Do you see God? (Rob Gieselmann, October 14, 2007)

Do you see God as real?

Do you see God for who he or she is?

Do you see God?

or is God a mere caricature, some two dimensional super-being?

Anthony deMello tells this story:

A family sat down for dinner in a restaurant.  The waitress was taking orders. When she came to the 7 year-old boy, she asked,

What do you want, honey?

A hotdog and French fries, he answered.

The boy’s mother looked at the waitress and says,

 Meatloaf and green beans.

The waitress ignored her, and asked the boy,

Do you want ketchup or mustard on your hotdog?

Ketchup! he answered.

Coming right up, she said.

The family was stunned, and in the sunned silence, the boy spoke up and said,

Know what?  She thinks I’m real!

Is God real? To you.  Is God real?

**

1. Introduction.  Two stories about healing of Leprosy.  The first is told about Elisha, and the other about Jesus.  Both of these stories are complex, so this morning, I’m going to do something a little different.  I’m going to walk you through each, to see what we can glean from them.

2. The first: Elisha and Naaman.   Aram was a competitor country, if not an actual opponent, of Israel.  Naaman was the head of Aram’s army.  Naaman had leprosy. 

a. A Hebrew – Israelite – girl worked in Naaman’s house.  A girl – the bottom of the socio-economic barrel – a slave, not just a slave, but a child, not just a child, but a girl.  This girl had sympathy for Naaman, because he had a skin disease – so she told her mistress, Naaman’s wife, about Elisha, the prophet – the prophet can heal Naaman, she said. 

Question: through whom does God work?  The prophet, the sage, the Messiah – to be sure – but look closely, here.  The person at the bottom.  You and I are people so often at the top of the ladder, and we are dependent upon people at the bottom, gardeners, waiters, telephone repairpersons, salespersons – more, workers in China and India, fruit growers in South America – do we see them?  Do you thank God for them?  God will work through the person you least expect, keep a look-out!  

b. Naaman talks to his boss, the King of Aram.  Now this is hugely ironic:  The King of Aram intervenes on behalf of Naaman – he sends a letter to the King of Israel – peer to peer, which is what you do if you want help, you get someone to intervene on your behalf.  If you know the Governor, you call the governor.  If the King, then the king.

Only the King of Aram gets it wrong, doesn’t he?  He implores the King of Israel to heal Naaman, but it isn’t the king who is a healer – a prophet.  The King of Israel knows he is no prophet, reads the King of Aram’s request, and he is shaken.  It is a trap, he imagines – if Naaman isn’t healed – the King of Aram will have excuse to attack.  The King of Israel is between a rock and a hard place.  What can he do?!

Question:  How often does a simple mistake in your relationships with others lead to a catastrophic elevation in anxiety?  Look how he picks a quarrel with me, the King of Israel and we ask!

c. But there is a prophet who heals, and that prophet, Elisha, gets wind of the situation, and sends word to the King:  Hey – this is what Israel is all about, having God and all.  Healing others.  Caring for others.  Showing the world that God is for us, and not against us.

So Elisha sees Naaman, and tells him to do.  Wash yourself, as if he hadn’t washed himself before.  He had washed himself, probably scrubbed for hours in rivers trying in frustration to rub the skin disease away.  Washing in Aram didn’t work; washing in Israel won’t work.

But Israel has a God, the One God.  Unlike Aram, Israel was monotheistic.  But God requires something of you – an act, faith in your action, faith in motion, I’d call it.  Wash. 

Question. Do you wait around for God to heal you, to wave his hand across your metaphoric disease, as though God were a magician?  Do you wait for God to reveal himself to you?  On your terms?  Or do you engage a faith that is on the move.  Do you act?  God’s will, God’s grace, God’s healing most often occurs in the movement – you on your way, The Pilgrim making progress, you remember -- told go to carry his burden on the journey, and that the journey would relieve him of it.  And it did.  The journey often clarifies the direction.

d. Naaman finally agrees to the bath, takes it in the Jordan, is washed clean, is healed.  Baby’s skin, the Scripture says.  Wrinkle-free.  All sun-damage disappears.

And this man who has become a baby once more, returns to Elisha and says, Now I know – I know that the God is Israel is the only God . . .  whereupon, he tries to give thanks with goods – but Elisha turns him down, he doesn’t want Naaman to confuse God’s gift with a gift in return –

Question.  What does a deeply felt need to offer thanks actually feel like?  Look like?

3. The Ten Lepers. 

a. First, Jesus travels along the border, between Galilee and Samaria.  Now remember, the Jews rejected the Samaritans, and vice versa, each claiming true worship of the true God.  A Jewish rabbi – Jesus – traveling along the border was the same as one flirting with disaster, again ironic – an irony compounded by the fact that only the Samaritan came back to offer thanks, upon healing.

Question:  Is your journey along the border?  Or do you stay safe, deep within the cocoon of your own country?  Don’t stay safe.  Walk along a border.  What faith is there in staying safe?  If you aren’t walking along some border, you aren’t walking faith.  I’d rather see you do something whacky in the name of faith, than nothing at all.

b. Second, when the ten men approach Jesus, they call out with a unified voice, as one.  They are not Samaritan and Jew, although, in-fact, there were some of each, but they were unified.  What power there is being unified.  And what power there is in unified desire.  And I’m wondering about us, in this regard –

Question.  What is our deepest cry, as Christ Church, what do we seek together, with unified voice?  Is it not to deepen, to touch, to believe?  I believe, Lord, help thou my unbelief, the one man cried to Jesus.  I believe, help my unbelief.  (alternatively: there was no border for them, no division when the need is present and desperate.) 

c. Next, Jesus sees them.  These are the least of the least, those others ignore, the beggar on the street, the old woman in the nursing home, you, when you are despondent and depressed – unseen by others, but Jesus sees them, like the boy in the restaurant, Jesus thinks they’re real.

Question.  Who do you see?  Is it just the prominent, is it just your friends, is it just those you like?  Or do you see all of God’s creation?  Who do you see?

d. According to the purification laws of Scripture, Jesus tells them, Go show yourselves to the priest.  They weren’t healed, but they didn’t question Jesus – why go?  you only go if you’re healed?  this skin stuff is still here.  Rather, they went, and as they went – faith in motion – they were healed. 

Question.  No question, here.

e. The One Samaritan, upon seeing his healing, turned back with a deeper desperation, crossed all social and ritual boundaries (until he was declared by the priest to be clean, he was forbidden from coming near others) – this man throws himself at Jesus’ feet, grabs them in happy desperation, and thanks Jesus.

And in the end, he wasn’t healed, he was saved (the word in the text).  Salvation is a healing, not physical, but spiritual, an entrance into an unseen world, the deeper touching of the divine, when with the touch, life makes sense, the pieces fall into place.

Question.  Are you saved?  Or are you healed only?  Have you crossed the threshold, moved from that room into this?  Have you seen God as real, and in the seeing, touched, and in the touching, received?  Do you see God?

f. Thanks.  Let me return to the giving of thanks.  Both the leper returning to Jesus and Naaman, offered thanks.   What is thanks?  I don’t mean Thanksgiving, a wonderful ritual, but whose meaning is occluded by turkey, parades and football.  I mean thanks.

First, if offering thanks is a duty, is it really thanks?  If you say thank you – to God or anyone – out of duty, is it really thanksgiving?

I told a story the first Thanksgiving I was here.  It is the story of Priscilla.   Uganda – etc., she thanked me. 

What made it so real?  Her quiet desperation, her sense that nothing she could have would touch that level, her sense that she couldn’t have . . .

second – myself – I was sitting here, in this chair, listening to Hugh preach – and I’ve thought about death, over these past years, learned much about death, over these past years – and I’ve wondered at the darkness in this life, and wondered –

And I also wonder, like you, is this all there is?  And I don’t think so, I’m engaging faith in motion, here, in this world, not b/c of eternal life, but because of the here and now – this is the way I want to live – it is salvation, not just healing –

But what about later?  And the futility of it all, I wonder, like you – and as I sat there that Sunday, and listened to Hugh – and Hugh started talking about creation – not creation as science, but as theology, that God breathed life, spirit, ruach, into the lungs of humanity, into these lungs, and I realized that  it doesn’t matter if there is another breath at all on the other side, b/c each breath here, each breath now, each breath is gift,   it is something I didn’t ask for, deserve, earn or otherwise expect – and each breath as gift is beautiful, and if the gift I receive is limited by the life I live, it is nonetheless gift, gift, gift – and I have lost nothing if it goes no further – tho I believe it does go further – I have lost nothing if it goes no further, but instead have gained each breath as gift, as gift, as gift, and with that thought, I became Priscilla, full of desperate thanks for the gift, fully aware that someone, something divine, touched me – breathed life into me – imagined me somehow worth something –

And I felt joy.  I have to tell you, I’m a happy person, generally – I am satisfied and content, generally – but after Laura died, I hadn’t felt joy – the deep deep sense of effusion, from within – but I felt joy there, walking along that border, journey along that dark territory. 

Think the waitress at the beginning – she saw the boy.  Do you see God?  Or is it yourself you see?  Faith in motion, life along the border, and deep gratitude, deep, deep gratitude.  And inescapable joy.

Pray for that healing, in your travel along the way.  Pray for that salvation.

Amen.

Copyright 2007