"So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, 'Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.'"

Nor is it surprising that after coming all that way, he should be annoyed by the apparent pettiness of the order. After all, Naaman was the Napoleon of his day -- a George C. Patton, a Douglas A. MacArthur, a Dwight D. Eisenhower. Naaman was "a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram." He was Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf with leprosy.

So here is this great general, standing outside a modest dwelling, perhaps nothing more than a dirt hut, with all his "horses and chariots," his servants and retainers -- and the reception he gets ends up being no reception at all. The prophet doesn't even come out of his house! In a culture where hospitality was at the heart of everything, this would be perceived as more than just rude. To Naaman, it was a snub, plain and simple. What impertinence!

So "Naaman became angry and went away, saying, 'I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!'"

Naaman wants to get his money's worth (after all, he went to Israel "taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments"). But as the great Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad notes, the King of Aram and Naaman "were, of course, unaware that in Israel [the LORD's] bestowal of gracious gifts took no consideration of social status and position." In other words, God can't be bought.

Naaman expects a show-he wants nothing more than to be merely the passive (yet awe-inspiring) recipient of a bit of hocus-pocus from some obscure foreign deity and his even more obscure medicine man. Naaman doesn't seem to realize that he might have to participate in his own healing, to get down off his high horse and chariot and demonstrate a little humility. When told to wash in the Jordan, Naaman responds angrily "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" Well, actually, yes, good old Abana and Pharpar were far superior to the muddy little creek the Israelites called the River Jordan. In that desert climate he might even have had trouble finding a place in the river deep enough to immerse himself!

"'Could I not wash in [Abana, or Pharpar], and be clean?' He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, 'Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?'"

Again, we see God working patiently to heal this powerful man despite his pride and his preconceived notions about how God ought to be working, for just as the slave-girl at the beginning of the story sets him on the path to healing, his servants at the end of the story make sure he stays the course. They do so by appealing to that very part of him he feels is most wounded by the prophet: his pride.

Actually, I'm not convinced that Naaman would have happily gone off and done something difficult in order to be healed-he gives no indication anywhere in this story that he is willing to alter the manner of life to which he has become accustomed. But his servants' sly rhetoric calms him down and puts him in the right frame of mind to trudge grudgingly to that muddy creek and do what the prophet's messenger had ordered.

I can imagine Naaman's attitude as he immersed himself the first time: "Well, I guess it's worth a try," he says to himself, though he's pretty miffed at taking an order from a civilian. He expects that with each immersion, his skin will improve noticeably. But as the second and third immersions don't seem to effect any change, his anger grows. Fourth time: nothing. Fifth time: nothing. Sixth time: nothing. As he plunges himself under the waters of the Jordan one last time he is thinking to himself, "That prophet is going to pay for making a fool out of me. I'm going to have his hide." But as he emerges after the seventh time, he hears his servants on the bank gasp. He looks down, and as the narrator so picturesquely puts it, "his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean."

Suddenly, as Naaman emerges from the murky depths of the Jordan River, it's as if the heavens have opened, and he has an epiphany, a sudden realization that the God of Israel has manifested himself at that watercourse, no longer merely a muddy creek, but the artery in which the very lifeblood of Israel flows from the heart of God.

Centuries later, another man would emerge from the waters of the Jordan and the heavens would open, and a Voice declare: "This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." The epiphany revealed to proud Naaman of Aram is but a dim foreshadowing of the Epiphany revealed through humble Jesus of Nazareth.

Having been healed, Naaman moves from grudging obedience to grateful faith. He says "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel." The miracle-the hocus-pocus that Naaman was expecting from this backwards, backwater prophet-is cast into the shadows in the light of a greater realization, a greater epiphany: that God works wonders not through the powerful and the mighty, but through the weak and lowly: through a slave-girl, through a humble prophet who knows that God doesn't even need him to leave his house in order to effect a miracle through him. God works through a simple message, through wise servants and a muddy stream, and doesn't need Naaman's preconceived notions about how God should behave-or even of how God's servants should behave. God doesn't need Naaman's suggestions, about waving one's hand over the spot or calling on God's name; God doesn't need any theatrics that reduce to passivity the human beings concerned. Rather, God expects humble obedience, an obedience that is far from passive, because it demands an active participation in one's own enlightenment, a willingness to listen to the good news being offered so freely, so simply. And to think, this simple gospel is offered to Naaman without regard to the fact that Naaman is a pompous jackass. That fact alone gives me hope. "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."

The Christian gospel is just as simple-perhaps even simpler, in that when we baptize, we only do it once, not seven times, and the result is just as dramatic: our fallen humanity, both body and soul, is restored, and we are clean. Yet, how often do we respond to such messages, such good news, like Naaman? For Naaman, in expecting something altogether different, actually puts limits on God's power. In what ways, then, do we limit God's power by our own preconceived notions about how God ought to act? Or, to put it another way, how do we cut ourselves off from the humble, yet all the more powerful, sources of God's love by our attitude that God should be the one listening to us, and not the other way around?

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book When God is Silent, writes tellingly,

Even now, some Christians have trouble listening to God. Many of us prefer to speak. Our corporate prayers are punctuated with phrases such as "Hear us, Lord" or "Lord, hear our prayer," as if the burden to listen were on God and not us. We name our concerns, giving God suggestions on what to do about them. What reversal of power might occur if we turned the process around, naming our concerns and asking God to tell us what to do about them? "Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening."

Sometimes I think we do all the talking because we are afraid God won't. Or conversely, that God will. Either way, staying preoccupied with our own words seems a safer bet than opening ourselves up either to God's silence or God's speech, both of which have the power to undo us.

As a community, we are about to enter a period of uncertainty as we try to discern God's will for the future of Saint James. We are blessed in that the leadership of this place, both lay and ordained, has prepared us well to face the future with confidence and hope. Yet we must beware our own preconceived notions about how God should and would and ought to act in the days ahead. God has a track record of acting pretty independently; God does not rely on opinion polls or suggestion boxes-or even parish surveys and rector profiles. God doesn't care whether you're the commander of the army of the King of Aram or his wife's slave-girl. God doesn't care whether you are a prophet or merely his messenger. But God does care about our attentiveness to God's presence, and our willingness to set aside our own agendas-whatever they might be and however well-intentioned they might be-in favor of obedience, humility, and faith, without which no miracle is possible, without which we only get some empty hocus-pocus. But with obedience, humility, and faith, the transformative power of God is manifested, and epiphanies, both large and small, do happen.