Sermon for Sunday 12th October Trinity 17

Year C, Trinity 17, 2 Kings 5; Luke 17: 11-19.

We are travelling down the River Jordan this morning, on our way to a meeting.

Heading southwards, we leave Syria behind us. To our left is Jordan, to our right is the West Bank of the river, where we see Samaria and Judea, separated from another kingdom called Israel to the north. The people who live along this river have been plagued by war for generations, with the kingdoms and fortunes of their leaders ebbing and flowing as the ethnic and religious frontlines are drawn and redrawn.

But for now an uneasy peace is holding, because recently a larger, more powerful broker has entered the story and is laying down the law using threat and force and the expectation that everyone dance to their tune. It’s generally true that bigger the army someone has the more respect they get. The person that we are here to meet is certainly used to this being the case.Because here, coming down the river, we see Naaman, the commander of the King of Syria’s armies, and we have also travelled a little in time, to around 3000 years ago.

Naaman is not an unfamiliar figure to us. He is powerful, competent, and successful. A person at the centre of things. He would feel comfortable in a 21st century White House. Or Harpenden. But just before we begin to admire him, we are told something else about Naaman. One phrase alters everything: “but he was a leper.”

And just like that, he moves from the centre to the edge of things. He is marked—visibly, physically marked—as someone diminished. No power, no victory, no title can mask the truth that Naaman carries something incurable, something that makes him unclean. That’s what makes him such a compelling, memorable character in the Second Book of Kings. That single sentence captures the fragile paradox of human life. We are all, at some level, caught between our competence and our vulnerability. However polished the surface, the cracks run deep.

Naaman’s story unfolds in paradox and irony. A girl—nameless and enslaved—sets the plot in motion. She speaks of a prophet in Samaria. It is a quiet but potent reversal: power begins to lose its grip, and truth begins to speak from below.

Naaman, however, does what powerful men do. He gathers his wealth, his letters of introduction, his retinue. He assumes this will be a transaction. He goes not to the prophet, but to the king. And the king of Israel, confronted with a leper and a letter, is thrown into panic. He cannot heal. He can only protect borders—political, religious, ritual. The king sees threat. Elisha sees possibility.

Elisha, when he finally enters the scene, offers no audience, no performance. He sends word. “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” Simple. Direct. And, for Naaman, deeply offensive.

Because here is the scandal of the story: the healing comes without status, without ceremony. There is no exchange of gifts, no impressive liturgy, no recognition of rank.

The Jordan is a small river. Elisha does not even come to the door. The remedy is insultingly ordinary.

And this is the moment—the turning point. Naaman, enraged, storms off. But his servants—again, the minor characters, the overlooked—urge him to reconsider. And here Naaman does something extraordinary: he listens. He bends. He descends into the water.

And he is made clean.

Not simply healed, but made clean. The distinction matters. Leprosy, as you know in the biblical imagination, is not just a disease—it is a condition of separation. It renders one untouchable, unfit for worship, outside the boundaries of community and of God. To be cleansed is to be restored—not just in body, but in belonging. It is to be brought near again.

The drama of this story is not just in the miracle—it is in the movement. Naaman moves from command to obedience, from pride to trust, from distance to intimacy. And it is that movement that makes healing possible.

We are, in so many ways, modern Naamans. We live in a world that prizes achievement, thatcovets power, that rewards success. But beneath the accolades, the clothing, the competence, we carry wounds—quiet, persistent, unhealed. That is the awkward truth of being human.

And when healing is offered—when grace comes, wrapped not in splendour but in simplicity—we, too, are tempted to turn away.

We expect the spectacular. God offers something else. God offers water. A word. A cross.

That’s why we’ve gone on our travels to meet Naaman this morning, because we need to learn what he learned 3000 years ago when he was insulted by the prophet Elishsa: that God does not transact. God gives. Grace cannot be earned; it can only be received. And often, it comes through the unexpected voice, the overlooked person, the unremarkable river.

There is something profoundly sacramental in this story. Water, word, washing. A cleansing that restores not only health, but relationship. Baptism echoes here—not merely as ritual, but as reality: the plunging into death, the rising into new life, the setting aside of pride, the receiving of a gift.

When Naaman emerges from the water, he returns to Elisha with new words: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” But more than that, he has become a new person. The leper is not only clean; the commander has become a witness.

The final twist is this: the one who arrived bearing wealth and letters departs bearing only truth. He came demanding healing. He found a God who heals.

And that is our invitation too. Not to the grand, but to the simple. Not to the secure, but to the vulnerable. To listen to servants, to wash in rivers, to step away from status and into grace.

Because there is a God in Israel. A God who heals. And the only thing required of us is that we allow ourselves to be drawn close enough to be made whole.

Illustration by Pieter de Grebber - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain.