Restored, cleansed and alive!

2 Kings 5:1 Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. ² Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. ³ She said to her mistress, "If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." ⁴ Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. ⁵ "By all means, go," the king of Aram replied. "I will send a letter to the king of Israel." So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. ⁶ The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: "With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy." ⁷ As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, "Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!" ⁸ When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: "Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel." ⁹ So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. ¹⁰ Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed." ¹¹ But Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. ¹² Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage. ¹³ Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!" ¹⁴ So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Today we have the tale of two lepers. One was a rich and powerful man, the four-star general of the Syrian army. The other, a poor nameless beggar on the road. One was a Syrian, a Gentile, an enemy of Israel; the other an Israelite, a son of Abraham. One was the unbeliever, the other a believer. One is stubborn and standing. The other on his knees and begging. Two men with leprosy. Both healed by Christ. One with water, one with the Word.

Let’s start with Naaman. He was the commander of men. A warrior, brave and fearless. Someone who was used to holding life and death in his hands. He gave the orders, and they were carried out. He was the star of the victory parades and enjoyed the spoils of war. Naaman, we might say, had it all.

Until one day, Naaman noticed that he had some specks on his eyelids and hands. That’s how leprosy starts – with white scales on the eyelids and hands and then moves to the rest of the body. Those scales give the disease its name. Lepos, that’s Greek for “scale.” Under the skin, the illness rips through nerves and, eventually, the infected individual has no feeling. If you have no feeling, you have no sensitivity to pain. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, scratch an itch – any of those actions could cause bleeding and bruising if you brushed, combed or scratched too hard. If you fell down, a leper didn’t know if something was broken or if there was internal bleeding. Eventually, fingers, toes, nose and ears were gone.

In an Indian leper colony, many of the sick seemed to be mysteriously losing fingers and toes at night while they were sleeping. Only when someone stayed up did they find out why. Rats were gnawing on the sleepers, who, feeling no pain, never woke up. Leprosy is a slow, agonizing, debilitating disease that was a death sentence.

Naaman was now fighting an enemy he could do nothing about. An enemy he could not defeat. And yet he is filled with pride and arrogance. It was bad enough that he had to take the advice of a servant girl from the defeated Israelites. Then he had to go back to Israel to visit a socially inferior prophet who offends Naaman even more by not coming out of the house to meet him. But the worst part was that Naaman was told to do something simple, when he wanted to do something mighty and heroic. He wanted, in some way, to be involved in his own healing, his own cleansing, his own salvation.

He had to take off his ornate clothing, his uniform, the symbols of his high status and position, and wash like all the commoners in the Jordan River. And not just once, but seven times! Well, it was too much for Naaman. His pride fought back. He was angry and insulted. He was ready to pack up and go home in a huff … until another servant suggests, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!” Naaman swallowed his pride and entered the water seven times. And he was cleansed. He was healed. He is restored. “His flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.” The death sentence had been reversed!

The other leper on the road understood his problem. He knew he couldn’t fix it on his own. He needed help. So he broke all the rules in order to find Jesus. You see, the leper should have been with all the other lepers in their colony. And if he did stray out into public, he was supposed to yell, “Unclean! Unclean!” so everyone stayed away. The leper eventually found Jesus, but knew enough not to touch Him. He simply begs for healing. Jesus then does the unthinkable! He does the remarkable thing, the dangerous thing, the contagious thing, the thing Leviticus and your mother said you weren’t supposed to do. He reaches out His hand and touches the leper. An action that was forbidden. Yet, Jesus has compassion. His heart goes out to the poor man and he heals him. Restored, cleansed, and alive with a new life.

In both of these men we find pictures of ourselves. The proud and the arrogant. The humble and contrite. You see, there is a little Naaman and a little beggar in all of us. For there is a lot of leprosy inside of us. In the Bible, leprosy was a picture of sin. The sin starts in our human nature. Many of us may think that we aren’t all that bad, aren’t all that sinful, aren’t all that sick. Sure, we may gossip, envy, pout, complain, criticize, and argue. But we’re not BIG sinners like murderers, rapists and thieves. Sure, our health is failing. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis. But we’re still alive and getting through life.

These are all symptoms of a much deeper illness – our sin. The leper could see the white scales, the pasty skin and the rotting flesh. But those were only symptoms of the leprous disease inside of him. We can take classes to deal with our anger issues. We can seek counseling for our marriage problems. We can go to the doctor for treatments for our many physical ailments. But those are only dealing with the symptoms. The disease of sin remains within us. It infects us and affects us through and through.

Sin pervades everything like a virus or a bacterial disease. And it’s not enough to simply treat the symptoms – a sin here or there. We’re prone to do that – treat the symptoms, but leave the disease in place. We think of sin as the bad things we do – our divisions, our disrespect, our temper, our pride, our lusts. But those are symptoms, just as a headache, fever and a runny nose are symptoms of a cold or the flu. But treating the symptoms doesn’t get rid of the disease, does it? We can treat the symptoms of our sin and make us feel better for a while, but the disease of sin remains a part of us – a big part.

In one of the hospitals in Milwaukee, the top floor is where fetal alcohol babies are treated. The problem with those babies is they inherited something that was not originally their personal choice. They inherited an alcohol dependency from their mothers who drank, and their lives will never be normal as a result. Well, I’ve got news for you. You and I are “fetal sin” babies. We can whine about it, tap dance around it, make excuses for it, or think about something else as a distraction, but we cannot get rid of our congenital evil virus. We all come from the same set of first parents, who in the Garden of Eden thought that being connected to God was demeaning slavery. Now we all live under God’s triple curse of pain, death, and judgment.

Sin cuts us off. Like leprosy, it shuts us off by ourselves, isolated from each other, cut off from God. You can always tell when someone is in trouble. They cut themselves us from family, from friends and from the church. They withdraw and isolate themselves. Sin does that. It puts us in a sealed isolated ward, out of touch.

We can be like Naaman, thinking too highly of ourselves. We are insulted when someone points out our sin. No servant should tell me when I’m doing something wrong, even if it is the Lord’s servant – your pastor. And then, if we do think we need to be healed, we want some religious hocus-pocus like you see on TBN where the prophet waves his hand over the diseased spot and calls on God’s name. We want to see something great, feel something great, even do something great in order to contribute in some way to our healing.

But that’s not how God works. He wants us to come like the other leper. Kneel before the Lord’s altar. Beg before God’s throne of grace. Bow your head in humility. Approach Christ’s cross in repentance. Admit your sin. Confess that you are a sinner in your nature, that the disease of your sin has infected your body, that the leprosy of your sin has affected your soul. Repent that your sinful nature does not remain hidden inside your body, but displays itself in your rotten thoughts, words and actions. Admit that if left untreated, your leprosy of sin will kill you, both physically and spiritually.

And then accept Jesus’ forgiveness, so that you may be restored, cleansed and made alive. Jesus does the unthinkable! He does the remarkable thing, the dangerous thing, the contagious thing. He reaches out His hand and touches you. He did the remarkable thing – He entered our world. He did the dangerous thing – He made Himself human. And then He did the contagious thing – He took our disease of sin upon Himself. We love human contact. We need touch and hugs and to feel physically close to someone. Jesus provides that. But not just human touch – but the touch of God.

Jesus bore our sicknesses in His own body on the cross. Every last symptom – every anger, jealousy and lust, every virus, bacteria and cancer cell – every last bit of our death, He buried in the black hole of His death. His death and resurrection are His healing miracles for us.

Jesus reaches out to us. He touches and speaks to us. You hear His compassionate voice in His spoken Word. You feel His cleansing water wash over you in your Baptism. You taste His love and forgiveness in His Body and Blood. This is His sacramental touch. Naaman the mighty Syrian general was cleansed with humble waters. You were cleansed in your baptismal waters. The humble leper was healed with a divine touch. You feel this touch, not in the mighty and miraculous, or the religious hocus-pocus, but in simple, the ordinary, in the absolution, the Sacrament and the benediction.

Jesus did not come to put a bandage on your sin, to treat this trouble spot or that difficulty, to heal this pain or fix that problem. He did not come to give us an easy way out of our suffering, but as St. Paul teaches us today, He comforts us in our troubles, so we can then comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3-7). Jesus came to be our sin, to become the leper in our place, the outcast, the cursed for each one of you. He bore your troubles in His body. He became infected with your inborn disease. He absorbed your leprosy into His own body cursed on the tree, broken, despised, forsaken crushed to death. He came to be your healing, your life and your salvation. So that you might be cleansed, restored and made alive!

Sadly, when most people sin, they don't like to take the blame for the wrong they've done. They find it easier and more convenient to blame the devil, or their upbringing, or their loss of temper, or just about anything rather than themselves. In shifting the blame, human creativity is almost boundless. As proof, I share the story of Ryu Matsumoto, the man who for an entire week was Japan's Minister of Reconstruction. On a tour to the earthquake-ravaged cities of Japan, Matsumoto made some remarks which got the people of Japan so upset Matsumoto had to resign. Rather than taking responsibility for what he had said, Matsumoto blamed his blood type. Yes, you heard correctly. He said, “My blood's type B, which means I can be irritable and impetuous, and my intentions don't always come across.”

Scripture is clear: God does not want us to ignore, minimize, put band-aids on, treat the symptoms or shift the blame for the things we have done wrong. When people do that, they end up minimizing the work of forgiveness that brought Jesus into the world. Just as bad, in essence they are also saying, “I really don't need the Savior because I really haven't done anything that needs forgiving.”

Today we learn a lesson from the two lepers. We are diseased. We need cleansing. We are leprous. We need restoring. Our sin kills us physically and spiritually. We need to be made alive. Because of Jesus’ baptismal water, His powerful Word and His healing touch, we are cleansed, restored and made alive. That makes a lot more sense to me than saying, “Because of my blood type I didn’t do anything wrong.” Amen.

6^th Sunday after Epiphany on February 12, 2012