The Sparrow

Propers: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 28), A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Naaman has it all: wealth, power, strength, fame. He is feared, which is the sincerest form of flattery. He is victorious in battle, which is the true measure of any man. Yet Naaman is no god. He remains only human, for indeed he is ill. And all his power, all his fame, all his gold and horses and spears, none of them can cure him. None of them are of any use.

The irony, to be at the top of the world, the pinnacle of human achievement, yet to be undone by one’s own skin! Think of movie stars, perishing of their own excess. Think of emperors, dying of syphilis atop their thrones.

But a word of hope arises from the unlikeliest of voices. It seems that in his military campaigns against Israel Naaman has seized, amongst his spoils of war, a young girl whom he has gifted to his wife as her handmaid. This girl has no name, at least none that we hear. She is a slave, a prisoner of war, a child so delicate and so vulnerable that the text more literally refers to her as “a little, little girl.” Yet she offers up an impossible promise. “If only my lord Naaman were with the prophet who is in Samaria,” she laments to her mistress. “He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Desperate times. Naaman must think he has little to lose. He convinces King Ben-Hadad of Aram to write a letter to King Joram of Israel, beseeching the prophet Elisha to heal the stricken general. And Joram, quite understandably, flies into a panic. “Am I God, to give death or life, that this king sends word to me to cure his man of leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!” Joram tears his clothes in public grief, yet Naaman, undeterred, somewhat wryly gifts to him 10 new replacement outfits.

So now here comes the great general, returning to the land he has so recently and skillfully raided, bearing along in his wake all the pomp and circumstance one might expect of a triumphal military parade. There are even chariots in his retinue, the armored tanks of the ancient world, veritably humming with the implicit threat of force. Not that there’s pressure to succeed, or anything. Lo and behold, when he arrives with his soldiers and servants and aides before house of the prophet Elisha, the man of God does not come out to greet him. There is no ceremony, no reception, no welcoming committee. Instead a lowly messenger comes out to greet the general, saying simply, “Wash seven times in the river Jordan, and your flesh shall be restored.”

That’s it? Kind of a letdown, don’t you think? I mean, we had a military parade and everything.

This is more than embarrassing. This is an international incident. Outraged and humiliated, Naaman storms away, angrily ranting about how surely, for a man as important as himself, the prophet should have come out and called down the power of God and made great ceremony, that he should be cured in a public and powerful way, commensurate with his great status. Yet he is stopped in his wrath by his servants, by his slaves, by the lowliest amongst his retinue. “Father,” they implore him, “if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, some great quest or worthy labor, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

I think this speaks to something in Naaman’s character, some deep compassion, perhaps, that those over whom he is conqueror and master and lord seem genuinely concerned with his wellbeing. Notice that he does not strike them, rebuke them, or ignore them. Instead, his anger is calmed, his wounded pride assuaged.

Naaman humbles himself. He listens, truly listens, to his servants. He takes off his fine robes and glittering armor. He descends into the muddy little Jordan—a sad little creek, really, when compared to the clear and mighty rivers of Aram—and he bathes seven times, as the prophet instructed. Astonishingly, he is healed! He is made clean! His skin disease washes away, and his flesh, it says, becomes supple and fresh as that of “a little boy.” Thus in this story, it takes a little, little girl to save a little boy.

Christians have long celebrated the story of Naaman for its obvious baptismal imagery. God commands us to do something simple yet profound—wash and be clean—whereby we are given new life, made whole by the Word of God promised and present in the waters of our Baptism. But I think this story, like Baptism itself, also speaks more generally to the character of God and to the reality of this world in which we live. As finite creatures, we are often obsessed by the scale of things, by their size, their power, by the quantifiable measurement of wealth or strength or fame.

Big things matter. Right? Big bank accounts, big biceps, big successes. We think that to matter, to be important, we have to be millionaires or movie gods or rock stars. We think that if we were just a little stronger, a little richer, a little more successful, then we’ll have made it—then we’ll be happy, we’ll be actualized, we’ll matter. But we won’t. Things we can number, things we can quantify and accrue, won’t make us happy. If anything, they’ll make us all the less human. I mean, really, when’s the last time you saw a happy billionaire?

God is not concerned about the scale of things. He doesn’t care how robust your investment portfolio is or how many Facebook friends you have or where you fall on Time Magazine’s list of most influential people. God is infinite; size doesn’t much impress Him. He’s far more interested in quality over quantity. I think that if anything impressed God about Naaman, it wasn’t his conquests or his chariots or the wardrobes he handed out to kings. It was his compassion, the love and devotion that he inspired even amongst his slaves, even amongst prisoners of war. And so God spoke to Naaman, not through the famous prophet Elisha, but through a little, little girl, who loved him. And isn’t that love infinitely more precious than all chariots of Aram?

People talk about having a bird’s-eye view of a situation, but they never specify which bird. Did you ever notice that? Eagles can fly ten to fifteen thousand feet above the ground, with the landscape unrolling before them for scores of miles. Yet the humble sparrow living beneath a bush knows every pebble, every insect, every whorl of the wood that makes up her home, an entire universe of detail that the high and lofty eagle will never glimpse in all his soarings.

It’s something of a cliché to say that God is in the small stuff, yet time and again the Bible drives home that God’s preferences invert our own. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts. He prefers the muddy creek to the mighty river. He prefers the loving mother to the lofty queen. And He prefers the humble supplication of the little boy to all the pomp and circumstance of the victorious and haughty conqueror.

At the end of all things, when the Light of Christ shall dispel all darkness and God will be all in all, no one will care what we benched in the gym or banked in our account. No one will care how famous we were, or how wealthy, or whether we self-actualized. All that will matter is the love that we showed in the little things, the everyday things. That’s what God pays attention to. His eyes are as much the sparrow’s as they are the eagle’s.

Finitude values a fleeting glory. Infinity cares only for love. Let us humble ourselves in the waters. Let us become like a little boy, like a little, little girl. There we will find healing and forgiveness of our sins. There we will find new life in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.