Deep Within

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

Naaman was not happy when Elisha told him what would clean him of his ailment. The scripture actually says he is angry and says, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would have his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!”  Naaman even continues his statements of anger by comparing his nation’s rivers to the Jordan.  I cannot help but point out that this man’s anger does not seem congruent with his quest.  He wants to be healed and actually travels for this cure to his enemy’s king, and then onto their prophet, yet he believes he knows how the healing should occur.  Naaman goes as far to say “…that for me..” now that is arrogant. Now the servants were quite wise and understood he was willing to seek an audience with the king of Israel and thus would have done anything the prophet suggested, why was he not willing do something he perceived was too easy.  Of course we know that he was made clean, because of there were people without any power leading Naaman to the healing power.

Naaman was his own biggest enemy.  He knew how the healing had to take place, or so he thought.  And even when he heard what the prophet said, he could not get over his ego.  His healing was desired because of his own ego and self care.  That should have a place, just as most of us check a mirror before the house, we care about ourselves.  The unnamed slave girl was moved by compassion to tell of the prophet in Samaria, that could heal.  At least I believe that to be true as she is not freed, receive any credit, or even named in the story.  Being moved to help because of compassion is what the Gospel lectionary is about.

In the Gospel of Mark, it is reported that Jesus is moved to compassion, and the word used is splagchnizomai.  To be moved to compassion from one’s gut.  A term for compassion used twelve times in the synoptic Gospels in reference to Jesus, or by Jesus in a parable.  It is a Greek term the root of which means gut, but specifically the inner organs of a sacrificed animal. 

Jesus is moved to heal not from His ego, but from His sacrifice.  If we want to share the Gospel, we most not think like Naamon and believe we know how, but to look deep within and act out of sacrificial compassion, in response to the grace we can never repay.