The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 15, 2009

 Take the Plunge

2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45

I ponder that encounter.  So many come to the faith looking for a quick fix.  But most of the time, healing takes time; and in most healing there is some expectation of our own participation.  There is no easy way.

At first glance, the gospel lesson for today seems to imply that there is, or may be, an easy way after all.  It is a short lesson, and the part about the leper’s healing comprises just three verses: “A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose.  Be made clean!’  Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”  (Mark 1:40-41, New Revised Standard Version) One way to hear that story, of course, is to make it all about Jesus’ choice.  “If you choose....” begins the sick man.  And Jesus responds, “I DO choose.”  Of course. We hear what we long for: there IS an easy way.

And we begin to confine God in our own safe little box.  Surely God chooses for none to be sick, so why aren’t more prayers answered with healing?  So our prayers tend to begin in the roundabout subjunctive voice: “God, if you would...”

Yet our framing our holy conversation thus creates a problem, not for God, but for us.  Beginning in a subjunctive attitude (“God, if you would…”), we own nothing of our own desires, to say nothing of our own responsibilities.  And we can’t help but be disappointed when our opening gambit doesn’t work, and the prayer is not answered as we think best.  When the answer we want doesn’t come exactly as expected, we wonder, like the woman in my office: Is God powerless, or is God callous?  It is neither, but by now our own narrow perception of God has closed out other possibilities.

Here is the truth, the gospel truth: God, being God, never stays confined, even by our fondest hopes or deepest desires for an easy way.  Kathleen Norris, the New York poet who became a preacher in rural South Dakota, talks about what she learned about these kinds of requests.  She says,  “ Sometimes people will say things like, ‘Your prayers didn't work, but thanks,’ as if a person could be praying for only one thing. A miracle. ... I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been. People who are in the habit of praying - and they include the mystics of the Christian tradition - know that when a prayer is answered, it is never in a way that you expect.”(Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, 60-61.)  God, being God, is God.  And God’s ways are larger, grander, better, but often more challenging than our own.

And God, being God, expects that we, too, will participate in our own lives.  Quite mysteriously, our participation begins in small increments, “baby steps” in the faith, if you will.  Like daily prayer:  it seems so insignificant, so small a thing.  But it shapes us both slowly and powerfully, but in the only way that lasts, by changing the habits of our souls.  And the rest of the issue of our own faith is in the discipline – the core of the word, “Disciple” – the discipline of our own faithfulness in the everyday things.  We practice our faith, and it forms us.

Mysteriously, it is precisely the discipline in little things that make a difference.  It is no accident that today’s gospel lesson is preceded by the long story from 2 Kings about Naaman, the Aramean general, who comes to the king of Israel looking for healing.  On its face, the connection is obvious: both stories are about a leper.  But, at a deeper level, I think the story of Naaman informs the shorter gospel story.  For Naaman is asked to do a simple thing.  He’s asked to do nothing more, and nothing less, that wash in the Jordan.  It is a small thing, an especially small thing for a large ego.  And therein is the difficulty.  Can Naaman find the humility to do this little thing?  Can he take the plunge?  Ultimately he does, and he is healed.  His washing is a precursor of our washing, in baptism.  It’s a small but potent act.

Perhaps there is instruction for us.  It is precisely these small things, things which build the community, that shape our lives of faith.  We, the church, always have to decide: will we take the plunge?  Will we invest ourselves in the life of faith?  Will we study, pray, work – together?  Will we build, brick by brick, the community that sustains life in the difficult times? The challenge is that doing the little things seems too easy.  But the simple things form our lives:  eating, talking, laughing, traveling together, we become a family. 

So, too, with the community of faith:  with the simple act of baptism we enter, and with the simple, sustaining acts of singing, praying, eating, and learning together, we are formed in our faith in Christ, confirmed in our hope in Christ, and commissioned to share the goodness of Christ.

These times in which we gather are not easy times.  The anxiety we each feel, but rarely discuss, infects us all.  And in such times many of us are tempted to withdraw, to be cautious, to fall back into our old pattern of trusting no one but ourselves.  The gospel invites us to a larger purpose: the gospel invites us to growth as well as healing.  The gospel invites us to remember that God does care, and that God is with us in every part of this life.  Even in our most anxious days.

The 14^th century English Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich is popular with some these days, perhaps because she reminds us also of God’s care, even though the way ahead is uncertain.  She said it well:  “God did not say, ‘You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted;’ but God said: ‘You will not be overcome.’”  (Quoted by Leonard Sweet in a sermon reflecting on September 11,”Hearts Hardened with Hope.”)

In the end, life of faith invites any who want to give it a try to do what Naaman was asked to do: Take the plunge.  Jump in.  Do the simple things.  See life in the everyday as well as in the grand, the cosmic, the eternal.  God does choose our health.  But God is also patient, waiting for us to choose to participate. 

And God provides the ways, quite simple ways really, for us to participate.  Novelist and essayist Anne Lamott comments on how life itself is just that way:  “It's funny:” she says.  “I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools:  the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience.  But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do.  And, mostly, against all odds, they're enough.”  (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, 103.)

Our simple tools of faith ARE enough.  Why? Because we are not alone. God is God, and God is with us in the journey.  In all of it.  God is with us.  We are given the tools to make it, not alone, but with God, in Christ our Savior, our brother, walking with each of us. 

Our life in Christ is as simple as that – and it’s a powerful simplicity.  All we’re called to do is to trust God as we take the plunge into the simple disciplines of our faith.

Amen.