In dangerous and testing times – the message is simple and clear
Wake Up!
Mahler’s 3rd Symphony
From all the things I learned while I was overseas this one single experience emerges as prophetic in so many ways.
The Cantor, a woman dressed in red who has sat there for almost an hour of an Ocean of rising and falling huge orchestral moments plays on our curiosity of what her role is and what she will sing.
And now in the Sheer Silence stands to sing, as the strings – violins, violas, Cellos – go through the motions of a curious, intriguing playing without sound.
Rather than avoidance, the Symphony urges confrontation - invites us to embrace the crisis and not run away from it. Indeed, in many ways it becomes for us A SIGN as it was for Elijah that night of the soul when God was NOT in the convulsions of storms and earthquakes and conflagrations.
And then THIS – words taken from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Midnight and its prophetic message poignant and clear.
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
‘Ich schlief, ich schlief –
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: -
Die Welt ist tief,
Und Tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh -,
Lust – tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit -,
Humanity – watch out!
Do you even know what the deepest midnight is saying to you?
Do you? – it’s this just this:
I was asleep, I was asleep –
Out of the deepest dream I was awakened; -
The world is deep
Much deeper than the day itself has ever imagined;
Deep is its pain -,
And desire even deeper than the pathos of the heart:
Pain speaks out: Get lost!
Indeed, All desire must have eternity-,
Yes … it too wants deep Eternity.
You may wonder what this has to do with today’s reading.
Well when the proud General who expects 5 star treatment finally accepts to go into what he considers to be a 1 star river thereby accepting the shabby deal the prophet offers i.e. 7 deep immersions in said cheap water … when silver, gold and exotic designer apparel extravagantly offered by him had been turned down for this dis-grace, he finds himself as if emerging from a dream, to have escaped the death sentence which was leprosy – equivalent to irreversible, incurable 4th stage cancer today.
In his awakened state he touches the affected parts of his body in disbelief discovering them to be healthy – the skin as clean and supple as ‘that of a young boy,’ he notices.
It is like Elijah’s cave extravaganza A SIGN, not just a miracle. And to understand the meaning, the significance of such signs in dangerous and testing times like ours we have only to pay attention to the way Jesus explains them in another context. The healing of the man with the withered hand. Their argument then was over the source of the healing; disputation over how this could be from God when clearly Jesus had broken the Sabbath law. So entangled were they in their doctrinal wrangling that they couldn’t see the obvious staring them in the face: something extraordinary had happened – a man incapacitated for life, unable to fend for himself because of his disability had had a defect from birth eliminated and there before their eyes was his hand perfect as it should have been from birth. None of this made sense to their tunnel vision. They just assumed that because the man was afflicted from birth – he must have a curse on his family (the punishment of the sins of one generation passed on to another) cf. Sophocles’ ‘thought experiment’ in Oedipus the King where the matter of his guilt was a distraction from what was actually at stake: that the plague probably had nothing to do with an alleged patricide, regicide and incest – but had everything to do with muddled thinking, hasty judgements – or when you get down to it – a show trial designed to eliminate a ‘political’ enemy. Not just ONE man was guilty – in this case all were guilty – guilty of either mistaken argument arising from assumptions that had never been questioned – or a deliberate fabrication of the truth to enable one side of the argument to triumph over another.
When we go back to our original story we see a different dynamic at work. For a start it was ‘a young girl from Israel’ who had been enslaved who set aside her religion, her Judaism to see a human being distressed by a death sentence. Her motivation was compassion not trying to prove a point about her religion, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of leprosy.”
That is the orientation of her thinking. And wonderfully these words from a compassionate heart set in train a whole series of repercussions – principally the challenge of a structural problem – Israel ironically had moved away from its focus on the true compassionate God to a religion that had to be ‘right.’ It is that which is confronted.
As a consequence because the assumptions, the foundations are wrong the king of Israel is caught out. The letter sent to him exposes the naked king – ‘With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ Which send the king into a tailspin, 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!’ A so-called pagan king stirring up the king of a country who were monotheists… and even Namaan himself gets a serve with his tantrum and ridiculous behaviour in the midst of a serious health crisis.
It takes the outlier, the boundary rider – the prophet Elisha – to bring things back to the centre.
So be encouraged you beautiful people - outliers, boundary riders that you are. God is with you with all of us regardless… cf. “Help me/ save me”/”Convict me” “Judge me” (modern day Job).
2 Kings 5.1-14
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 of raiders 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? Make 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 all 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.