Sermon Notes Feb. 12 Mk.1:40-5 ,2 Kings 5:1-14. Ps. 30

Naaman. Of all things, his name is the male Naomi, it means joy and pleasantness. and JC OK seems matter of fact, almost casual in this healing.
We have the Americans with disabilities Act. We try very hard to mainstream students in school. integration, not segregation is our impulse.
(God and the outcast from hunchback Movie on crusades with the leper christian king Baldwin the IV depicted fictionally in Kingdom of Heaven.Father Damien and Molokai
When ill, the body seems to betray us. If it is Hansen’s disease here, we are talking about falling apart at the seams. The first indication was numbness at the extremities. -inner sores/wounds)

We have to get past the understandable chuckle Israel got out of a great general being cut down to size. For one of their own, a servant, to tell the great man about a prophet in Israel. Illness will drives us to absurd lengths. my mother resisted going to doctors for her arthritis but oh she would try anything from magnets to shark cartilage to who knows what snake oil was being peddled to help relieve her pain. Can we not see a bit of our own pride in Naaman’s reaction to undergoing a cleansing ritual in Israel? The aides understand him and us. Surely you would be willing to do some great thing. We do not seek out the help we need. It may be fear of finding real trouble, as my mother would say medical tests could find something. I have told a guy for years that he should see a therapist, but he resists, as he is afraid and too proud to ask for help.
We are as insular as he with our notions of charity begins at home, our self-focus first- I loved the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Jack Benny told him that his “I don;t get no respect” routine would last him a lifetime because everyone feels that way at one time or another. (do jokes) Life can be a string of indignities.

Seeing a healing can cause rejoicing but also resentment. Why would this pagan’s prayer be answered and not mine. for that matter, why would anyone have a prayer answered when it is so obvious that it is my prayer that should be at the very top of the list. It is an invitation to the spiritually deadening act of comparing one to another, and we rarely judge another with the same standard as we use toward ourselves.

Leprosy seemed to have a real fear of contagion,so an element of exclusion was at play as well. Mental illness gets the reaction in our time. maybe even grief gets the same reaction. We ourselves try to wall it off from within. We don;t have many public outlets for it, and we may not intentionally exclude the grieving out of both a sense of propriety but also fear of how to treat them until things calm down a bit to being more normal.

Oh to undergo such a turnaround as Naaman, or the spiritual turn around of the Psalmist. It does not happen often that we turn from defeat to victory, from illness to healing, from mourning into dancing. Sometimes we push it and dance when we are not quite ready, try to force joy. We may feel a bit guilty when we start to feel better when we may think we should be mournful. Presbyterians have a tradition of a serious mien to prevent an sudden eruption of frivolity. Depressed people live under a pall of sadness, or at least the threat of a dark cloud appearing right over top of them in an otherwise cloudless sky. May you be blessed with such a conversion.. Even more, may you be able to find joy, love, and peace, even in struggles.