How often do we say we want to serve God, but not do what he wants us to do? Or ask God for help, then refuse to do what he asks in order to achieve what we have requested? Today’s Old Testament reading shows dramatically the consequences of listening to God even when he appears to ask strange or difficult things.
Naaman is an officer in the Syrian Army when he contracts leprosy, a contagious disease that would have made him a complete social outcast. Through a servant he hears of the prophet Elisha and his powers of healing. Despite his contempt for Israel, to Naaman an insignificant little nation, he leaves in search of Elisha, whom he meets after a series of mishaps. Elisha sends him to bathe in the Jordan river. Naaman is outraged. Why should he bathe in this grubby little Israelite stream when there are big and beautiful rivers in his own country? He is persuaded to do as Elisha has instructed, and his skin is made whole. He returns to Elisha and places his faith in the One True God of Israel.
Sometimes God wants us to do tasks for him which are distasteful to us. Other times the task is, we feel, beneath our dignity. Yet other times they go against all our instincts or better judgement. No-one really enjoys changing a baby’s dirty nappy, for example. But we do it, either because we love that baby dearly, or because we know that, helpless as it is, it needs our help, and as human beings we are obliged to give it. Neither, if someone has drunk too much and made a mess iin our lounge, do we want to clean up the nauseous mess. If we want our lounge to be as it should, we will nevertheless do it. Nor do we like to be confronted at our front doors by a filthy person who asks for money for food, money which we are morally certain will be spent on an alcoholic beverage. But we do not want a fellow human being to starve, so we will at least give him something to eat.
Small things which confront us all the time, can challenge us to step outside that which is pleasant or convenient to us. We often rebel aginst these things. Yet in God’s plan, we can never know what major consequences might flow from a small action on our part. And we never know how such actions may affect OUR lives, for we can never be more generous than God.
Naaman is an example of this. He overcame his distaste, bathed in the river Jordan, and was made clean. But this small action was the source of an incalculably greater gift; faith in the one, true God of Israel. His action was an opening on the eternal, through which God poured his grace and mercy upon Naaman. It is the same for us. Jesus once said, when his disciples were urging him to eat, “My food is to do the work of the one who sent me.” How often do we think that when we do some little task, especially something less than pleasant, that we are “doing something for God.” In fact, for us, too, it is the other way around. Each one of these is a window on to eternity, through which the Lord Jesus can pour out upon us all the grace and mercy that he won for us by his death on the cross and his resurrection. Next time you are confronted by some unpleasant task, think of this.
Fr Phillip
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