Naaman is like the man in an old joke who is caught in a flood and goes up on the roof, where he intends to wait for God to rescue him. Person after person comes by in a rowboat, offering to take him to safety. "No, thanks," he says. "I know God's going to save me." Finally the waters rise over him, and he dies. When he gets to heaven, he complains, I prayed and prayed, but you didn't save me! And God answers, "I sent four rowboats and you didn't get into any of them."
There is such a dominant emphasis on individualism and rational thought that they need to be balanced out. Popular imagination tends to posit God against nature. That is, if science can explain it, then God is not involved. Thus God gets relegated to whatever is unexplainable by science. And of course, as the base of scientific knowledge grows larger, God grows smaller. But what if part of God's work is through the natural and cosmic processes? Miracles, then, are all over the place.
My biggest problem with the miracles testified to in scripture is not believing they happened exactly as written, though this difficult. My problem is that there are not enough of them, and they are not big enough. For if God can heal one, why not a thousand, and if a thousand, why not ten thousand? Why not just eliminate leprosy altogether? We know that it is precisely such thought within sectors of the church of the Middle Ages that gave great fuel to the pursuit of science and medicine. We sometimes forget that most of the first great Western universities and hospitals were started by branches of the Church, which valued science and education. Indeed the very notion of the incarnation of God in the natural human world, and the idea of humanity as the imago dei, made in the image of God, to be coworkers with God, says historian Ernst Benz, became "one of the strongest impulses for man's technological development and realization."(Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology p. 15) We also know now that the arrogance we took from becoming like God and doing God's work for him has also helped drive an idolatry of humanity which fueled imperialism, destruction of the environment, and the creation of the atom bomb. This is to say nothing of the inevitable downsizing of God to the private sphere before crucifixion on the cross of irrelevance. Our millenarian hopes of progress and humanist idolatry have been dealt a blow. We sail the Gospel to the new world and kill millions with sword and disease. We learn to fly and then to drop bombs. We invent penicillin and get AIDs. We cure ten thousands of one disease and starvation kills a million. We have a green revolution, which feeds millions, and we gain a population problem and consumption levels that threaten the balance of God's great ecosystem, Earth. Billions of lives hang in the balance. And finally, even plastic surgery has failed to cure the leprosy of shame and envy that eats at the human soul. An interesting story in the December 19 Washington Post reports on the prosperity Gospel preaching author of the Prayers of Jabez, whom God had told to save one million AIDs orphans in Swaziland. The Disneyland orphanage failed, and he gave up and left in a matter of months. Apparently George Wilkinson had a problem with the small-scale miracles too.
Even as a piece of me struggles with the smallness of Jesus' miracles, the Jesus in Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor annoyingly lingers in my mind. How tempting it is to fall for the Devil's three temptations in the wilderness: bread from rocks and political and religious power. In all our attempts to help God out, to perform "greater miracles than these," Jesus is still there, simple, way too human, with the kiss of love and grace.
Perhaps this must be one of the dangers of human life, that the miracles we perform on behalf of God can make us feel like gods. Then that arrogance gets us in trouble, heading in direction of forbidden fruit.
Maybe this is why these little miracle stories almost always include the humble faith of the poor and outcast. In II Kings we see it is an unnamed servant girl who carries the key of faith that unlocks two miracles. The first miracle is the cure of Naaman, commander of the Army of the king of Aram.
The Israelite girl has been taken captive by a band of Aram's soldiers. War is in the air. So much so that as Israel's King sees the letter telling of Naaman's approach he thinks it is surely a trick to invoke war. Elisha stops the King from any rash decisions and tells him to send Naaman to visit with Elisha. Then Naaman is angered and war is again threatened when his expectations for a grand dramatic miracle are not met. Again the servant girl throws in her words of wisdom and faith. "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he tells you,' Wash and be cleansed!'" Stop eating French fries and exercise, God says, but no; we want bypass surgery and liposuction. Burn less fossil fuel, but we want dikes and levees on every piece of coast in the world. Help heal their sick says God, but no, we want to hit them before they hit us. With the servant girls prompting wisdom, Naaman follows Elisha's instructions and is healed. No extravagant displays of power or magic, but the healed Naaman, commander of enemy armies, becomes a friend and fellow worshipper of God. Peace is the second miracle.
Naaman was a man who gained great power and skill before he contracted leprosy, but the man who came to Jesus had none. In ancient middle east, leprosy and other diseases were not understood according to the laws of nature, but were attributed to God or Evil Spirits. They were punishment for wrong deeds. Thus there was a high degree of social stigma for those who suffered from any form of disability or illness. Embedded in my mind is the image I received as a child from watching the scene of the valley of the lepers in Ben Hur. Lepers are sinners, untouchables, unclean inside and out. Yet again it is from the marginalized and oppressed that we receive a lesson in faith. "If you are willing, you can make me clean." Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man." How sweet is that! Before he says anything, he reaches out and touches him.
We can use mountains of reason to formulate volumes of doctrine and systematic theology, but would they teach us more about the power and love of God than this simple gesture. How many medical texts and journals would a doctor have to read before learning of a more powerful healing instrument than human touch and boundary-breaking love?
Technically, according to the law, this touch would then make Jesus unclean. But just the opposite happens. "I am willing," Jesus says, "Be clean!" And the man is healed. The chasm that separates the shamefully diseased from the Holy God has been bridged by human touch. An intimate, individual, personal, almost insignificant act with powerful religious and political implications. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In his commentary on scripture, the early Christian father Origen writes, "[Jesus] touches [the leper] in his untouchability, that he might instruct us in humility; that he might teach us that we should despise no one, or abhor them, or regard them as pitiable, because of some wound of their body... Let us consider then, beloved, if there be anyone here that has the taint of leprosy in his soul, or the contamination of guilt in his heart? If he has, instantly adoring God, let him say, 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean."