Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Look at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (February 15, 2009)

[This coming Sunday's Bible lessons for Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I serve as pastor, will be the same as the lessons in many churches around the world. Hopefully, these notes will help folks prepare for worship.]

The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

The Bible Lessons:
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Comments:
Here are a few thoughts on the lesson from 2 Kings which I shared on January 20, with a group of pastors with whom my son (who starts seminary this summer) and I meet each month:
1. It’s unfortunate that this pericope stops where it does. The next few verses beyond present an argument for the universality for Israel’s God and Elisha’s problematic acquiescence to Naaman’s intention to worship the Syrian version of Baal alongside his king back home. But this is a rich text even without following the incident through v.19.

2. Aram, of course, is Syria. Speculation is that this incident occurred in about 850BC, during the reigns of Ben-hadad in Aram and Jehoram in Israel.

3. There’s no evidence of Hansen’s Disease in Israel or nearby countries in these ancient days and only a few incidents of it in Jesus’ time. The term of leprosy was applied to many different skin diseases. (Hansen’s Disease can be treated, but not cured by conventional methods.)

4. Vv.1 and 2 present several interesting juxtapositions. First, there’s the irony of Naaman himself: He’s a mighty general, but he’s afflicted with a skin disease which, if unchecked, will eventually make him a pariah unfit for society. Second, there’s the stark contrast between this powerful general on the one hand and the little foreign slave girl in his household. As Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

5. Another stunning thing in v.1 is the revelation that the God of Israel had given Naaman his victories over Israel. This both hints at the universality of God’s reign and the judgment of God against His people in history.

6. It’s intriguing that this foreign slave girl, so insignificant she isn’t even named, shows concern for the man who enslaved her. (v.3)

7. It’s equally intriguing that Naaman is so desperate for a cure that he takes the advice of the slave girl seriously. It’s not the last time in this incident when Naaman will take the advice of his social inferiors (v.13).

8. Naaman gathers gifts to take to Israel (v.5). His is typical religious behavior, religion being humanity’s attempt to placate or please gods. He’s going to get a lesson not only about the presence of God in his prophet, as Elisha has it (v.8), but also that God’s gifts are free.

9. The reaction of the king of Israel (vv.6-7) is understandable. Aram had often attacked Israel, making it a vassal kingdom. It was perfectly logical to think that Aram was creating a pretext for yet another attack. The king knows that he can’t bring about the healing of Naaman.

10. V.9 is sort of a powerplay. Think of the scene in The Right Stuff when Vice President Lyndon Johnson goes to the house of astronaut John Glenn in order to offer comfort to his wife during a crisis point in the flight of Friendship 7. Annie Glenn refused to see Johnson and the Vice President of the United States is portrayed as having a first class temper tantrum in his limo. Like Naaman, the great man wasn’t treated with the deference to which he thought he was entitled.

11. Of course, with his expectations of personal deference and of a religious transaction, Naaman is highly offended by Elisha’s instructions in v.10. Referencing another movie: Think of Ranch Wilder in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield. “You can’t fire me. I have a contract!” Ranch bellows, “I’m Ranch Wilder!” “You can’t expect me to do something so insignificant as dunking myself seven times in the muddy Jordan!” Naaman says (v.12). Like many people offended by grace and the idea of God working in small ways and places, Naaman would rather head back to Syria without being healed than experience the humiliation of so small an act (v.13). This really could have resulted in war.

12. Good semitic argument, which Jesus often used, ran this way: If this small thing, then how much more this big thing? This was, for example, Jesus’ argument about God’s willingness to answer prayer: If you, who are evil, respond compassionately to the requests of your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give you the Holy Spirit when you pray?

Naaman’s servants turn this arument form on its head…and make absolute sense in the process (v.13). “If Elisha had asked you to do some great thing, you wouldn’t refuse. Then, why refuse this little thing?”

Naaman had to get small, deny self, to experience God’s charity. As long as he held that as a BMOC, he needed to be in charge of things, he was too big to be helped.

13. Seven dunks in the Jordan and Naaman’s whole body was as soft as a baby’s bottom (v.14). He was rendered “clean” because leprosy was regarded as a dirty thing.
Here are some verse-by-verse comments, which I wrote three years ago, on the lesson from Mark:
v. 40: This is the first overt expression of faith in Christ that we find in Mark's Gospel. At most, faith is implied in Mark 1:30 and of course, in the silent witness of the Capernaum crowds who came to seek healing (Mark 1:32-33). Although it should be said that in both cases, there is reason to wonder whether what's being expressed is faith. At this point in the Gospel, the crowds are not responding to Jesus as a matter of trust in Him as the Messiah Who will suffer and die for them and call them to die to self in order to rise to new life with God. Not even Jesus' first four disciples--Andrew, Simon, James, and John--appear to have an understanding of Jesus that would qualify for the Biblical term of faith (pistis in the Greek of the New Testament, a word that means trust. Rather, the incipient faith we see here demonstrated is rooted in the belief that Jesus is a miracle worker who will give them what they want.

But the leper's belief in Jesus is different from what we've heretofore encountered in Mark's account. There's a note of "Your will be done" in his words. "If you choose," he tells Jesus. This is submission. In that word, if, the leper also recognizes that Jesus is sovereign, that Jesus doesn't have to heal unless He chooses to do so, and that it's possible that a sovereign God may allow suffering to happen in the lives of believers. Tough stuff, but very mature. (God grant me such maturity of faith!) This is the sort of real and unflinching faith I often observe in people who have suffered.

Leprosy was regarded as more than merely a biological ailment. The leper was "unclean," unfit for participation in social or religious life. This is why the Old Testament book of Leviticus had clear guidelines on how one who had suffered from leprosy could have the restoration of their cleanness, and their restoration to religious and community life, certified. The certification was done not by a physician, but by a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

It's a measure of Jesus' perceived compassion that the leper feels that he can approach Jesus. In those days, people were so paranoid about being near a person with leprosy, for fear of physical and spiritual contamination, that they would throw stones at lepers to keep them at bay. We no doubt see a contemporary version of this in the attitudes of some toward those infected with the AIDS virus.

v. 41: The most jarring words in this verse are: "Jesus...touched him..." This was a scandalous no-no.

Jesus did choose to heal the leper, underscoring what I mentioned earlier, that healing is always at the discretion of a sovereign God.

v. 42: "Immediately" again. Mark's frequent use of this term emphasizes several things: (1) the immediacy of God's presence in Christ; (2) the capacity and desire of Jesus to work with urgency in our lives; (3) the rapidity with which Jesus moved from meteoric superstar to rejected Messiah.

v. 44: Once again here, we see an example of what's known as Mark's "messianic secret." Until Jesus has gone through cross and resurrection, the crowds are inclined to see Him as nothing more than a kewpie doll, a miracle-maker bound to do their bidding and provide them with pleasure. But Jesus has not come into our lives to give us lives of ease. He has come to be the road to our everlasting transformation.

This is what will happen in the lives of those who turn from sin (repent) and trust in Jesus and the good news about Him (Mark 1:15). As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran martyr killed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War Two, pointed out, new life and forgiveness are gifts we cannot earn for all with faith in Jesus Christ.

These things come to us as grace, the Bible's word for the charity God grants to undeserving people like you and me. They're gifts and they are free. ("For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast," Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-9).

But, as Bonhoeffer goes on to point out, if we accept these gifts, doing so will cost us our lives, the lives we're accustomed to living. We cannot take up Christ without laying down our self-absorption and self-protection. There is a difference, Bonhoeffer shows, between "cheap grace"--anything goes-ism without personal transformation--and "costly grace," embracing Christ's gifts by laying down our whole lives in surrender.

Until we understand the difference between cheap and costly grace, to speak about Jesus as the Messiah is meaningless babble.

And so, Jesus doesn't want the healed leper to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah yet.

But there's a second reason that Jesus tells the leper not to tell anybody about how he had been cleansed. He wants the man to go through the certification process alluded to earlier and which is detailed in Leviticus 18 and 19. Remember: Jesus didn't come to abolish God's laws, but to be their pure and complete fulfiller. He expected the cleansed leper to abide by those laws.

v. 45: But the cleansed leper couldn't keep his mouth shut. Jesus' fame spread even more.
I may have more to share on the lessons later in the week.

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