The Club or the Cross

Propers: The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 28), AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

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

Before the Western world had Jesus Christ, we had Hercules. Before the Roman Legions painted chi-rho on their shields, they wore little golden amulets about their necks, shaped like Hercules’ olivewood club. He was far and away the greatest of the ancient Greek heroes; last son of Zeus, unless one counts the claims of Alexander the Great. And he had all the virtues that we as Western pagans value: strength, virility, aggression, success, and a healthy ego.

Hercules civilized the world with his bare hands, slaying monsters, defeating armies, changing the courses of rivers, taming the wild through sinew, bone, and will. Sure, he murdered and raped and committed smallish acts of genocide along the way, but that was simply part and parcel of being a hero back then. Still is, as I hear tell. Heck, when Caesar started out, he killed a million men and slaved a million more. And that was just in Gaul.

A lot of people like to draw parallels between Hercules and Jesus. At first blush, admittedly, they sound a bit alike: both with divine fathers and mortal mothers, both great saviors of humankind, both ascending to the heavens after death. Indeed, in recent retellings, such as Disney’s crack at the Hercules myth, Hercules is in fact a Christ figure, just like DC’s Superman or Marvel’s Thor. They’re all gods who become mortal and die selflessly for love, for the salvation of us all.

But really, honestly, the two figures are nothing alike, save perhaps as mirror images, each the inverse of the other. Hercules is half a god, and burns the humanity out of him. Christ, however, is God in the fullest, truest sense, while also being completely and utterly human—in fact the only fully human being to ever walk this earth. My favorite living theologian recently put it thusly:

“It seems to me quite reasonable to imagine that, increasingly, the religion of the God-Man, who summons human beings to become created gods through charity,  will be replaced once again by the more ancient religion of the man-god, who wrests his divinity from the intractable material of his humanity, and solely through the exertions of his will.” 

In other words: Christ is God come down to us, in humility and charity and love, pouring out His Blood, His Breath, His life itself that we might be reborn, that we might all be one in Him, one with God, one in eternity. Hercules is the exact opposite. Hercules is a man fighting desperately to become a god on his own terms, to claw his way up into heaven, to carve out his immortality upon the bones of anyone foolish or unlucky enough to cross his path.

We all need Christ. And thanks be to God, for unto us a Child is born! Yet we keep wanting to be Hercules, don’t we? We keep wanting to make ourselves into gods, into overmen, by a will to power beyond good and evil. That’s the very thing the serpent promised to us in the garden, and it’s written all throughout our history in steel and fire and blood. Would you be made a god by grace or a titan by terror? What’s it going to be—the club or the Cross?

Naaman, in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures this morning, would indeed be herculean by any mortal measure. He is commander of the army of the king of Aram, a man of power and wealth, status and success. At his direction, cities are conquered, militaries massacred, nations wiped off the map. And yet—irony of ironies—he is laid low by his own skin. All the gold and glory of the globe cannot cure his leprosy, the corruption in his flesh.

Disease, remember, the venom of the hydra, is the very thing which laid Hercules low.

I think of Herod in the Bible, mighty monarch, terrible tyrant, falling apart on his throne, eaten by worms. I think of Henry VIII, I am, I am, wonder of the Western world, stinking of syphilis and bone infections underneath his armor, rotting from within. Yet there’s something more to Naaman, something Herod and Henry VIII appear to have lacked. Naaman is, you see, very much beloved; not simply by courtiers and sycophants but by his servants, by his slaves, by the prisoners of his wars.

I find that quite remarkable, and I think it speaks powerfully to his character. For here he is, the great warrior of Aram, enemy to Israel, foe to the chosen folk of God, and who is it who speaks to his salvation? Who is it who earnestly seeks his health? It is a slave girl, a servant girl, an Israelite prisoner of war. The Hebrew calls her something like “a little, little girl,” emphasizing her weakness, her lowliness, her humility. Why should she care for this man? I’m not certain, yet clearly she does.

She convinces her master that in Israel, in the Northern Kingdom of Ephraim, there is a great prophet, a healer and a holy man, named Elisha, a wonderworker of renown who would surely heal his infirmity, cast his skin disease aside. And what does it say of him, what does it say of this great and mighty man, that Naaman listens to this little, little girl? Is he just that desperate? Or beneath all the biceps and the bluster, is he perhaps humble enough, compassionate enough, to hear her?

And through her, to hear the still, small voice of God?

You heard the story. He sets out with his entourage, in full pomp and ceremony, absolutely terrifying the king of Israel, who is convinced that he’s being set up, that Aram will use his inability to heal Naaman as a pretext for further invasion. But Elisha tells the king to let him come. And when Naaman marches out to Elisha, with all of his horses and his chariots—the armored corps of their day—Elisha simply sends out a messenger to tell him to bathe in the Jordan. That’s it, short and sweet.

And Naaman is flabbergasted. Surely, he thought, for someone as important as himself, the great prophet of Israel would at least come forth to greet him, to wave his hands over him and say some magic words. Light some incense, man. He expected all the smells and bells appropriate to his station. And instead he’s just to bathe in the Jordan, in that pathetic, muddy little river? The waters of Aram are far superior to this sickly Israelite creek.

Now at this point, I think it fair to say, Hercules would have killed everyone for such an affront to his honor. But Naaman does not. He goes off in a huff, but he does not draw his sword. And this, again, is significant. He has pride but is not cruel. And as he simmers in his rage, his servants cluster around him and beg him to take the prophet’s advice. “Father,” they say, “if he’d asked you to do something hard, some great labor, surely you would’ve done it. How much more when he says something so simple! Just do it, please! What’s the harm?”

I mean, they care. They really do. And Naaman, again to his credit, listens. He humbles himself, strips himself, and bathes seven times in the muddy little Jordan. And he is healed! He is cleansed! His flesh is restored, like that of a young boy. What’s more, he is grateful: to God, to the prophet, to his servants. The strength of his arm, the swiftness of his horse, and the edge of his sword were all alike impotent to save him from his own flesh. Yet the Word of God has renewed him entirely.

In our tradition we call this Theology of the Cross: finding God—or more accurately God finding us—in the place we least expect Him. Here He is found in a servant, in a prisoner, in a little, little girl. His grace He pours out upon an enemy, an Aramean. The whole thing is pure Jesus through and through. Salvation comes not from within us, not from our own great strength, but through grace, compassion, forgiveness, love, and gratitude. It comes through the weak and the lowly, the meek and the poor, the peacemaker and the healer, not the warrior, not the man-god.

If we were told we had to earn our place in heaven, to wrest divinity from within and burn out our humanity, told that we had to work a dozen legendary labors and slay innumerable monstrous beasts, for our immortality, we would do it, wouldn’t we? We would try. How much more, then, when all we are told is to come to the water, come to the Word, come to the God who meets us in our Baptism, and who pours out upon us all that we could ever need and infinitely more.

A bite of bread, a sip of wine, a drop of water and oil; a simple story, an earnest Word, and the hand of the sinner in the pew beside you—this is where we find our God. This is where the God-Man meets us, in the last, the lost, the little, and the least. It may not look like much, we may not look like much, but Christ is surely with us as He promised us He’d be. And since He has us, we know we are saved.

Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.

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