Crossing borders, ignoring status, reaching out

Today we heard two stories of healing, centuries apart. One involves the prophet Elisha. One involves Jesus. Both stories are about lepers. Both stories are about foreigners. Both stories are about mercy that refuses to stay inside the expected bounds of religion and rank.

Naaman was a great man, the Bible tells us—a successful general, commander of the army of Aram, Israel’s enemy, in high favor with his king. Few men in his world had more power or wealth. Few had more reason for self-confidence, even for pride. But Naaman had one problem. He suffered from leprosy. Leprosy was a skin disease. It was, I’m sure, unpleasant, but it was also seen in the ancient world as a curse—a sign that the sufferer was unclean and must be out of favor with God.

But Naaman was a great man. And so when he heard that the prophet Elisha could heal him, he gathered up his horses and chariots and servants, and a good portion of his wealth, and he traveled to Israel, to Elisha’s house. Naaman expected the formal welcome due to someone of his prominence. Elisha might ask him to undertake some great and difficult task, or demand a hefty fee in exchange for healing him. That would be right and proper. But surely Elisha would come out, bow, and greet him. Naaman was a great man, after all.

But Elisha didn’t even come to the door. He sent out a messenger to tell him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times. Naaman was furious. That’s all? No welcome? No elaborate ritual? No great quest to undertake? Go wash in the muddy local river? What an insult! “Don’t you know who I am?” he must have thought.

Naaman was a great man.

But of course, in reality, Naaman was what we all are—at once strong and weak, self-confident and afraid, proud and troubled by shame. And fortunately, Naaman swallowed his pride. His servants urged him to do what the prophet told him to do. It was easy, after all. And so Naaman went to the river. He probably felt ridiculous. But he did it. He bathed seven times, and lo and behold, he was healed.

Later, he returned to Elisha, offering riches in thanksgiving, but the prophet refused. And Naaman—this foreign general—vowed to follow the God of Israel.

What does this story tell us about God? Notice a few things. Naaman is a foreigner. He’s not a follower of the God of Israel. Yet God heals him. Naaman learns about the prophet not from his king, but from a young girl, a captive slave. He follows the advice of servants. It’s not his power or his wealth—or even his faith—that saves him. It’s his humility. It’s his willingness to listen to those weaker than himself. His willingness not to insist upon the honor due his rank.

And then—centuries later—we hear another story of lepers, another story of healing. Ten people are living outside their village, cut off from family, from work, from worship. They share Naaman’s disease. But not his power. They have no armies to command, no silver or gold to offer. All they can offer is a plea, shouted from a distance: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

And Jesus says, “Go. Show yourselves to the priests.” No touch. No ceremony. No proof. Just a command—as simple, and as strange, as “Go wash in the river.” And as they go, they are healed. Nine keep walking. One—a Samaritan, a foreigner—turns back, praising God, and falls at Jesus’ feet to give thanks.

Now remember: Jews and Samaritans hated each other. They worshiped in different places, traced their ancestry through different lines, and avoided one another whenever possible. A Samaritan would have been the last person a Jewish audience would expect to be the hero of a story.

It’s also worth noting that we don’t know anything about the other nine who kept walking. They may have hurried to the Temple to do exactly what Jesus told them to do. There’s certainly no hint that Jesus took back his decision to heal them. They may have gone home to see families they hadn’t hugged in years. They may have stuck for a while to the isolation their illness demanded. We just don’t know. But we do know this one man turned back. And Luke wants us to see him. A foreigner once again—the one you’d least expect—recognizing God’s mercy for what it is, and giving thanks.

Naaman and the Samaritan leper both learned the same truth: that grace doesn’t wait for the worthy, and that healing doesn’t come through status or power. It comes through trust, through humility, through gratitude. Naaman obeyed a word that seemed too small to matter. The lepers obeyed a word that seemed too little, too late. And both found themselves clean.

Maybe healing faith begins in such places—in a small, ridiculous act of obedience, in an unexpected moment of thanksgiving, in the willingness to listen when God speaks through unlikely voices. Because God still acts that way. God still speaks through the voices of the powerless, through the kindness of strangers, and through a grace that runs deeper than pride, and stretches further than we often think to look. In Elijah’s time, in Jesus’s time, and today, God’s mercy finds a way—crossing borders, ignoring status, reaching out to anyone desperate enough, humble enough, or grateful enough to receive it.

And how often have we dismissed a word of wisdom because it came from someone we thought beneath us—from a child, from a colleague we don’t respect, from someone we disagree with on everything that matters? How often have we refused simple obedience because we expected God to work in grander, more impressive ways?

But we do sometimes get it right.

Did you know that, every Sunday, we do the same thing that Samaritan leper did so long ago? We give thanks. That’s what the word Eucharist means—thanksgiving. Like that stranger so long ago, we turn back. We fall at Jesus’s feet. We need no wealth or status or power. Only gratitude. And in returning, remembering, and thanksgiving, we find again that the mercy of God still makes us whole.