Wash and be Cleansed
2 Kings 5:1-14
On their 25th anniversary, a husband took his wife out to dinner. Their teenage daughters told them that they would have dessert waiting for them when they returned. After the couple got home, they saw that the dining room table was beautifully set with China, crystal, and candles, and there was a note that read, “Your dessert is in the refrigerator. We are staying with friends, so go ahead and do something we wouldn’t do!” The husband looked at his wife and said: “I suppose we could vacuum.”
They say that cleanliness is next to godliness, and it is an important charcteristic. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that cleanliness is specifically a divine quality. For by nature we human beings are dirty rather than clean, and not just physically, but especially in our heart and soul. As we state in our confession of sins: “We are by nature sinful and unclean.” Not only do we have an aversion to cleaning up our messes, but spiritually speaking we can’t actually do it. In other words, only God can truly make us clean.
That is the theme behind our Old Testament lesson for today – the account of the cleansing of Naaman. Our text tells us that Naaman was a commander in the Syrian army – a valiant soldier, who was highly regarded by the king. Seemingly he had everything going for him, except that he was afflicted with leprosy. Now, the Hebrew word for ‘leprosy’ refers to any number of infectious skin diseases, whose symptoms often included malignant raw flesh with white hairs growing in it. It was obviously an unpleasant, disgusting, and at times fatal, disease. For that reason, the Jewish ceremonial law required that such a person be isolated from the community. And as a sign of their impurity, they were to tear their clothes, leave their hair unkempt, and cry out ‘unclean’ to anyone who passed by.
However, Naaman was not a Jew. He was a Syrian, an enemy of the Jews, who had captured a young Israelite girl in one of his raiding parties. Amazingly enough, this little Israelite girl was so full of compassion for her captor, that she suggested: “IF ONLY MY MASTER WOULD SEE THE PROHET WHO IS IN SAMARIA! HE WOULD CURE HIM OF HIS LEPROSY.” In other words, she witnessed to her enemies. She testified to the fact that not only could God heal Naaman of his leprosy, but He could cleanse him of his impurity.
My friends, what a comforting word that ought to be for us as well. For like Naaman, we too have an infectious disease – a disease, not just of the flesh, but of the heart and soul. It is the disease of original sin, passed onto us by our parents, which makes us unclean and impure before the Lord, and isolates us from His loving presence. The symptoms of this deadly disease are the actual selfish thoughts, spiteful words, and rebellious deeds we commit, as well as the kind, loving and caring things we fail to do. And as Holy Scripture so often reminds us, it is a fatal disease that leads inevitably and inexorably towards eternal death in hell. That’s why it’s so good to know that our almighty God can not only cure us of the disease of sin, but cleanse us of our impurity.
And yet, the incredible thing is that like Naaman, all too often we think we have to buy God’s blessings. We’re told that Naaman took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing, in order to purchase his healing. The audacity is in thinking that that would ever be enough. After all, what is your life worth? How could we ever pay the price? But we exhibit the same audacity, when we think that our contributions in the offering plate, or our gifts to the poor, or our labors in God’s kingdom someone make us more pleasing in His sight, and earn for us His blessings.
A number of years ago Walter Carlson of Chicago’s WMBI took his roving microphone into Union Station and asked passers-by the question, “How does a person get to heaven?” For half an hour a parade of travelers responded with such answers as “Obey the Golden Rule,” “Be good to your neighbor,” “Go to church,” “Pay your bills.” These answers are natural for all people, even for us. We are born with a good opinion of ourselves, with the idea that we are able to satisfy God by our own efforts. That is our natural bent — we think that we are something. And yet, as John Dyer once said, “A man may go to heaven without riches, without honor, without learning, without friends, but he can never go there without Jesus Christ.”
In other words, the only way we can be saved, or cleansed, or receive God’s blessings is not by trying to buy them or work for them, but only as a gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. The ironic thing is that Naaman’s name is a Syrian word that means: ‘gracious.’ And that’s just what he received from God through the prophet Elisha. He received grace. Even though he was an enemy of God and His people, he was graciously cured. In fact, Elisha refused his gifts, and instead told him: “GO, WASH YOURSELF SEVEN TIMES IN THE JORDAN, AND YOUR FLESH WILL BE RESTORED AND YOU WILL BE CLEANSED.”
Oddly enough, Naaman’s first response wasn’t very receptive. He went off in a rage, thinking that he’d been duped. After all, you get what you pay for, and he hadn’t paid anything. He apparently expected Elisha to perform some magic – to wave his arms, and say some words and heal him. But instead, he was told to go wash in the dirty, muddy Jordan river. In his estimation the rivers in his home country were better than the Jordan. But when his servants finally persuaded him and he humbly went, he was made whole again. As a matter of fact, our text says that, “his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.”
What a beautiful glimpse that gives us into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Although we too are enemies of God and His people, we have been graciously cured. By God’s grace we have been restored to His forgiven and beloved children, through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. We have been made whole again, without any spots or blemishes of guilt. We have been given a brand new start, like a little child, fresh and clean and forgiven. For just as God healed Naaman through humble means – the humble waters of the Jordan river – so also through humble means He has healed you and me.
For instance, a little baby born in a manger dies on a piece of wood, and because He is the almighty Son of God, veiled in human flesh, He saves us from our sin. A morsel of bread and a sip of wine, by the power of God’s Word are the vehicles by which we receive Jesus’ very body and blood – the same body He sacrificed on the cross, the same blood He poured out for our salvation. We taste and eat, and in so doing He imparts to us His pardon and forgiveness, the merits of Christ that blot out all our iniquities. A simple splash of water, combined with God’s Word in Holy Baptism cleanses us of all our unrighteousness. A humble, mortal man stands before you and says: “I forgive you all your sins.” And by the power of Jesus’ command, it is a blessed reality. All your offenses and mine are wiped out and erased for good. Yes, through those humble but powerful means – Baptism and Communion, the Word and Absolution – we are cured of the leprosy of our sin.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing of all is that in our text the word ‘cure’ is a verb that actually means: ‘to gather or collect’ and hence: ‘to remove.’ Dear friends, that is precisely what Jesus Christ has done to our sins by His grace. He gathered up all our most disgusting sins of thought, word and deed, as well as original sin itself, and carried them to the cross, where He removed them once and for all. Whatever troubles your conscience the most, whatever guilty thought clings to your heart and wakes you up in the middle of the night – know this for a certainty: Jesus Christ collected that up in the trash bag of His love and threw it away forever.
No doubt, that’s why Elisha had Naaman dip himself seven times in the Jordan river, because seven is the number of perfection and completion. Which is a wonderful reminder for us, that Jesus has forgiven us, not partially, not just some of our sins, but all of our sins completely and perfectly. And that gracious pardon and forgiveness He pours out to us in the cleansing waters of our Baptism, the nourishing meal of His supper, and His Holy saving Word, where He absolves us of all our guilt. For in those precious Means of Grace, like Naaman we too have been washed and cleansed.
In the downtown section of St. Paul, MN some years ago was a church known as the People’s Church. At one time it was filled with throngs of expectant worshipers, but as the business district closed about it, the worshipers dwindled until only a handful came there to worship and pray. One night the old church caught fire. Before the firemen could extinguish the blaze in the sub-zero temperature, a large part of the church had been burned. An eight-foot, life size marble statue of Thorvaldsen’s “The Appealing Christ” had occupied a central place at the altar. During the blaze it had fallen into the basement but by some miracle was undamaged. After the ruins had cooled, the firemen placed the statue of Christ with arms outstretched on the sidewalk beside the church. The next morning the throngs that passed by on their way to work, most of whom had never been inside the old church, saw the figure of Christ in a gesture of gracious invitation.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that incident is a striking illustration of the task of the church today. We are to take the Christ of the church out into the world where people are. We cannot simply wait for the lost to come to us, because they can’t. They’re lost. We need to go out to them and share the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. Like the little slave girl in our text, we should have such compassion, even for our enemies, the unbelieving world, that we witness to them that God can cure them of the leprosy of their sin. We do that by building relationships with our neighbors, co-workers and acquaintances, and then in their time of need, pointing them to Jesus and the cross. We do it, not by avoiding them or ostracizing them like lepers, but by living among them and listening to them, so that we can communicate the love of Jesus in their language. That’s why we’ve been washed and cleansed – so that we can share that cleansing with others. May God empower us by His Spirit to do that, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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03/06/2006