Sunday, October 9, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The purpose of life
Margaret and I visited relatives in Seattle in October of 1980, a few months after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18. As we approached, another eruption burst into the air. It looked just like the first one, but was much less powerful. It was mostly smoke and ash. We drove as far as we could into the eruption zone and filled a few baggies with the ash that covered the earth, took it back to Illinois and put on our mantel. If we had a mantel.
A New Creation
I didn’t create you to be grateful.
I didn’t create you to praise me.
I didn’t create you to be my hands to serve others
or to fix what’s wrong in this world.
I created you to share myself.
I cannot be contained.
I cannot be limited.
I created you to enter into the mystery
of life, of living, of me.
I created you as part of the beauty of the universe
and to carry in your soul the essence of all that is.
You have the freedom to claim your essence as mine,
to share in the life that is me.
And you have the freedom to say no,
or not yet, or not so much.
You have, and you will
(remember I know you as well as I know myself).
So let us continue this journey
with the next steps of patience and kindness –
with each other,
with ourselves. – Clarence Heller
Since the creation of the world, we and others like us have been on this journey. Stories abound:
Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha, the man of God. Naaman’s flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean of his leprosy.
Who was Naaman? Military general for King Ben-Hadad II of Aram, deficient in no way except for his secret illness, admired by his people and his king, worshipping his own gods … but now? What happens next?
Naaman resisted the healing ways of Elisha at first, refusing the mikveh he prescribed. Elisha himself was nowhere to be seen. But he listened to his servant: “Why not, master? What can you lose?”
I wonder if Naaman’s newly opened spirit and open-minded obedience, sometimes called “faith,” did its own healing. “Your faith has healed you,” Jesus sometimes said. I believe you can heal me, and therefore I am healed.
Jesus said to the Samaritan leper, “Ten were cleansed; where are the other nine?” Then he said, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
Why not Naaman?
When Naaman presented himself before the “man of God” Elisha, and showed him his clean skin and healed body, Elisha gave thanks to God. When Naaman wanted to pay him, he refused. But Naaman realized his healing went far deeper than his body. His leprosy was only skin deep; his devotion to false gods dug into the depths of his soul. And he no longer felt devoted. He knew Yahweh’s touch, in the water and out, and Yahweh was his god now.
Please, Elisha, let me, your servant, have two mule loads of earth, for I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to Yahweh.
Since Naaman could not remain in Israel, he carried Israel home with him. At least two mule loads of Israel. Upon that earth he built an altar on which to offer sacrifices to Yahweh.
The word of God is not chained. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our God. The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.
We didn’t do much with the ash we gathered from Mt. St. Helens, but Naaman did offer sacrifices on the earth he took him from Israel.
I created you to enter into the mystery
of life, of living, of me.
I created you as part of the beauty of the universe
and to carry in your soul the essence of all that is.
You have the freedom to claim your essence as mine,
to share in the life that is me.
(2 Kings 5, Psalm 98, 2 Timothy 2, 1 Thessalonians 5, Luke 17)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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