at this, of course. A little piece of bread and a sip of wine? A splash of water across my tired forehead? An ordinary group of folks? That’s it? I thought for sure God would snap the divine fingers, speak from the clouds, use lightning or fireworks or something.
The invitation is simple, and it’s always free. Wash, and be clean. Come to the table, and be fed. Cling to the promise, and find yourself renewed.