Who Knows Best?

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Elisha, humility, Israel, Kings, Naaman, ordinary miracles, prophet, River Jordan, servants, speak truth to power, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s first reading (2 KGS 5:1-15) could be staged as a somewhat comedic morality play. It’s the story of Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram who has leprosy. The events go like this. A little girl captured from Israel, the servant of Naaman’s wife, tells her mistress that the prophet Elisha in Israel could cure Naaman. The wife speaks to the king who says to Naaman, “Go to the King of Israel.” The King of Israel is incensed by Naaman’s request (thinking that Naaman is asking him for a cure which is obviously not in his skill set) and says, “Is the king of Aram trying to provoke me?!” Elisha overhears this event and goes to Naaman telling him to wash seven times in the River Jordan. Now Naaman gets angry like the king, looking for something more spectacular for the cure and saying they have better rivers where he lives if that’s all it takes. His servant asks the core question of the story when he says, “If the prophet had asked you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?” Naaman recognizes the truth in the question and humbly goes to the Jordan where he is healed. Happily, he acknowledges the cure and the power of the God of Israel.

I like this story and say to myself, “Let’s hear it for the servants!” The servant girl to Naaman’s wife is moved by compassion and trust in the power of her God to heal through the prophet Elisha. The servant of Naaman is willing to “speak truth to power” as a reality check for Naaman and his behavior. I see the moral of the story that can be a lesson for us as two-fold. 1) Keep humility close in order to avoid bursts of hubris in any situation where you feel challenged. 2) Be awake to the ordinary miracles in your everyday life. Sometimes solutions are simpler than they appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Something to Eat

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body and soul, Elisha, Ephesians, food pantries, hunger, John, Kings, loaves and fishes, miracle, need, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unity

The gospel reading for this morning is John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes (JN 6:1-15). The question of the disciples is “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” A similar question is posed in the first reading (2 KINGS 4:42-44 – less familiar to me) when Elisha directs a man who has given him 20 barley loaves to “give it to the people to eat.” When his servant asks, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” The prophet repeats, “Give it to the people to eat. For thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and there shall be some left over…'” Indeed, in both cases there was a great deal left over – one miracle foreshadowing the other, greater one.

It is, I think, the coming together of need and the willingness to satisfy it that creates the miracle in these readings. I think about the prevailing sense that there is enough food in the world today so that no one need go hungry if we will take steps toward a just distribution of what exists. Lately I’ve been seeing reports of more and more efforts in this regard – some in direct service, e.g. food collections at various events as “entry fees” and church collections for their food pantries, and some that address systems like the Clinton Foundation Global Initiative Food Systems Track that “supports strategies  to meet the rapidly growing global demand for food while also protecting the natural resources critical to the future of food production and human well-being.” (www.clintonfoundation.org)

St. Paul is reminding the Ephesians this morning of our call to live a life of unity in the spirit of “the one God who is over all and through all and in all.” (EPH 4:1-6). In this way, the feeding of the people takes on a deeper meaning leading to the “human well-being” spoken of above. So when we bring our canned goods to church or give a donation to an organization like Bread for the World, let us pray for that unity and be willing to participate in the feeding of both the body and soul of our brothers and sisters throughout our neighborhood and the world.

It’s the Simple Things

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cure, Elisha, expectations, God, Kings, miracle, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s story from the Second Book of Kings in the Hebrew Scriptures (Ch 5: 1-15) teaches a great lesson that even Jesus used when he was talking about prophets not being accepted (LK 4). It concerns Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram, a leper, who is advised to seek healing for his leprosy in Israel. When Elisha tells Naaman to go and wash seven times in the Jordan in order to be cleansed, Naaman becomes incensed because the directive is something so simple. He was expecting something extraordinary, like a cure on the spot when the prophet invoked his God. Luckily he had wise servants who said to him, “If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?” They suggested he do what Elisha had directed and so he did and was healed.

Some of us keep waiting for a great experience of God’s presence to us – a miracle, a theophany, a way for us to know without a doubt that God is with us, on our side, as it were, so we can live the rest of our lives in peace and unshakeable faith. In living this way, we can easily miss the daily moments of grace that reveal God. My Christmas cactus has just put out the most glorious blossom that reminds me of the beauty of God’s creation no matter what the calendar says when it continues to be bone-chillingly cold and windy outside. We had a Taizé service for the Sophia Center last night with only 7 people which was profound for its music and for its silence, bringing God as close to us as any wildly celebrative Church service could ever do.

It’s all a question of expectations. If we expect God every day and keep our “expectant self” on tiptoe in the waiting we will lose our need for the extraordinary and be satisfied with the simple things God asks of us and gives to us in each moment of presence, each and every day of our lives.