Moral Imagination

This is the third in a series - moving from the spectacle of the prophet Elijah to the silence and healing of Elisha.  And it says a lot about who we are called to be today.

See 2nd Kings 2

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

June 29, 2025

“Moral Imagination”

2nd Kings 5: 1-6 – The Message

Naaman was general of the army under the king of Aram. He was important to his master, who held him in the highest esteem because it was by him that God had given victory to Aram: a truly great man, but afflicted with a grievous skin disease. It so happened that Aram, on one of its raiding expeditions against Israel, captured a young girl who became a maid to Naaman’s wife. One day she said to her mistress, “Oh, if only my master could meet the prophet of Samaria, he would be healed of his skin disease.”

4 Naaman went straight to his master and reported what the girl from Israel had said.

5 “Well then, go,” said the king of Aram. “And I’ll send a letter of introduction to the king of Israel.”

So he went off, taking with him about 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothes.

6 Naaman delivered the letter to the king of Israel. The letter read, “When you get this letter, you’ll know that I’ve personally sent my servant Naaman to you; heal him of his skin disease

Two weeks ago, we began with an over-the-top story of the prophet Elijah’s fire-filled showdown meant to prove the power of God over the prophets of Baal and tragically, their unjustified murder.  In response, Queen Jezebel promised fatal retaliation and so Elijah ran as fast and as far as he could until he collapsed under a broom tree and prayed to die.  

God sent an angel with some bread, water, and encouragement.  Then, rested and hydrated, Elijah continued until he came to a cave where he rested again. 

He awoke to hear God ask, “What are you doing here?” And before he could respond, the earth shook, winds howled, and fire blazed all around him—but God wasn’t in any of it. Not in the spectacle. Not in the violence.  God was in the whisper that repeated again, “What are you doing here?”  In that silence, faith shifted from spectacle to something more intimate.  

God told Elijah to find a successor—it would turn out to be someone totally unlike him.  Last week, we met Elisha, a prophet who did not call down fire but practiced a different kind of power: quiet, consistent… He healed poisoned water, multiplied jars of oil to save a widow’s sons from debt slavery.  Elisha doesn’t seize attention with thunder.  He restores what has been broken.  His miracles aren’t meant to dazzle—but to heal.  And nothing makes that clearer than the story of Naaman.

Naaman was a mighty commander of the army of Aram—Israel’s enemy.  He had everything—wealth, power.  But beneath his armor, he was hiding a disease that covered his skin with white flakes.  He could do nothing to defeat it. 

In his home lived a young girl, taken captive during a raid into Israel.  Enslaved.  Powerless.  Yet she saw Naaman’s suffering and said, “If only you went to see the prophet in Samaria, you could be healed.”  It’s a startling moment that sets the entire story in motion.   

Naaman listened.  He sought an official letter from his king that he could carry to Israel to seek help.  He loaded up a caravan with silver, gold, and fine garments.  But when he arrived, the Israelite king panicked.  “Am I a god that I can heal this man from his disease?  This is a trap!”  But he sent Naaman to Elisha anyway.  

Naaman and his entourage rolled up to Elisha’s house, expecting a magnanimous greeting, but Elisha didn’t even come to the door.  He sent a servant to say, “Go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River and you’ll be as good as new.”

Naaman was furious. “I thought he’d come out personally, call on the name of his GOD, wave his hand like some holy magician and make it all disappear.  I mean, c’mon.  The rivers in Damascus are much clearer than that muddy creek.  Why not bathe in them?  At least I’d get clean.”  He was ready to stomp off and go home.

But one of his servants spoke up.  “Sir, if he told you to do something hard and heroic, wouldn’t you have done it?  So why not this simple “wash and be clean?”  

And so, the proud commander relented and dunked himself seven times in the Jordan and when he rose, he had the skin of a little baby.  Humility, not heroics, opened the door to healing.

Naaman returned to Elisha not just to say thank you, but to proclaim a new faith: “Now I know there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”  And then he began to unload all the silver and gold and fine garments.  But Elisha refused it.  “Healing isn’t for sale.  All I want for you is to go with peace.”  

Naaman then made a strange request:  he wanted two mule-loads of dirt. He believed that gods were tied to the land, so he thought he if he wanted to pray to the God of Israel, he had to stand on soil from Israel.  Strange, yes, but sincere.  With or without the dirt, we don’t know, Naaman went home, overjoyed.  The end.  But not quite yet...

Elisha’s servant Gehazi had been watching.  As Naaman’s convoy pulled away, Gehazi ran after him.  “My master’s changed his mind.  He wants those gifts after all!”  Naaman was thrilled and handed over everything, and even a little more, and then continued on his way, grateful that his appreciation had been received.  The end.  But, again, not quite…

Gehazi stashed the treasure and walked back.  Elisha saw him coming and asked, “Where’ve you been?”  “Nowhere.”  “What’ve you been doing?”  “Nothing.”  But Elisha knew where he had been and what he had been doing and was angry.  And in a final twist, suddenly the greedy Gahazi is covered with Naaman’s skin disease.  The end.  The real end.

A traditional approach to Naaman’s story focuses on individual repentance.  An angle that centers on Naaman’s obedience.  He came seeking a miracle, had to surrender his pride, and trust the prophet’s word.  “Sinner, submit to God's way and you’ll be made clean.”  There's truth to that.  Many of us carry shame or ego that we need surrender.  But a liberation-focused interpretation goes farther.

This story is about much more than Naaman.  

• It’s the story of a young girl with no name who dared speak a word that set healing in motion.  Scripture doesn’t waste words. If her voice wasn’t essential, it wouldn’t be there.  
• It’s the story of servants who dared question the wisdom of a powerful general.  Again, if not important, this would have been left out.  
• It’s the story of a prophet who refused to profit from a miracle.  That’s important.  
• And a greedy insider who ends up wearing the disease that was healed.  

Much like the Gospel of Jesus Christ, this is a series of reversals for those on the margins, where the powerless become prophets and the mighty are called to humility.  

I want to center the nameless, enslaved girl who sees the humanity of an enemy and dares to imagine healing for him.  A “nobody” who demonstrates more courage and moral imagination than anyone else in the story.  And to note, she gave mercy.  It was not demanded of her.  Too often scripture has been used to tell the poor and the colonized, the enslaved and excluded, the abused and traumatized: "Be humble.  Submit.  Forgive and forget."  

That is not humility.  That is violence dressed up as virtue.  Humility is sacred when it’s chosen.  It is toxic when it’s demanded.  It asks people who have been crushed to make themselves even smaller and places the burden of peace on the shoulders of the wounded, turning the liberating virtue of humility into a tool of control.

That’s important to say as we watch the Christian faith distorted into spectacles of fire and fury,

• where the loudest voices claim to speak for God while using fear as their gospel, 
• political movements wrap themselves in Scripture while tearing apart the very people Jesus calls us to love…  
• As we watch wealth offered as proof of righteousness,
• control mistaken as evidence of God’s blessing,  
• and cruelty celebrated as strength…

Well, this story—this ancient, strange, beautiful story—says: 

• God is not found in that spectacle. 
• God is not in fire or storm or violence. 
• God is in the whisper.  Whispers that carry way more truth than shouting.  
• In the voices of servants who ask questions. 
• God is in muddy rivers.
• And the one who dares to speak mercy to power, even when she has none herself.

Fannie Lou Hamer dared to speak truth from the underside of power, too.  Born the youngest of twenty children to sharecroppers in Mississippi, raised in poverty and racial terror, she saw the sickness of the system and dared to speak healing truth.  When she tried to register to vote, she was beaten, jailed, and nearly killed.  And still, she refused to be silent.

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, she stood before the nation and said:  “All of this is on account of we want to register to become first-class citizens… Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Like the girl in Naaman’s household, she had no army.  Just her voice.  But unlike the girl—whose voice, remarkably, was heeded—Fannie was punished for hers.  Not because she lied.  But because she told the truth.  So, during her speech the camera feed was cut away to the President who staged a fake press conference from the oval office meant to drown her out.  The deeper the truth cuts, the harder the system fights to silence it.  

I’ve told you before about the Rev. William Barber who was handcuffed for praying in the Capitol Rotunda to protest cuts to Medicaid and social security, practically immobile from his disease, handcuffed and led away – but not before reporters were removed from the room so no one could see it.  Immoral.  This week we saw senior citizens lined up in the hallways of Congress handcuffed in their wheelchairs, protesting cuts to their own health care to enable huge gains for the already obscenely wealthy.  Absolutely immoral.  Talk about sickness in the system. And daring to speak healing truth.  

That’s moral imagination:  refusing to bow to the gods of power and spectacle.  And yet, at the same time, daring to believe that even the ones in power might be healed—if they’re willing.

There’s one more character I want to highlight.  Elisha refused to profit from a miracle.  But Gehazi?  Servant of the prophet—the one who lived closest to the holy—should have known better.  But when he saw grace given freely, he asked, “What can I get out of this for me?”  He tried to twist grace into gain, and in so doing, became covered in the same disease.  We should see Gehazi’s story as a holy rejection of the prosperity gospel and a warning against transactional religion.  
 
 

It’s tempting to celebrate Gehazi’s downfall.  To say, “Finally, someone got what they deserved.”  The consequences Gehazi faced were not unfair.  But, healing doesn’t need celebration at someone else’s expense.  

That’s why I’m trying to remember the enslaved girl because she embodied a deeper power:  the courage to see the humanity in someone who had power over her, and still speak a word of healing.

I find the story of Elisha deeply inspiring for our time.
 Because if healing is going to come,
 it won’t be lit by fire from heaven,
 or shouted from platforms of power.
 It won’t arrive wrapped in spectacle,
 or be forged through control, fear, or force.

It will come not from the centers of power, but from the edge where love begins.

In whispers.  In water.
 
 

It will come through those who will speak what others won’t say,
 dare to see what others ignore,
 name what others deny,
 and stand where others step back.

 And it will begin… in someone like you.  

So… where shall we start?