Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, November 4, 2018
2 Kings 5:1-19

This morning our scripture texts are about healing, and really, this All Saints’ Sunday is a good Sunday to talk about seeking God’s healing in our lives as we deal with loss and grief. What might be hard when we hear these scripture readings about people who received physical healing from God, is when we think about those times in the past year when we heard the words no one ever wants to hear: “there is no cure. There is no more treatment. We’ve done all we can do. It’s time to get your arrangements in order.” The question “why?” is an easy one to ask God during these times – why was Naaman healed and yet my mom not? Where was Jesus’ healing touch for my dad, or my grandma? Those are fair questions to ask God in times of grief and loss.
In some ways, we can understand Naaman’s angry response to Elisha, because he healing doesn’t come in the way that Naaman expects or wants. Elisha sends a messenger to ask Namaan to wash in the Jordan river seven times, and Namaan is angry, because he expected this famous prophet to come to him personally and touch him and be healed. He’s a bit indignant, and besides that, the Jordan water is kind of dirty. His servants wisely calm him down, reminding him that it’s really not a big thing that Elisha is asking him to do. I don’t necessarily have the answers to why God doesn’t always heal us in the way we hope for or want. But I think these scripture passages remind us that it is God’s mission to heal the world, in a much deeper sense of the meaning of healing beyond physically curing people. And even in times of death, God reassures us that through Jesus Christ, who himself died for our sake, healing is possible. Healing IS God’s mission, for the world.
Both in Hebrew and in Greek, the word for healing has a more holistic sense than a physical cure. Specifically, the word “sozo” in Greek can also be translated as “salvation.” And even our English word, “salvation,” is related to the word “salve” – a healing ointment. Healing and salvation are closely tied for God. Naaman seeks healing for his skin disease, but at the end of the story, after washing seven times in the Jordan river, Naaman not only has skin as smooth as a baby, he is spiritually healed. He tells Elisha, “I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God anywhere on earth other than the God of Israel.” In that physical healing, Naaman has a powerful experience of God that changes him forever. Not only is he healed, he is saved, by the living God of Israel. Similarly, the man with leprosy that Jesus heals in the gospel for today not only experiences relief from a physical ailment, but restoration back to the community, as lepers were outcasts isolated from social interaction because they were thought to be not only contagious but spiritually unclean. God must be punishing them for something wrong they had done, was the common thought. The leper’s healing includes physical, emotional, and social wellbeing that God in Jesus Christ brings.
We were at my grandparents’ farm to celebrate Thanksgiving one year when I was in high school. I went with my family very reluctantly to my grandparents’ church for their Thanksgiving Eve worship service. I was reluctant to go because we had been out searching for my dog all afternoon. She had never run away from the farm before, but on this day she had followed my grandparents’ golden retriever off the farm and headed east, towards Brookings. That was all we knew – my grandparents’ dog had come back without her. There was snow on the ground and it was cold in South Dakota and too dark to continue our search that night. So my mom dragged me to church. It just so happened that my grandparents’ pastor had just returned from his mother-in-law’s funeral and preached about that. I don’t remember a word he said, but I was sobbing. My dog was lost, his mother-in-law was gone. And even though I could hardly hear the words I remember feeling a great comfort that someone in that room, especially the fact that it was the pastor, was grieving something, too. I was not alone. Fortunately for us, on Thanksgiving morning the Brookings pound called to say that a kind passerby had picked up my dog that night and taken her to the pound. She happily greeted us like nothing had been wrong, excited to “tell” us all about her adventures. It was a powerful moment for me to realize we all feel loss and grief sometimes, even over a lost dog, and church can be a place for us to share our grief so we know we are not alone, and that God is with us even and especially in those difficult times.
Martin Luther referred to the church not as a museum for saints, but as a hospital for sinners. On All Saints Day, we remember that we are people created by God to do great things for God, but often, as sinners, we fail. Often, we are in need of God’s healing beyond what physically ails us. Many of us suffer from chronic conditions for which there is no cure, and that does not mean that our faith is somehow weak, that God is punishing us, or that God is silent and uncaring. Many of us are wrestling with things we’d rather not talk about, whether it’s ongoing arthritic pain, a battle with cancer, family divisions that aren’t getting better, a mental health diagnosis that requires daily medication, a changed financial situation, and so on. All of these hurts, while not all physical, come with additional mental, emotional, social and spiritual wounds. They come with loss – we can’t do things the way we used to because of limited physical mobility. We can’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas the way we used to because our family member isn’t with us, or so and so isn’t speaking to us. This is where God’s healing in the salvation (sozo) sense of the word gives us hope. Christ is here. Christ is here now, extending a healing touch beyond what may be physically possible to send friends and family to support us mentally and emotionally, a church community to pray for us, to feed us spiritually and sometimes literally with nourishing food. As we remember loved ones who are no longer with us here on Earth, together we grieve their passing today, whether it’s been twenty years or two weeks. We are not alone in our grief. Today, we also celebrate the promise that God’s healing in Jesus Christ includes our salvation and theirs, life abundant, life eternal, now and always. Amen.