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The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, Professor of Hebrew Studies at VST.

Imagine My Surprise!

In our so easily domesticated readings of the Bible, in which we just take for granted that the Bible is a serious and pious work of religious wisdom and insight, we often miss the surprises the text has in store for us. In my many forays into adult education in local churches of all kinds, to say nothing of teaching in theological colleges, I have come to see that often people do not expect to be caught off guard by a Bible passage. Especially for those who have grown up in church, or who have become used to the cadences of Scripture, the idea that a particular story or text might be funny or surprising or even shocking seems out of bounds. However, when a passage can be heard as an original ancient audience might have heard it, by re-creating a sense of the social world in which they might have understood the story, we can recover a sense of the shock value it might have had, and in that listen with new ears and perhaps new surprise for the message the story might have for us today.

It’s not too hard to see that our Hebrew Bible text from Second Kings is a passage full of surprises for the characters within the story. But it probably contained surprises for a whole series of ancient audiences that might have heard the story as it wended its way through oral tradition to written story to re-written text and finally canon. The story seems simple and is not difficult to understand. The tale concerns the commander of the Aramean army, Naaman, a great man and able warrior who has led his country to victory over the kingdom of Israel. His greatness is hampered and shamed by the fact that he has leprosy. Hearing from a captive Israelite slave girl that there is a prophet in her home country who can cure him, Naaman secures his king’s permission and generous funding to seek a cure in Israel, the country he has just conquered.

Confronting the dismayed Israelite king with a royal letter seeking a cure, Naaman instead is summoned to Elisha, the man of God in Samaria. Upon visiting Elisha’s house, he is summarily told to go wash 7 times in the Jordan. This important and powerful man is taken aback and angered by the apparent lack of appropriately grand attention from the prophet in effecting a cure. Only the caution of his own servants to think about his actions prompts him to actually carry out Elisha’s instructions, whereupon he is immediately cured.

The origins of the story can be placed among the legends of the prophets Elijah and Elisha from the mid-ninth century BCE. In that era, Israel was the northern and more powerful and prosperous state of the Israelite people, which dominated its poorer cousin state Judah to the south. Throughout the ninth century, Israel fought against its north-eastern neighbour, Aram with its capital in Damascus, in a series of skirmishes and battles in which each state took bits of territory and captive populations from the other. Aram was a constant threat and ongoing enemy, even when the states occasionally cooperated long enough to set up trading relationships. There was no love lost between these rivals, and plenty of suspicion and animosity.

Let’s look at some of the surprises the story contains, not only for the characters in the story, but also for the probable audiences whom we might imagine to have heard the story. We can start with the king of Aram, who in the story listens to Naanam’s tale from the servant girl and gives him leave and money to seek a cure in Israel. As a character, he is not portrayed as showing any surprise that his army commander might want to visit a prophet in a defeated opponent state instead of following the sacred rituals of his own religion. However, at least the upper class and militarily-minded folks in Israel who heard the story might have had a moment of surprise at this, followed quickly by self-satisfied chortling that they had “better” prophets than their conquerors.

Our view of the king of Aram is closely tied into another character, the Israelite slave girl. And my guess is that anyone hearing the story in the world of ancient Israel might have been a bit stunned by the portrayal that both the king of Aram and his army commander take seriously the word of a captive slave girl. In the story world, as well as in the “real world” of ancient Israel, the social position of a captive slave was basically that of non-entity, worth only the labour that could be gotten out of them before they were worked to death. That such a character is not only portrayed sympathetically but also given a voice in the story surely would have amazed some hearers of this tale. A second surprise about the slave girl is that she retains allegiance to the prophet and thus the God of her origins, loyally reporting the power of the Israelite prophet to cure leprosy. The way ancient peoples viewed a defeat or capture was that their gods were weaker and less effective than the gods of the successful enemy and that their gods had abandoned them. Yet, rather than feeling abandoned and giving up on the Lord, the slave girl provides a recommendation for God’s prophet. We’ll have occasion to return to this later.

If we turn to the portrayal of the king of Israel, more conundrums await us. Given the way the situation between Israel and Aram is reported in the story, Aram’s defeat of Israel by the Lord’s power, and the taking of captives, it is actually not surprising that the king of Israel is so afraid of Naaman’s royal request to cure leprosy. The king’s fearful suspicions seem justified. One aspect of the characterization of the Israelite king might present a bit of a question for the story’s audience, however. The ongoing story in these chapters of First and  Second Kings has included a whole series of prophetic legends in which the powers of Elijah and Elisha are quite clear, and very much aimed at evaluating and judging the behaviour and religious allegiance of the kings of Israel. These prophets have plagued the kings for years, calling the rulers to account and demonstrating their power as the Lord’s messengers.

I can imagine that at least some among the story’s audience might have been a bit flabbergasted that the king doesn’t immediately think that Elisha might be able to help him out of the tight spot presented by Naaman’s request. The connection with and provision of divine power is the prophet’s calling card—why didn’t the king think of it? It certainly reflects badly on the king’s character. And that may be part of the story’s larger connections to the whole history of ancient Israel—that kings, when they get too wound up in their own power and arrogance, forget that true power resides with God.

Elisha in some ways is the least surprising of all the characters, if only because the prophetic legends have portrayed these early prophets as unpredictable and ornery all the way through. So it does not come as a surprise that this man of God orders the king around when he finds out about the king’s dismay. Elisha’s brusque command to the king to send Naaman on to him reminds the king about the main point anyway, a point the king should not have forgotten, that “there is a prophet in Israel.”

When Naaman makes his way to Elisha’s house, an amazing scene results. This powerful foreign emissary is left cooling his heals in the dusty street while the prophet sends out a brief message. For those in the audience who have followed the prophetic tales, this comes as a bit of a surprise. Both Elijah and Elisha have been portrayed as very personal, hands-on kind of divine messengers. They both have been seen in the houses of the poor, taking on the needs and desperation of people, confronting kings directly, closely relating with people on all levels of society. This distant, impersonal approach is different and perhaps through our surprise, is revealing of another prophetic strategy. Maybe part of the point with someone like Naaman, who expects that everyone will kowtow to his eminence, is to cut him down to size, as it were. Maybe Elisha deliberately reverses his more expected direct behaviour in order to undermine Naaman’s arrogance.

The simple instructions Elisha sends out apparently do not play into Naaman’s grandiose schemes for a dramatic cure, as his anger demonstrates. Perhaps both Naaman and the audience of the story need to get the point Elisha’s simple instructions convey—no drama queens or kings need apply, God’s power for healing is available.

A set of minor characters provides the next shock. Naaman’s servants, perhaps military or diplomatic underlings, meet their master’s anger head-on. Bravely and definitely surprisingly, they call him out, “Ugh, sir, you need to get off your high horse—just because the prophet’s instructions are simple doesn’t mean they aren’t effective.” Their persuasiveness is conveyed when Naaman goes to the Jordan with no further word of protest.

Naaman himself as a character has been a part of most of the unexpected story elements we’ve seen so far. But he carries a few all on his own. As biblical story telling goes, he is a fully drawn, emotionally real character. Thus, his arrogant assumptions that Elisha would give him personal attention and dramatic action come as no surprise. What is surprising, as we noted earlier, is that he actually listens to people who would have been insignificant in his circles of power and influence, his own underlings for one, and most astonishing, a captive slave girl.

Probably for most of the characters and definitely for the audience of the story, the most shocking elements come in the last verse. Naaman is healed of his leprosy, “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” That simple declarative sentence that the narrator reports authoritatively but without fanfare would have astonished everyone in the story except Elisha and the servant girl.

But it would have been world shattering for the audience of the story, through all the centuries that the story was handed down in the tradition of ancient Israel. That a foreigner was healed by God was unthinkable—not that God didn’t have the power to do it, but that God wouldn’t extend such healing power beyond the borders of Israel. It’s one thing when God smashes your enemies on your behalf—that kind of divine power over foreign states works fine, thank you. But that God is willing to extend grace and healing to the army commander who just conquered your nation? That’s an astounding desecration of a sacrosanct limit.

And to add insult to the injury just committed against the audience’s pride and worldview, the story isn’t done. The natural ending of the Hebrew tale, in the usual form of the storyteller’s art, falls just outside the verses we read in this morning’s lesson. The next verse, 15, picks up the story line immediately after Naaman’s healing: “Then Naaman returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” In this straightforward but dramatic declaration, Naaman’s universe changes forever. He’s the most surprised of all the characters because his whole universe has turned upside-down. He thought he was coming to be healed of leprosy but finds to his shock that he’s gained a whole new understanding of the world. No longer does he know a cosmos ruled by the gods of Aram, but he recognizes the whole world is actually as under the power of the Lord God of Israel. And that’s the point at which the audience of the tale falls off their chairs or flees the auditorium in shock. Their neat and self-satisfied adherence to God as their God alone has just been upstaged by their worst enemy.

Taking this story out of the realm of domesticated, pious Bible stories requires hearing the shock that Naaman and all the characters felt and recognizing the story’s world – shaking revelations for ancient and modern audiences. Foreigners and despised outsiders are within God’s widest realm of care and well-being. Borders we thought were unalterable and sacrosanct are extravagantly violated by compassion and healing. Moreover, foreigners and despised outsiders are capable of declaring their faithfulness in words that put those who claimed to be true believers to shame. Yes, yes, the prophet brought God’s power to heal—that’s what prophets do. But equally powerful and prophetic are the words of those who are the least in the story—servants and even slaves, those whom normal social standards overlook if not deride and reject. The audience gapes in astonishment and consternation, “Who let all these weird people in here?”

Surprises are the stock in trade for our God. Throw out all your expectations—the kin-dom of God is among you. Hang on for dear life, this roller-coaster turns us and all our dearly held assumptions and habits on their heads, blasts holes in all our protective armour. No, no, it’s just the opposite, let go for dear life — welcome and show compassion to your worst enemies – God has been there before you and leads the way. Listen to the voices of the weakest, those whom you step around in the street – they bear God’s word. Let go of arrogance, pride, false security – there is nowhere you can fall where God cannot catch you. Let your world be broken open and changed forever—the word of God’s love, the intentions of God for well-being regardless of boundaries — these can surprise and astound even the most self-satisfied among us with the power of new life.

Luke 2:22 – 40

The Rev. Alisdair Smith

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“[We] are made by love for loving. [We] are made by goodness for being good. [We] are Godcarriers and so [each of us is]…a VSP, a very special person, God’s viceroy, God’s representative. God bless [us all]. ”

To begin this morning, I invite you to close your eyes and breathe. Find your breath, slow it down, and breathe in deeply, and then let it out, breathe, with your exhales being as long as your inhales, breathe, and please keep your eyes closed, be with yourself and that still small voice inside for this moment. And as you sit and breathe, with your eyes closed, listen to these words.

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:28 – 32)

This beautiful moment from the midst of Luke’s Gospel has taken on new meaning for me as I move not so gracefully into middle age. And to be very frank this morning I’m glad that so many of our young people are downstairs with Chris, because I think that the Gospel reading is one of those that is in fact for adults only. As much as this text is about “the presentation” of Jesus, it is also about elders, represented by two elders in particular, Simeon and Anna. In case you don’t know the story, Mary and Joseph have brought the still infant Jesus to the Temple to be presented to God and to the community, as is the custom of the time. An old man (we assume) named Simeon and an old woman named Anna, both marvel at the infant. And so rather than focusing our attention on the infant Jesus, I’d like us to take a moment and marvel ourselves at these two amazing elders, and what they can teach us.

Now imagining what happens when an adult sees an infant is relatively easy for us, there are a few of them around us here often enough. And especially when we know the parents, we are all very excited about the baby. We coo, and make strange noises and funny faces, and generally get pretty excited about the whole thing. There is something magical I think about an infant for us; we see the future, we see the simple gift of life, we see hope and possibility for them, and for us. So it would not be surprising that Simeon and Anna would be intrigued and excited about the infant Jesus. And yet their response takes on a certain spiritual depth. Simeon offers a prayer of thanks to God that he has seen “the salvation of Israel”, and Anna talks about the infant with people who are “seeking the redemption of Israel.” Why is that? Why do these two people go to a spiritual depth when most of us would simply coo and make funny faces?

Well, first off, this is Jesus they’re looking at, and they have seen the “redemption of Israel” in Jesus because he is The Christ, and that is what this text is about. It’s about Jesus, the same baby the angels sang about in the preceding chapter. Clearly it is the infant Jesus that prompts Simeon’s prayer of gratitude. We have here a perfectly reasonable on the face of it interpretation. And I want us to drive deeper spiritually ourselves with this text, to imagine what it might mean for us here and now.

Because in the depths, we see spiritual lessons for us all. I think that as elders, Simeon and Anna “get it.” Think about it this way, the other people who get who Jesus is are mostly the ill, the infirm, the poor, the victims of oppression, the people outside the mainstream. The mainstream, even the disciples, don’t really get who Jesus is until after the resurrection. These two elders though, they get it, and these two elders are the first people, after the shepherds, another group of outsiders, to do so in Luke’s Gospel. They go to a spiritual place right away because they understand that the birth of a child generally is a profoundly spiritual moment; life appearing, life and love manifest right here and right now. And they go to a spiritual place because they understand that God is at work in the infant Jesus, and God is at work in any infant. Elders get how precious life is. They see that “the Christ” is alive and working in this baby. They see that it is in the gift of life that “the Christ” is alive and working in all of us infants. Elders like Simeon and Anna have a wisdom; the ability to see things that the rest of us are moving too quickly to notice.

Breathe. Slow down. Listen for the still small voice within you.

Anna and Simeon have reached a point in their lives where they have seen pain, terror, hunger, oppression, and injustice. They have lived. And now, as their own mortality is so clearly present in their lives, they have an epiphany. They see that life does go on, that there is hope, that there is love, that there is relief, sustenance, truth and justice in life. In the words of an elder, Archbishop Desmond Tutu “You are made by love for loving. You are made by goodness for being good. You are a Godcarrier and so are a VSP, a very special person, God’s viceroy, God’s representative. God bless you. ” And Anna and Simeon see all that in the eyes of an infant.

Breathe. Slow down. Listen for the still small voice within you.

We learn from Anna and Simeon that we come upon the lines on our faces honestly. We have lived and learned from fools and from sages, and we do know that our history, the good and the bad does in fact come down to us. And the older we get, the wiser we are supposed to be. I have a friend, who is a partner in one of the big consulting firms. We were laughing over lunch a few months ago as he said that when he was in his 20’s and 30’s, and going in for a job interview he’d be stumped by the question, “tell us about your weaknesses.” He’d have to think, and scratch his head and then make something up. “Now,” he says, “in my 50’s when someone asks the same question, I ask them, ‘how much time have you got?’” I didn’t think to ask, I wonder how long it’ll take to answer the same question in our 80’s!

There is love, there is hope, there is possibility, there is life. Breathe. And listen for that still small voice within you.

Simeon and Anna also teach us about the importance of perseverance. Both, it seems have spent their lives persevering towards a better world. A teacher of mine, Meg Wheatley says, “It is comforting to remember that perseverence is the story of humankind. We all come from ancestors who persevered. We wouldn’t be here without them. It’s our turn now.”

Perseverence. How often we must persevere in our lives. We know that as amazing as a birth is, the next adventure has only just begun. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when we learned that my mother had another fall. This time, thankfully, she was in hospital, and so help was very close at hand. However, she had fallen face first, and broke her cheekbone. What was amazing though, was the story we heard from the nurse who came to her aid. Mum was on her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth after dinner. The nurse found her on the floor, blood coming from her nose and mouth, trying to pull herself up on her walker, toothpaste and toothbrush still in hand, still trying to get to the bathroom to brush her teeth!

Anna and Simeon, and my Mum and most likely yours, teach us that life requires perseverance. There is a great deal of fear in the world, we need to persevere against the fear, persevere against the troubles, persevere against the dangers. We must persevere with courage, and persevere with a soulful confidence. And perhaps most importantly, we must persevere against the petty, the sharp and the short within ourselves.

There is love, there is hope, there is possibility, there is life. Breathe. And listen for that still small voice within you.

Amen

PREVIEW CLASS FEBRUARY 22nd (ASH WEDNESDAY) 6:45pm-7:15pm

Over the course of this coming year, Christ Church Cathedral will explore the spirituality of the sacred writings of the Bible.

The Sunday morning gatherings will focus more on the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of selected passages within the Bible. The Tuesday nights will go into more sustained inquiry around texts and themes. In this first set of weeks we will examine the book of Genesis, covering topics like: Creation, The Fall, Covenant & Blessing, Terror, and Forgiveness.

DETAILS: Please bring a Bible with you.
Drop ins are welcome. There is no registration required for this course.

Please Note: We will break for Holy Week and Easter and then return to the same
Sunday and Tuesday schedule beginning Tuesday April 17th.

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue will host a citywide conversation on compassion with world-renowned author Karen Armstrong for the 12-day period March 19–30, 2012.

SFU will present Armstrong with the prestigious Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue. The visit will mark the launch of the Greater Vancouver Compassion Network, part of an international movement to build compassionate communities, inspired in part by Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion.

About Karen Armstrong:
Karen Armstrong is one of the most provocative thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world. In 2008, she was awarded the TED Prize in support of her call for the creation of a “Charter of Compassion”, a document now endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Other accomplishments include addressing the United Nations General Assembly and participating in the World Economic Forum. For more information visit the Charter of Compassion website or read the SFU Official Biography.

To learn more about Karen Armstrong’s visit to Vancouver or The Greater Vancouver Compassion Network

Click Here

(*Please note – there are no events being held at Christ Church Cathedral)

Related Links:

Click Here to read Douglas Todd’s Blog about Karen Armstrong’s visit to Vancouver

“Amongst other things, SFU’s Centre for Dialogue is utilizing Armstrong’s visit to highlight Metro Vancouver stories of compassion. The second in their series highlights Christ Church Cathedral’s support of community functions…”

“Sometimes we think and we speak as if we were given our powers of speech primarily to speak for ourselves, to express our feelings or to express our personalities, as we say. But what if speech were really given to us so that we can speak out of a sense of solidarity and community? What if the great miracle were the ability to speak on behalf of the neighbour and on behalf of the stranger?

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day puts that question to us very seriously, very earnestly. It invites us to think back to those words of Martin Niemöller: the question “if I don’t speak for others, who is there to speak for me?” Holocaust Memorial Day brings back to our minds the appalling consequences of a situation where people don’t speak for the neighbour and don’t speak for the stranger; where people are concerned about their own security, their own comfort zones. And when we look back on the tragic history of the 30s and 40s, one of the things that prevents it just being a totally dark night is the presence of some of those who were willing to speak for strangers and to take risks alongside strangers.

Last year I visited Central Africa and spent a bit of time in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I heard there something of the experience of people who have lived through genocide of another kind — people who didn’t know and couldn’t rely on the fact that there were others to speak for them. And yet there were some; there were signs of hope, and even the slightest difference in the middle of such a catastrophic situation is of the greatest importance – a sign of grace, a sign of God.

So in our commemoration this year we are encouraged to challenge ourselves: who do we speak for? Are we willing to speak for the neighbour and for the stranger, for people like us and also people who are not like us? Are we willing to take risks alongside one another?

We’ve been commemorating recently the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Council of Christians and Jews in this country, and that has its origins in a moment when one of my own predecessors, Archbishop William Temple, came to the conclusion that he had to learn to speak for a stranger. Out of that has come several decades of intense friendship building, relationship building and witness to our wider society. I very much hope that that witness will be part of what we take forward into the next generation; a generation where these issues will not be stale and they will not be academic, and where we will go on being challenged as to who we speak for. Our words may not be very loud, they may not instantly change everything, but they will change something: they will change us, they will change at least one neighbour – they will make some strangers into neighbours. And that is profoundly and eternally worth doing.