Creekside Church Sermon of February 9, 2003 "Taking a [Healing] Dip" 2 Kings 5:1-14	Rev. David Bibbee
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Naturally, Earl was desperate, but Glenn came to the rescue with a bucket of water. "Here…sit in this!" he ordered. "Don't get out till I tell you." He left Earl crying in a bucket of water. After a lengthy sit, Glenn told him to get up and lay on his stomach in the sun. "Lay there," he ordered "Until your pants dry out." When their parents got back they found Earl laying in the yard crying and bellaring that he would die if the sun didn't dry the seat of his pants. Glenn thought it was a hoot. His parents didn't think much of the remedy.

Many of us remember the home remedies that were practiced years ago. When I was young and had a coughing spell that Vicks 44 couldn't quiet, my grandmother would bring me a tablespoon of spirited elixir. "Open up and down the hatch," she said. Grandma called it medicine. It was whiskey and honey. There were, and still are lots of potions and poultices for what ails us, some proven to have curative qualities, others as effective as sitting in a bucket of water.

With this in mind, let's look at 2 Kings 5 and one man's quest for a cure. Naaman was a decorated general in the Syrian Army. He wore so many medals on his coat he could barely stand erect. Beneath his coat of medals was a body wasting away from leprosy. None of the Syrian specialists could help him, but he got arerral from an unlikely source. A nameless little servant of Naaman's wife who was taken in a raid on Israel said, "Mrs. Naaman, I know someone who can cure your husband. He is a prophet in Samaria." When news of the Prophet Elisha came to Naaman he said, "Let's go for it!"

Naaman was an expedient man. He knew, as we know, that medical treatment was expensive. He loaded chests full of silver and gold and elegant designer robes to pay for a cure. The king wrote a letter on Naaman's behalf. When Naaman arrived in Israel he handed over the letter to Israel's king and said, "This letter is from my king to you the king, telling you to order your prophet Elisha to heal me." Naaman wasn't asking a favor. He was giving an order. If Naaman's leprosy wasn't cured, Israel might pay dearly.

It created a crisis for Israel's king. "Who does he think I am? God? Greater yet, does he think I'm a doctor? The king shook in his shoes considering the consequences if Elisha didn't come through. When word of the situation reached Elisha he said, "Tell the king to calm down and send the general on over." Naaman hadn't gone to such great lengths on a "chance" he might be cured. Naaman "expected" a cure. He was prepared to buy one. He would pay a hundred-fold what insurance didn't cover.

So Naaman went to Elisha's house with his pompous entourage. The text says, "Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the door of Elisha's house." Elisha was absolutely unimpressed by the grand entrance. He didn't invite Naaman in for tea. Elisha didn't even get out of his chair. He sent his messenger to relay the message. Naaman stood by his chariot in his dress blues, medals reflecting in the sun, waiting for Elisha to come out chanting a strange, mysterious tongue, invoking incantations to the Hebrew God. "Aba-cadabra! Presto-chango! You're healed!" Imagine Naaman's reaction when a lowly servant opened the door and asked, "Which one of you is Naaman?" "I am Naaman." "Well, Mr. Naaman, Elisha told me to tell you to take seven dips in the Jordan River. That should take care of your problem. Thanks for coming." Then he closed the door.

All that trouble and expense, traveling all that way to be healed by a famous prophet whose prescription was, "Go wash seven times in the Jordan river?" A great man with a great disease deserved a great treatment…something more than what he got.

My father had heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. Some of the staff who worked on him also worked on King Hussein of Jordan. Imagine that upon arriving at the world famous clinic, King Hussein was met at the entrance by a candy striper who said, "Tell your driver to take you over to the Cuyahauga River and jump in seven times." What would he say? He would probably sound like Naaman. The text says:

"I was certain he would come out to me and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand and cure the leprosy. The rivers back in Damascus are better than Israel's waters. I could have washed in the rivers back home and be cleansed instead of coming all the way here!"

Occom's Razor is a construct that says when faced with a phenomenon that can be explained by either a complex or simple answer, the simple solution should be chosen. When it comes to issues in our lives, however, we think the complex answer is best. If something sounds more involved, if it has more parts, if it is more expensive, or hard to understand, it must be better. Like the saying goes, "You get what you pay for."

Way back in 1983 I was a volunteer chaplain at Memorial Hospital. Each day I received referral cards with information about the patient including diagnosis and treatment procedures. I went to see a patient on the sixth floor where the heart surgery patients stayed. He was scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning. The procedure the surgeon would perform had a name about eight inches long. "With a name like that, it had to be serious," I thought. What surprised me was how calm he seemed. "Ahhh…he's masking his feelings. Beneath his calm exterior he's scared silly." I gave him opportunities to name his fear, but he didn't. I said, "For a man facing heart surgery, you sure are calm." "Heart surgery?" he replied. "I'm not having heart surgery." "But this is the heart floor." I said. He replied, "I'm here because they are out of beds downstairs." "So what are you having done?" I asked. "I'm having hemorrhoids removed." The name of the proceedure had made it sound impressive.

Suppose Elisha had told Naaman, "Hop seven miles on one leg, then seven miles on the other leg. Then remain stationary and hop on both feet seven minutes every hour for seven days. Then stand chest deep at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates River until you see a cloud formation that looks like a goat, then come back with seven pairs of King Cobra fangs." A difficult prescription for a difficult disease, and Naaman probably would have done it.

What he got instead seemed like a joke. Naaman was furious with Elisha and stormed off. But one of his servants said to him, "If the prophet commanded you to do a great thing, would you not have done it? Isn't much easier when he says, 'wash and be clean'?"

You feel lousy. You go to the doctor and sit on a cold, paper-covered table in an examination room, wearing a skimpy excuse of a robe with the back door open on it, waiting for the doctor to enter. He comes in, picks up the chart and studies it. "Hmmm," he goes. He looks down your throat, up your nose, and in your ears. "Hmmm," he goes. He pushes, pokes, and thumps. "Hmmm," he goes. He writes on your chart. "You've picked up some bug," he says. "Get some bed rest. Push the fluids. Take two Tylenol every four hours. That ought to do it." You are grateful it's nothing serious. But there is also a part of you that thinks, "It would have been okay to haave comething more rare than just a 'bug'" For some reason it is strangely disappointing.

Naaman did as Elisha said. Seven dips in the Jordan and his leprous skin became as clear and soft as the bottom of the Ivory Snow baby. Note the big role of the little people in this story. The little Hebrew maid of Naaman's wife. "Go to the prophet in Samaria." Elisha's messenger. "Take seven dips in the Jordan." Naaman's servant, "Master, forget your money and your ego. Do as the man says. Do you want to be healed or don't you?"

We tend not to trust the easy, ordinary path toward healing. We spend a fortune on prescriptions and procedures; years with a therapist probing the crevasses of our psyches to get to the root of our problem. But there are times when the remedy is right under our nose. Sometimes healing is a simple step; a dismissed thing, an overlooked thing, the thing that was there all along that you didn't see or didn't want to see.

All of us need restoring dips throughout our lives. What might your's be? Maybe it means making peace with a painful past. Maybe it means forgiving someone. Maybe it means seeking for forgiveness from God or a person. Maybe it means reassessing and re-directing your life. Maybe it means asking God's help in learning to change what you can, and grace to live with what you can't, and enough sense to know the difference. Maybe it means no longer micro-managing your life and allowing God to take the helm instead.

Naaman returned to Elisha and said, "I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel." His knowledge of God was enlarged. He discovered what we can discover. What we need most comes not from treasures or power, or complicated prescriptions, but God's great faithfulness, mercy, and love. He learned as can we, that there are extraordinary powers in the ordinary aspects of life and that little is a lot when God is in it.

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