This Sunday’s texts include the story of Naaman, the leprous general who wants to be healed. Naaman and his stories is one of the easiest to have fun with in the whole Old Testament (if you want to hear a bit of what can be done, listen to the St. Mark’s sermon where I give in to the temptation a bit). We can poke fun at Naaman from several different directions and frequently do, but, if we are willing to put the same level of scrutiny on ourselves we might find we have more in common with the hapless general than we thought at first.
The connection between us and Naaman is in our essential humanness. We might poke fun at Naaman’s unwillingness to go jump in the Jordan River but are we really so different? As you will discover in this Sunday’s sermons we are not all that different. Few of us are consistently willing to do what we need to do, even if we get the message from someone we trust. No matter what we are asked to do it can all too easily fall into one of two categories: too easy or too hard. Was Naaman asked to do a hard thing or an easy thing? (By the way, the picture was taken out of my front window and is sort of what I imagine Naaman thought the Jordan River looked like.)
Give one or both sermons a listen and let me know what you think.
Blessings,
PS For those of you who read the post from the middle of last week, as I write this my father-in-law remains alive, surrounded by family and love.
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