To whom do you
belong?
When, in the Second Book of Kings, the prophet
Elisha tells Naaman the leper to go and
wash seven times in the Jordan in order to heal his leprosy, Naaman is
skeptical… until he is healed, of course!
He wants to thank Elisha, but Elisha knows that he himself isn’t
responsible for the healing – God is. So
Naaman asks instead for two mule-loads of
earth, that he might worship the true God
of Israel in his own country. As in Psalm 98, The Lord has revealed his saving power
to Naaman, and so Naaman now belongs to God. It is a conversion story, to be sure, but it
is also a powerful story of belonging.
The Samaritan
leper in Luke’s Gospel has a similar experience. Jesus heals ten lepers, and nine of them
follow his instructions to go show
themselves to the priests. But the Samaritan returns to thank Jesus, glorifying
God. The other nine are restored to
their community, which means that they remain attached to Mosaic law, attached to
a faith that doesn’t know that Jesus is a manifestation of God’s love. The nine simply do not recognize that God is
revealed in the person of Jesus, the new
law. But the Samaritan sees clearly, and
now belongs to Christ; he is a new creation.
Notice that in
this story, Jesus does not force the nine to believe: they must choose to accept or deny Christ. But, as Paul reminds Timothy, if we deny him, he will deny us. That is to say, if we deny Christ, all the Lord can do is affirm our decision. He does remain
faithful, however, even if we are
unfaithful. To deny the Lord is to reject him, to cut ourselves off from him; to
be unfaithful is to fail, to sin – in which case we have not rejected the gift
of God’s love, we have just failed to respond properly to it. We may be chained
by our own failures, but the word of God
is not chained. Even in our
failures, God continues to speak to us through Jesus Christ, continues to
invite us to relationship, to love, to belonging. To belong, we have but to choose.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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