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Commentary on Sirach 6:5-17

Sirach today gives some advice on friendship. He has some wise things to say. According to the Harper-Collins Study Bible:

Friendship was an important concept in social relations during the Hellenistic period and is referred to several times in Sirach (9:10; 11:29-14:2; 22:19-26; 37:1-6). In Greek literature of the time, a friend was one who remained true in times of distress and could therefore be trusted with one’s official or private interests and affairs. Today’s reading brings to an end a section of instructions and admonitions which test one’s resolve, integrity, and capacity for making judgements in keeping with wisdom piety. (edited)

True friends are discerned, not by how much money they have, but by whether they will continue to stand by one in times of difficulty and misfortune. Such friends are rare, and their value is beyond estimation.

The word ‘friend’ is one we tend to use very casually, and we call people friends with whom we have only a relatively superficial acquaintance. Or we term as friends people who are useful in getting things we want. A genuine friend, with whom one can open oneself completely and in whom one can have total trust, is not easy to find.

Some of the points made today are worth considering:

• Friends are won by our speaking kindly and being courteous to people. Why do some people seem to have lots of close friends and others have very few? Perhaps one of the main reasons is here. To find a friend one has first to be a friend.
• People with whom you are friendly can be many, but a close adviser and confidant will be “one in a thousand”. As we said, the word ‘friend’ can be used very loosely. It is genuine friendship that we are speaking of here.
• True friendships, which are based on genuine love, take time to develop. Mutual attraction is not enough. Hence, “…gain them through testing, and do not trust them hastily.”

Sirach gives a few examples of what we would now call ‘fair-weather’ friends:

…there are friends who are such when it suits them,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.

…there are friends who turn to enmity
and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace… [one thinks of bitter divorce proceedings]

…there are friends who are companions at the table,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
When you are prosperous, they become your second self
and boldly command your slaves,
but if you are brought low, they turn against you
and hide themselves from you.

Sirach advises us to “Keep away from your enemies”, those who are hostile to us. But in this, we also have to remember the Gospel injunction to pray for them and be ready to forgive and be reconciled with those who have harmed us.

At the same time Sirach tells us to “be on guard with your friends”, that is, those who call themselves friends but who, in time of stress, are likely to ditch you.

Finally, Sirach speaks of the true friend, a treasure more valuable than anything money can buy:

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter;
whoever finds one has found a treasure.
Faithful friends are beyond price;
no amount can balance their worth.
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine,
and those who fear the Lord will find them.

True friendship is based on love and, where there is love, God is inevitably present, for God is love.

Last of all, Sirach provides an astute piece of advice:

Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright,
for as they are, so are their neighbors also.

This last phrase may mean ‘one’s friends are as dear to one as oneself’, but it may also mean ‘one’s friend will inevitably be, like oneself, a God-fearing person’.

When we live in truth and integrity, we live in God, and we are likely to make as friends those whose lives are also based on truth and integrity. There can really be no other kind of true friend.

One of the greatest tragedies in life is never to have had really close and intimate friends. The sign of a true friend is the sense of emptiness that comes on permanent separation because of death or some other irreversible reason.

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Commentary on Mark 9:14-29

As Jesus comes down the mountain of the Transfiguration with Peter, James and John, they find the rest of the disciples surrounded by a large crowd. They are in a deep argument with some scribes, the experts on the Jewish law. Jesus wants to know what they are arguing about.

A man comes forward and describes some terrible symptoms his son is experiencing. He had asked Jesus’ disciples to exorcise this demon, but they were not able to do so. Reading the passage with contemporary eyes, it is possible for us to see the boy’s symptoms as perhaps some kind of epileptic seizure. It is understandable that people in those days would see in it some kind of evil possession. A person having epilepsy may seem to behave in very bizarre ways and even to be in the control of some external power.

Jesus exclaims:

You faithless generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?

He asks that the boy be brought to him. Immediately the boy has another attack, lying writhing on the ground, foaming at the mouth—all typical symptoms of a seizure.

The father says the boy has been like that since birth and then he makes a heart-rending plea:

…if you are able to do anything, help us! Have compassion on us!

Jesus’ response is immediate:

If you are able! All things can be done for the one who believes.

Jesus does not just help people who ask. They must have a firm trust and confidence in God. We were told earlier that in Nazareth Jesus was able to do very little healing because the people there had no faith or trust in him.

The man comes back with a magnificent response:

I believe; help my unbelief!

That is the paradox of faith. It is something that we must have in order to come under the power of God, and yet it is also something he has to give us first.

This was enough for Jesus. He immediately drove out the force that was afflicting the boy. It involved one more last attack, leaving him lying on the ground “like a corpse” so that the onlookers thought he was dead. Someone with a seizure disorder can certainly look like that at the end of an attack.

Then Jesus took the boy by the hand and lifted him up:

…and he was able to stand.

As often happens in the Gospel, healing and a restoration to wholeness means standing up, sharing in the resurrection, the new life, of Jesus.

Afterwards, when Jesus’ disciples were alone with him, they asked why they could not heal the boy. Jesus tells them that this kind of problem:

…can come out only through prayer.

Did that mean that they had been trying to heal the boy by their own efforts? Were they beginning to think that the power that had been given them was their own? Had they failed to realise they were just channels of God’s healing power? Jesus spent long hours in prayer before and after his teaching and healing works. We cannot expect to do otherwise.

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Commentary on Mark 9:30-37

Jesus was now spending more time with his disciples and teaching them. He was teaching them things that the crowds were not yet ready to hear. As we will see, his disciples were not too ready either.

Today we have the second of three predictions of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection which he communicates to his disciples. On each occasion, the pattern is exactly the same:

1. A prediction of what is going to happen to Jesus;
2. Total lack of comprehension of the meaning of what Jesus is saying on the part of the disciples;
3. A teaching of Jesus arising out of their lack of understanding.

The prediction is stated simply. First, Jesus will “be betrayed into human hands”. Other translations say “handed over” and still others use “given up”. These terms are used many times in the Gospels. John the Baptist is handed over; Jesus is handed over; the disciples later on will be handed over; and, in the Eucharist, the Body of Jesus is handed over for our sakes (“This is my body, which is given [tradetur] for you”). Second, he will be put to death; and third, three days later he will rise again.

They arrive in Capernaum and, in the house, Jesus asks them a question. Once again we have a reference to the “house’ with overtones of the Church, the place where God’s people gather, as they do here to listen to the Word of God. Jesus asks his disciples what seems an innocuous question:

What were you arguing about on the way?

Here we have another important word of Mark’s: “way” or “road” (Greek, hodos). In the context of the Gospel it has theological overtones. Jesus is the Way or the Road, and Christians are those who walk on this Way or Road. So the disciples “arguing” has implications about Christians arguing among themselves as they follow Christ ‘on the way’.

Jesus’ question is met with an embarrassed silence, because they had been arguing among themselves about which of them was the greatest. The minute the question was asked, they knew they were in the wrong.

Why were they arguing about this? It was once suggested that, as Jesus had now for the second time announced his coming death, they were beginning to accept the possibility of it really happening. They began to wonder what would happen to them as a group without Jesus. Who would be in charge? Which of them had the best qualifications? Hence, their argument. If that was the case, then Jesus’ question was even more embarrassing. They could hardly say, “Well, we were wondering which one of us would take over when you are no longer with us.”

Jesus, of course, knew exactly what was going on in their minds, so he gave them some guidelines if they wanted to be truly his followers:

Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.

This is quite a hard saying, and most of us find it difficult to put fully into practice. It is, of course, totally in opposition to what goes on in the secular world, where ‘success’ means being on top, being in charge, being in control, calling the shots.

Yet, who are really the greatest people in our society? Is it not those, who are especially talented intellectually or in other ways, who use their talents totally for the well-being of others, to the point of even sacrificing their lives?

Apart from the obvious example of Jesus himself, we have a long list of saints who all have one thing in common—they put themselves totally at the service of their brothers and sisters. Success, promotion, status, material wealth or executive power meant nothing to these saints. They served, and their service was their power, a power which inspires in a way that no mere politician, business tycoon or dictator could ever do.

To serve is not to be submissive or weak; it is not putting oneself on a lower level than those being served. It is simply to be totally committed to the good of others, and to find one’s own well-being in being so committed.

Jesus then takes a little child, as a symbol of all those who are vulnerable, weak and exploitable. Children are used by Jesus as symbols of the anawim, the lowly and weak in our society. They are the ones who are most of all to be served and protected and nurtured. In so doing, one is recognising the presence of Jesus and the presence of God in them.

As Christians, we have much to be proud of in our record of service to our brothers and sisters, especially those who are weak and vulnerable. But we also have to confess that within our Church and in our dealings with the ‘world’, we have had our fair share of hungering for power, status and position. And, we have so often argued bitterly with each other “on the Way”, about just such things.

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Commentary on Mark 9:38-40

There is another lesson for all of us in today’s brief passage.  The disciples complain to Jesus because they saw someone casting out devils in Jesus’ name.  They tried to stop him:

…because he was not following us.

Jesus tells them very clearly that they should:

…not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.

This is a principle we need to take seriously to heart. There can be a strong temptation among us to a kind of exclusivity.  Many Christian groups (both Catholic and people from other denominations) can fall into this trap.  As Paul tells us in one of his letters:

…the word of God is not chained. (2 Tim 2:9)

God can do his work through all kinds of people—Christians and people of other religions and of no religion.  He may even work at times through people who are ostensibly anti-religious.  Far from being resentful of others doing work which we feel belongs only to Christians, we should be overjoyed.  This is a clear sign of the Kingdom at work.  Wherever there is love, wherever there is service, there is God.

Membership in our group is not the test.  The test is whether what others do fits in with our goals of truth, love, justice, compassion, freedom, peace, non-violence and all that is good.   Our God is to be found in all these things.  The Church is a way to a further goal; it is not itself the end.  The Church is called to be a sign of the Kingdom, but is not the totality of the Kingdom. The goal is that people with good hearts and the Church are working for the good of one another and for the realisation of the Kingdom.

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Commentary on Mark 9:41-50

Today’s Gospel speaks of ‘scandal’.  It is a much used word in our media today and not always with the same meaning that we find in the Gospel.  In our time it tends to refer to behaviour which we do not expect from certain individuals or classes of people.  We read about it and we say, “How terrible!  How wicked!”  In the Gospel, however, ‘scandals’ are stumbling blocks which impede one’s journey along Christ’s Way. If a head of state behaves inappropriately with someone in his or her office, that may be scandalous in the media sense, but it is not likely to affect the living out of one’s own Christian faith.

The Way of Christ is expressed in love and compassion and, wherever that happens, the action is noted and rewarded.  So anyone who gives a disciple even a drink of water, precisely because that person is known to be a follower of Christ, will not go unrewarded.  That ‘anyone’ is to be taken with full literalness.  It could be a person of a completely different religion or of none.  And one would hope that we would do exactly the same in return.

On the other hand, anyone who corrupts the beliefs of a simple believer is only fit for a fate worse than death.  And that applies most of all to fellow believers who, by their actions, can be an obstacle to a person following Christ or coming to know Christ.

But even within ourselves, there can be things in our lives which can block our living out of the Gospel message.  A wandering hand may steal, may hurt, may sexually abuse; it would be better to be without a hand than to allow it to do such things.  A wandering foot may bring us to places where we are corrupted or cause corruption to others.  It would be better to be crippled than to be involved in such things. A wandering eye can result in our treating other people, however beautiful and attractive, as mere objects of desire and may lead to worse things. We can read stories or visit websites which may lead us to thoughts and actions harmful both to ourselves and others—there are many possibilities. Blindness would be a lesser evil.

Obviously, Jesus is not urging us to carry out such amputations literally.  His point is to warn us of the many things which can be stumbling blocks in our Christian lives.  Perhaps we could reflect a little today and try to enumerate the things that get between us and our following of Jesus.

Jesus says in today’s Gospel:

…everyone will be salted with fire…

To be salted is to be purified and kept from corruption.  This can refer either to penalties by which a sinner is punished and at the same time preserved, or to the purifying trials through which we are made more faithful followers.  This is the kind of ‘amputation’ that can apply to those who have caused scandal.

This purification can happen through the trials which the Christian is likely to face in the faithful living out of the Gospel. But if the salt itself loses its taste, what can be used to give taste back to it? Rather:

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

Good “salt”, that which ‘seasons’ us, seems to be the inner essence of the message of Jesus.  It is certainly the key to peace in our own hearts and in our relationships with those around us.  And if that salt is within us, we are not likely to be a stumbling block to others looking for Christ and his Way.

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Commentary on Mark 10:1-12

Jesus is approached by some Pharisees and they ask him if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. We are told they asked him this question in order to put him to the test.  It is another example of their efforts to find Jesus on the wrong side of the Mosaic law.

As frequently happens, Jesus responds to their question with his own to them:

What did Moses command you?

They reply that Moses allowed a man to make out a writ of dismissal and so divorce his wife.  They are quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy which says:

Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies): her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that would be abhorrent to the Lord, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession. (Deut 24:1-4)

Jesus clearly is not happy with this teaching and says Moses allowed divorce to accommodate the moral weakness of the people (that is, primarily the men!).  He challenges this stand with words from the creation story in Genesis (1:27; 2:24):

…God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

After marriage, then, he says that there are not two separate people, but one body.  And from that Jesus concludes:

Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

When they were back in the ‘house’ (that house again, the place where Jesus’ disciples are gathered about him—the Church), Jesus’ disciples expressed their misgivings about what they had just heard.  But Jesus went even further: a man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery and a woman who divorces her husband and marries another is also guilty of adultery.  He does not recognise divorce. One gets the impression that this teaching of Jesus came as something of a shock to them.

In a sound and enduring marriage the words of Jesus are realised. One meets people who have been married for decades and are as deeply in love with each other, in fact more so, than on the day of their wedding. One has only to see bereaved spouses to realise the terrible void that is left when a partner of many years dies.  They feel as if a part of themselves had been torn from them.  It can take years for life to come back to some kind of normalcy.

However, in our own day divorce has become a very common phenomenon.  In some societies, the divorce rate is almost half of all marriages and in most societies all over the world it is increasing.  Marriages between Catholics are also seriously affected.  Obviously it is a very complex question and cannot be dealt with here.

There are two comments to be made about this Gospel passage. First, Jesus is attacking a situation where men, when they got tired of their spouse and found someone more interesting, simply wrote a piece of paper and unilaterally dumped the first wife, leaving her high and dry.  Jesus rightly deplores such a situation.  His final remark indicates something new for his time (and often not yet accepted in our own): equal rights and equal responsibilities for both partners. He is very clear that women are not commodities to be picked up and dropped off at will.

Second, divorce as we experience it in our society today often involves a genuine breakdown in the marriage relationship which neither partner wishes and which is a cause of deep pain and suffering to both sides.  It may be due to some element of immaturity at the time of marriage, or the partners growing apart as they develop as persons.  Whatever the reason, this situation is quite different from the one about which Jesus is speaking.  One feels that Jesus would be most sympathetic to the painful breakdowns of marriage which happen today and, as Christians, we too should try to empathise with people in such a situation.

Most people enter into marriage with good will and with the intention of having an enduring, lifelong relationship.  It is a hope sometimes not realised.  At the same time, we also have in our society today a pluralistic approach to the concept of marriage from merely seeing it as two people living together ‘as long as it feels good’ to those who believe in marriage as a permanent relationship ‘in good times and bad’—and everything else in between.

We need to remember that the Church accepts that marriages can break down and that, for various reasons, the couple may need to have their separation made legal by a divorce settlement in court.  What the Church forbids is remarriage within the Church absent a formal tribunal annulment declaration.  Many Catholics do remarry in a civil ceremony and we need to deal with such people with great sympathy and understanding if they express a sincere desire to remain active members of the Christian community.

The ideal that Jesus proposes remains, but a changing society may need a different approach to marriage where the emphasis is more on the relationship and less on the legal contract.  A truly pastoral Church will help people live the Gospel in such a changing sociological situation.  As always, the solution will lie in answering the question: In this situation, what is the loving thing to do as far as all are concerned?

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Commentary on Sirach 17:1-15

Today Sirach speaks of the relationship between the Creator and the human beings he has made. It is part of a poem in praise of the Lord for the creation of humankind. The author is following the order of Genesis and has already spoken of the creation of stars, plants and animals.

He combines in one the two accounts of the creation of humankind (Gen 1:26-27; 2:7) and interprets the image of God in humans under the headings of authority, strength, and dominion, thus developing a hierarchy of power: God, humans, living beings.

Humans were created by God from the earth, and will at the end return to earth. The First Man had been created a living thing from the earth and at the end is buried and returns to where he came from.

Human life on earth is temporary, but privileged:

He gave them a fixed number of days
but granted them authority over everything on the earth.
He endowed them with strength like his own
and made them in his own image.

God shared his ability to know and love and to have his vision of creation. Because of this, we were put in charge over all beasts and flying things and:

He [the Lord] put the fear of them in all living beings…

This is a generally true statement, but there are exceptions where the human is the one who fears.

God shaped humans giving them:

Discretion and tongue and eyes,
ears and a mind for thinking…
He filled them with knowledge and understanding
and showed them good and evil.
He put the fear of him into their hearts
to show them the majesty of his works.

The Israelites believed that the heart was the seat of reason rather than the seat of the emotions, as it is for us. The list of faculties for perception is similar to that common to the Stoic tradition. The ‘five faculties’ were sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste.

The human was also filled with knowledge and understanding and given a sense of good and evil. In this way, God’s light was planted in human thinking so that we could appreciate, as other creatures cannot, the magnificence of God’s creation.

God also taught us as well:

He bestowed knowledge upon them
and allotted to them the law of life.

This refers to the Law of Moses, which is included in the endowments that God “allotted” to mankind. The gifts of Creation and of Mount Sinai are here telescoped into one act of God.

And we were given another gift:

Their eyes saw his glorious majesty,
and their ears heard the glory of his voice.

This is a reference to the Israelites’ experience at Mount Sinai.

For us, of course, there is the further teaching that we have received through the Incarnate Son of God a new and “eternal covenant”:

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
(John 10:10)

Our response to all these gifts will be to:

…praise his holy name,
to proclaim the grandeur of his works.

A very important part of our prayer is to praise and thank the Lord for the beauty and gift of his creation.

At Mount Sinai also, God told his people to beware of all wrongdoing and:

…he gave commandment to each of them concerning the neighbor.

He did this through the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law. And they needed—as we do—to be aware that:

Their ways are always before him;
they will not be hidden from his eyes.

Let each one of us reflect that we too are part of this creation. We have been given these gifts to develop so that we can continue to grow ever more in the likeness of our God. That is the sole purpose of our existence and we forget it at our peril.

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Commentary on Mark 10:13-16

The Gospel begins with the line:

People were bringing children to [Jesus] in order that he might touch them…

It is so sad that this act of ‘touching’ has lost any connotation of innocence in our present day.  A compassionate and healing touch is something for which children, the sick and, at times all of us have a great need.

His disciples felt that Jesus, who may have been in the process of teaching, was being bothered by these mothers and tried to drive them away.  More than once we have seen the officiousness of the disciples who were taking to themselves an authority that not been given them.  They still had to learn the lesson that authority serves rather than controls and manipulates. It is a lesson that those in authority in our Church today need also to remember.  And it reflects to some extent the low place that children had in adult society, to be neither seen nor heard.

Mark, who likes to record the feelings of Jesus, says that he was quite “indignant” at his disciples’ behaviour, saying:

Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

“Children” here can be taken in a wider sense to include all those who approach Jesus with a completely open, unprejudiced mind—and also those who have a low status in our society.  Such people are often more ready to hear the message of the Kingdom and to take an active part in it.

So Jesus says:

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

Only those with the openness and simplicity of a child will be able to enter the Kingdom.  These words were, no doubt, addressed to all-knowing scribes and Pharisees and their like, and also to the disciples.

Jesus then took the children, put his arms around them, laid his hands on them and blessed them.  Jesus knew the importance of physical touch in communicating with people, in expressing encouragement and affirmation and in bringing healing.

This passage can be linked, in a way, with the recent one on scandal (Mark 9:42-50).  The disciples, perhaps not deliberately, were blocking access to Jesus by those who were most open to his teaching.  As people who are responsible for children, either as parents or teachers or in other roles, we need to be aware of how—by word or action—we can block our children from being exposed to Jesus’ message of Truth and Love.   But we can also be a block to other people who can be influenced and turned away from the Way of Christ by our unchristian way of behaving.

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Commentary on Luke 4:24-30

This Gospel, and the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42), are both linked by the story told in today’s First Reading about Naaman, a Syrian general, who was miraculously cured by Elisha the prophet.

The Gospel is the second part of the scene in the synagogue in Nazareth, where Jesus officially announces his mission as Messiah, Saviour and Liberator. The first reaction was one of amazement that Jesus, their townsman, could speak with such power:

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. (Luke 4:22)

There was amazement, but no real faith in him. Familiarity had blinded them to his true identity, and they reject him. For them he is just ‘Joe the carpenter’s boy’.

Jesus says he is not surprised by this reception:

Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

He then goes on to give two examples taken from the lives of two well-known Old Testament prophets. They are not quite examples of prophets not being received by their own people, but rather of prophets reaching out to other peoples, non-believers.

When there was a great famine among the Israelites, it was a Sidonian widow who was helped by Elijah. Sidon was the place where Jesus would heal a gentile woman’s daughter. There were many leprous people in Israel, says Jesus, but Elisha was sent to cure Naaman the Syrian, another Gentile.

Jesus’ hearers are incensed by what appear to them arrogant and insulting words. In their minds, they were not rejecting a prophet, but an impostor. They find his remarks about Elijah and Elisha highly objectionable.

The references to Elijah and Elisha help to emphasise Luke’s image of Jesus as a prophet like those who went before him. They also lay the foundation for the future mission of the Apostle to the Gentiles.

We too can very easily fail to recognise the voice of God in certain people who in fact—whether they are aware of it or not—are bringing a message from him. Like the people of Nazareth, we can think we know them too well to have to listen to them. We feel it would be inconceivable that God could speak to us through such people. Fair warning that this probably happens most of all with people we see every day during our lives.

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Commentary on 2 Kings 5:1-15

The central character in today’s First Reading is Naaman, an army commander from Syria under the king of Aram, probably Ben-Hadad II. He was held in high esteem by his king because of military victories, which the Bible attributes to the power of Yahweh. In the writer’s view, victory is to be attributed to the God of Israel, who is seen as the ruler and controller of the fate of all nations, and not just that of Israel.

Now, Naaman was a ‘leper’. The New Jerusalem Bible calls his condition a “virulent skin disease” because, whatever it was, it did not seem to exclude Naaman from coming into close contact with people. In ancient times, real leprosy was, tragically for the victim, often confused with other chronic skin diseases.

Although Israel had concluded a peace treaty with the Aramaeans during the reign of King Ahab, there were still minor skirmishes on the borders between the two states for control of a place called Ramoth Gilead. These followed a battle in which King Ahab had been killed. It was as a result of one of these skirmishes that a young Israelite girl was taken captive. She would prove the link in bringing healing to Naaman.

We could well stop to reflect for a few moments on this young girl. Although a simple slave, she played a crucial role in the healing and, together with the austere prophet Elisha, offered a startling contrast to the ostentatious wealth of Naaman—wealth which had no role to play in his being restored to health.

She knew about the prophet Elisha, who was living in Samaria and suggested that her master should go to him for healing. The king, Ben-Hadad, gave his full approval for Naaman to go to Samaria and see Elisha and promised to write a letter of introduction to King Joram of Israel. The Syrian king obviously believed that Elisha was subject to Joram and that the prophet’s services could only be bought with a generous gift—hence the 10 talents of silver (a huge amount of money), 6,000 shekels of gold and the 10 festal robes which Naaman brought with him. He thought that God’s gift of healing could only be bought with money.

On the other hand, King Joram is horrified by this and rends his clothes in despair. His own faith in God’s healing power was so weak that he thought that Ben-Hadad was simply looking for a pretext for war by asking the obviously impossible—the cure of a leper. But when Elisha hears of it, he scolds the king for his failure to consult his prophet.

Naaman now arrives in all the glory of someone in his exalted position with horses and chariots. He will overawe the prophet by his presence, power and show of wealth. He must then have been somewhat surprised to be told by the prophet what he must do. And what he had to do was to bathe seven times in the River Jordan. Elisha clearly indicates that the healing power comes from the power of the God of Israel, but only if the general does what he is told by the prophet.

The prophet himself was not strictly speaking a healer. Ritual washings were practiced among the Eastern religions as a purification rite, and the number seven was generally known as a symbol of completeness. Naaman was to wash in the muddy waters of the Jordan River, showing that there was no natural connection between the washing and the desired healing. Perhaps it was also being suggested that one needed to pass through the Jordan, as Israel had done (see Jos 3—4), in order to obtain healing from the God of Israel. Much later, Jesus would also pass through the same waters of the Jordan and be filled with the Spirit of his Father.

Naaman finds this an affront to his dignity. He expected the prophet to come out to him, wave his hand magically over the afflicted spots and effect an immediate cure. Instead, he has to do what he is told by someone he regards as a foreign underling. And what is worse, he is asked to bathe in the Jordan. What was wrong with the rivers that flowed through Damascus—the Abana and Pharpar? The Abana was called the ‘Golden River’ by the Greeks and is usually identified with the Barada River today, which rises in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and flows through the city of Damascus. The Pharpar River flows eastwards from Mount Hermon, just to the south of Damascus. In fact, the waters of these rivers were hygienically far superior to the muddy waters of the Jordan. But that was precisely the point—it was not the water which brought the healing.

Deeply insulted, Naaman turns round to go home. But his servants plead with him. After all, if Naaman had been asked to do something difficult, he would have done so. Why not obey the prophet when he asks something so easy? Naaman puts his pride behind him, goes to the river seven times and emerges with his skin like that of a new-born child. He is both physically and spiritually reborn.

However, we need to be aware that there is a deeper meaning to the story. Naaman, the Gentile submitting to the command of Yahweh through his prophet, is put forward as a contrast to a disobedient Israel, which still wavered in its divided allegiance to Yahweh and to Baal. God’s blessings are only to be found in total submission to his will and his commands. In today’s Gospel, Jesus will bring up this point himself, much to the anger of the Jews to whom he was speaking.

The clear lesson of the story is given in the last sentence when, after being cured, Naaman goes back in gratitude to Elisha and says:

Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel…

A minor lesson for all of us arises from Naaman’s indignation at being told to bathe seven times in the river Jordan. Wisdom comes from the slaves in his household who said to their master:

…if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?

How often do we not see God coming into our lives because of our prejudices and blind spots?

It must be understood from this passage that the true healer is not Elisha, nor the muddy waters of the Jordan river, but God himself. And the healing is the result, not of the washing in the river, but of Naaman’s eventual submission and obedience to God’s spokesman.

It was exactly the lack of this attitude on the part of the people of Nazareth (spoken of in today’s Gospel) that prevented Jesus from healing the people of his own town.