July 7, 2013 – 2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Looking for God in All the Wrong Places
7th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 14] – July 7, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The people in the villages who refuse to welcome the disciples Jesus sends out this morning
could be forgiven for their lack of hospitality.
Here they come, a couple of freaks with no letters of introduction, no family connections to
anyone in the village, no trappings of success – indeed, no possessions at all! – and
not even any of their own food or means of paying for it.
They are known to eat, as Jesus says, whatever is set before them, even if it is not kosher,
and they have been known to eat with Gentile non-Jews.
They have abandoned their families, and rumour has it that one has even refused to
return home to bury a dead father.
What kind of good could rascals like these bring with them?
Better to send them packing.
So, yes: these people could be forgiven for refusing Jesus’ disciples a welcome.
It’s probably best not to be too hard on them.
It’s better, probably, to ask what we can learn from them.
“If they don’t welcome you,” Jesus says,
“Tell them, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet,
we wipe off in protest against you.
Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near to you –
and you missed it!”
They’ve missed their appointment with God.
Is it possible they are looking in all the wrong places?
I’m a pretty conscientious person when it comes to keeping appointments.
Most of you know that I write everything down so I don’t forget anything
But I’m sure all of you – like me – have at one time or another missed an appointment,
or a lunch, or a meeting – and then comes the dreaded e-mail:
“We were meeting today at 2:00 o’clock, weren’t we? I waited until 2:30 but didn’t see you.”
New Testament scholar Katherine Grieb wonders what it would be like to
receive such an e-mail from God:
By the way, my reign came very near you this morning and you completely missed it.
Meet you next time? GOD. (in The Christian Century, June 26, 2013, page 19)
It happens to some of the people in the villages to which Jesus sends out his disciples.
And it nearly happens to poor old Naaman this morning, enemy General with leprosy in
that wonderful story from Second Kings.
A Jewish slave girl he has taken as the spoils of some battle against the Jews tells him that
there’s a prophet currently in Samaria who can cure him:
she means Elisha, Elijah’s successor.
So Naaman’s king, the King of Aram, gives him permission to go and seek healing and sends
a letter of introduction along with him.
Only the king of Aram assumes that God could only be at work in a king of like status,
a king like himself, the King of Israel.
When the king of Israel receives Naaman and the letter, however, he figures that
the king of Aram is spoiling for a fight and that this is just an elaborate set-up that will
Provide an excuse to attack when the King of Israel can’t cure Naaman.
The king of Israel, note, has no idea that there’s a prophet in his land who can bring God near.
When Naaman is finally received by Elisha, Naaman wants a big show indicating
God’s work and activity: he wants magic words, and incantations,
an eye of toad and hair of newt; he wants fireworks, and smoke, and
maybe even a sacrificed virgin or two.
And he’s brought a whole lot of cash to pay for all this,
and to make all the trouble worthwhile for Elisha.
Elisha, though, will have none of it.
He doesn’t even want to see Naaman in person.
“Myeh,” he says. “Tell him to go wash himself in the puny old Jordan river 7 times.
He’ll be fine.”
Naaman is outraged: surely a joke is being played on him.
Surely a person of his stature deserves all the bells and whistles a holy man can muster.
But his servants persuade him to do what the prophet says, and Naaman is cured.
You’ll notice in the story that the big deals – the kings and the general –
are all looking for God in the wrong places.
They look for God in powerful displays and powerful people.
It’s what you would expect, I guess, in a military culture that prizes spectacle and
intimidation and shock and awe.
And you’ll notice, too, that it’s the servants, the ones closest to the ground,
who know truly where to find God and who move the story forward to healing.
I wonder what the King of Israel thought when it turned out that his God through the prophet
really did cure the general of his enemy’s army?
Turns out the God of Israel is to be found in healing, not in shock and awe.
In mercy for all people rather than favouritism for a few.
In the lives and workings of the lowly ones, rather than the big wealthy deals.
God came near the kings and the generals, and they almost missed it.
The servants – the ones close to the ground – helped them to see it.
How many times, every day, I wonder, have we missed our appointments with God?
I have said many times before that I believe God is always, always speaking to us,
but that we have a very hard time hearing God because of all the noise in our lives.
It is very difficult for us to be still, and quiet, and hear the voice of God.
But the same is true of simply noticing God’s work in the world.
The true miracles, maybe, are the ones we take for granted, or the ones that seem so mundane.
The miracle of life and consciousness.
The miracle of friendship and marriage.
The miracle of the healthy visiting the ill and bringing prayer and music and communion.
Isn’t it true that we still look for God in the powerful and in shock and awe?
Isn’t it true that we pray for a big miracle from God when
we miss the thousand small ones God daily works?
Isn’t it true that we still often conceive of God as a big deal manipulator of
the universe, of all that is, who is capable of granting us our every wish and
who is responsible for all evil rather than
A poor Jewish peasant who suffered the evil in the world in order to forgive it and
suffer it with us?
Do we still look for God in the wrong places?
Do we still look for God in accumulating more and more stuff and
in being ourselves the centre of everything?
Luke tells us in the very beginning of his story that while Caesar was ruling and was
on the front page of every newspaper;
while Quirinius was Governor of Syria and
his face was splashed all over the evening news;
while Pilate was the darling of social media;
while all that was going on, an unimportant, young, pregnant, teenage peasant was
about to give birth to a son, in a stable, because there was no room for such
an unimportant person in the inn.
This person calls to himself those who are themselves in need of healing –
and sends them out in order to heal, and to say this: the reign of God has come near.
It has come near to us in this person Jesus, and it has come near to you in us.
What these people have that Jesus sends out this morning is nothing but . . . Jesus,
Jesus and his healing, and his gracious good news that God in him has come near.
The thing is: we miss the miracle in ourselves.
God has come near to you in the baptized person sitting next to you.
And God will come near to those in need of healing this week through you.
God comes very near this morning in an invitation to eat what is set before you.
God comes near when we serve each other in this unassuming meal,
when we look one another in the eye and offer one another the miracle of food and the great miracle that comes with this food: forgiveness of the past,
hope for the future meal when all will be fed,
and present strength for the journey from here to there.
And God comes very near when God then will speak and say, “Go. Go now. Go in peace.
Get outta here! Go on your way! I am sending you. Bring the reign of God near.
Cure the sick. Strengthen the downhearted. Forgive the sinner. Respect the poor. Prize the child.
I am before you. I am behind you. I am within you.
I have made many, many appointments with you.
I will meet you on the road and I will be with you.
Go: I have given you authority over everything that will inhibit my loving mission to
love, bless, heal, and set free this whole world and every person in it.
Go: and do not look for me in all the wrong places.
Look for me in the groaning of creation: I will be there.
Look for me in the poor: I will be there.
Look for me in the imprisoned: I will be there.
Look for me in palliative care, look for me at food bank, look for me at Kids Club,
look for me in one another’s pain and difficulty as we bear one another’s burdens:
I will be there.
Know that I have come near, whether you see the miracle or not: I have come near.”
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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