2 Kings 5: 1-14

In this week’s sermon, we returned to the prophet Elisha. Last week, he had picked up Elijah’s mantle and struck the Jordan River with it. When the waters parted, it was a sure sign that he had, indeed, received a “double portion” of the great prophet’s spirit.

This week, we meet him as a prophet in his own right. The great military commander Naaman, serving under the Syrian King Aram, has come to him to be healed from leprosy.

Why has he come? Because his wife’s servant, a kidnapped Hebrew girl, consigned to a life of slavery, mentioned to her mistress that “the prophet who is in Samaria” could cure her husband (v. 3).

Naaman, loaded down with silver and gold and accompanied by a royal retinue stands before Elisha’s house. There he meets not the man himself, but rather a messenger who calls out, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” (v. 10).

And Naaman filled with the rage that is the natural companion of scorned pride, refuses. “How dare he,” he thinks to himself. “Doesn’t he know who I am?”

But then some other lowly servant, or servants, unnamed and mostly unnoticed, reason with him, convincing him to go down to the river, where he washes seven times and is cleansed.

Thus, in the end, this story is not Naaman’s. It is not the tale of a great man with his silver and gold, but rather that of the lowly and nameless, the marginalized and forgotten whom God uses to speak truth into a broken world.

It is the story of healing through humility, of the necessity of going down.

This week, think about the unexpected people God has used to speak truth in your own life. Take a moment to release your expectations about who God uses and how. Instead, allow God to come to you in whatever form God wills.

2 Kings 2: 1-2 and 6-14

Elisha stood on the banks of the Jordan river. His spiritual father, mentor, and friend, Elijah, had just been carried up into heaven by chariots of fire.

Elisha was alone.

He grabbed his robe at the collar, and, in a fit of what must have been overwhelmed and overwhelming grief, ripped it in two.

Then, gathering himself, he went and picked up Elijah’s cloak from where it had fallen to the ground. His last request from the old prophet had been a double portion of his spirit. Had he received it?

Elisha looked out at the brown, swirling river. He raised the cloak above his head, and brought it down on the water’s surface. As he did, he cried out, “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” (v. 14).

And the waters parted. And Elisha crossed over into something new.

We all stand on the banks of a Jordan. In each grief-filled ending, the Lord, the God of Elijah, and of us today, is there, calling us into a new way of being.

This week, reflect on what God is calling you to. What is your Jordan river, and how can you find the courage and the faith to cross it?

This past Sunday, the sermon reminded us that God is found on the move, as active in our own lives as he was in Elijah’s, and also in the sheer silence that so often comes after a storm.

As you reflect this week, take a moment to consider last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Luke 8: 26 - 39. It’s the perhaps familiar story of Jesus healing a demon-afflicted man who’d taken to living among the tombs, wandering naked and alone, separate, it seemed forever, from his community.

After the demons had been driven out into a herd of pigs, and the man was found “dressed and in his right mind” at Jesus’ feet (v. 35, NIV), the townsfolk were so overcome with fear that they begged Jesus to leave. The healed man, for his part, was so overcome with joy, that he begged Jesus to let him follow and be a disciple.

The first request Christ honored – he did, indeed, leave that town. The second, though, he rejected. “Return home,” he told the man, “and tell how much God has done for you” (v. 39).

Where do you see yourself in this story?

If you’d witnessed this disturbing, miraculous thing, how might you have responded?

Try to imagine it, and when you’re done, talk to God about what you noticed, or simply rest in sheer silence.