Voices

4 Pentecost, Proper 9C

3 July 2022

I enjoy a good story. The best stories surprise you; the ending should be clear only in the end. Stories are written to amuse, to enlighten and educate, to teach or instruct, or to make a point. Often we expect a hero to come forward; action and adventure, questing and romance; righting wrongs are all the stuff of the stories we like to hear.

The Bible, however, often turns expectations on their heads.

We have heard this story before; we know the ending. I would pose the following questions to you:

Who sets the story in motion? Which characters are crucial to the outcome? Hint: it is not the rich and the famous.

The story is set in motion by a slave girl or woman; an Israeli who has been captured by the Arameans, or Syrians. She has no name; like anyone who is a slave, she is a non-person. Yet it is this anonymous non-person who suggests the solution to Naaman’s problem. “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”[1] The physicians, the nobility, the powerful elite can offer him nothing. But a nameless slave provides the key for Naaman to become well again. What does that say about what or who is important in the eyes of God? All lives are important in the eyes of God and all people have value and hold wisdom that is of value. I wonder how much different the world would be if we listened to the voices of indigenous peoples; if we valued women as much as men; if we sought the wisdom of those who are poor and homeless. Yet why should a slave girl provide wisdom and advise for someone who had enslaved her? Perhaps the story is a cautionary tale for all of us that each person has value, not only in and of themselves, but for the welfare of all of us. The act of a single person, like the butterfly batting its wings, will have repercussions for all of us. If God spoke through the life of a poor girl named Mary, who are we to silence the voices of so many?

Remarkably Naaman listened. But he still did not really get it. Like far too many of us, he rather expected that because he was Naaman, the great general, he would be treated differently, with greater respect. Instead Elisha does not even go to meet him in person, but rather sends a message to him. Pride almost does him in at this point in the story (and who of us has not fallen victim to our own pride?) but once again he is saved by his anonymous servants. No voice should be silenced; a voice may speak with too much pride or fear, as did Naaman and the king of Israel, and be understood to be speaking wrongly, but the voices of all should be heard and then filtered with our understanding of the nature of God.

And so Naaman heeds the voices of reason and is cured.

Let us, then, listen to the voices of those we would prefer not to hear. If we have learned anything about the nature of the world that God is trying to create, it is that every voice matters and that each one of us is a beloved child of God. Sometimes we offer wheat, and sometimes we offer chaff. If we have learned well, we know how to filter the wheat from the chaff.

[1]The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 2 Ki 5:3.