Epiphany 6 February 12, 2006

Two patients lie in an emergency room, beset by mysterious pains.  When the doctor arrives, one patient asks “What’s wrong with me, Doc?”  The other patient, who is a drug addict, pleads only, “Can you give me something for the pain?”  The questions come from different universes.

I begin with this little anecdote as a way of introducing our scripture passage from the Second Book of Kings.  The story of Naaman the Syrian is an ancient one, some 2900 years old, but the truth contained therein is as timeless and as relevant as any other we may glean from scripture.  It is the story of an accomplished man, the general of the powerful army of Aram, which is modern day Syria. 

Naaman had it all.  Creature comforts, status and power, wives and children.  There was nothing amiss in his life except one troubling physical infirmity.  Naaman, you see, had leprosy.  And to have leprosy in the ancient world was a fate worse than death.  Lepers were considered pariahs, outcasts, forced to live in exile for fear they would contaminate the general public.

For this reason, I think we can safely conclude that Naaman’s leprosy was not public knowledge.  It was something he needed to hide.  It was something he needed to have complete control over, or he would lose everything, his status, his power, his wealth.  It was something he could not divulge to any but his closest intimates or he would be as good as gone.

And this is exactly the way he would have spent the rest of his days if it had not been for a young slave girl of the Israelites he had carried off in one of his military raids.  One day as he was in his wife’s chamber, the slave girl saw Naaman’s hidden affliction, and she told him of a man, a prophet in her native land who could possibly heal him.

With this news, Naaman secures the support of his king, and travels to the land of Israel, where he presents to the King of Israel a princely sum of silver and gold and garment, in hopes he can purchase his cure.  But, knowing he has no power to heal Naaman’s affliction, the King of Israel tears his clothes, and sends him on to the prophet Elisha.
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Naaman then takes his horses and chariots to Samaria, where Elisha sends his servant out to tell him how he may be healed.  He must go down to the muddy river Jordan, disrobe, and wash seven times.  Naaman responds indignantly.  Surely he could have stayed back in Aram and washed in the pristine waters of the great rivers of Damascus.  Surely he could have been made clean there.

Naaman wanted a quick fix, you see.  If he could not buy his cure, if he could not control the terms of his cure, if he could admit he was completely powerless over this leprosy that afflicted him, then the hell with it.  And so, he turns away in a rage.

Only when his servants approach him, does he reconsider.  “You are willing to move heaven and earth to be clean,” then tell him, “why not do the most simple thing, then, and go down to the river and wash?”  Naaman relents, and he washes.  He washes not once or twice, but the prescribed seven time, and scripture tells us, as he came out of the water the seventh time, he is made clean, and his flesh is restored like the flesh of a young boy.

Well what are we to make of this strange tale?  I believe the story of Naaman is a classic example of what we know in our modern world as the power of addiction. In his landmark book, Addiction and Grace, Psychologist Gerald May sees addiction as an attempt to assert complete control over our lives.  We become addicted when we become attached to something, anything that robs us of our spiritual identity.  Substance abuse, in alcohol and drugs, is the most glaring example of this in our lives.  But we can be addicted to our work, or sex, or performance, or reponsibility, or intimacy, or any of a number of others things.  We can become addicted, like Naaman, to our physical health or our disease.

And like Naaman, we can spend years doing everything in our power to hide our addiction, or deny it exists.  We can spend untold hours and resources trying to get a quick fix, or like that patient in the emergency room, seek anything to ease the pain.  We can and will sacrifice everything for our addictions.  We will lose ourselves to our rage over our addictions.  We will turn away from the truth, the simple healing powers that are right in front of us, right within us because of our addiction.

Naaman did.  And we do.  For we are an addicted people. We live in a time when addiction pervades everything about our lives.  Drugs and alcohol destroy millions of lives in our society.  Our inner cities are war zones from our addictions.   Our children are addicted to t.v. and video games.  Food addictions are epidemic.  Sex addictions are a national scandal. Our addictions to credit and debt are rampant..  And it goes on and on.

And perhaps worst of all, and most certainly most of all, in the recent words of our President: “We are addicted to oil”  Our entire way of life is predicated on this addiction.  Our whole economic infrastructure is based on this addiction. It touches everything in our world.  We are addicted to consumption of energy, to profligate plastics and convineint power in all of its fuming, humming expressions: cars, motorboats, air conditioners, home appliances.  Even though, the writing is on the wall.  We are mortgaging the future.  We are overheating the atmosphere.  We are killing this planet, our island home.  We are stealing our children’s future.  All in the name of our mindless, horrific addiction to cheap oil, and the vaunted standard of living this has given us.
 
Like the addict in the hospital bed, whose every waking moment is riveted on his next fix, who cares nothing about a diagnosis, nothing about what is really wrong with him, we too are slipping into a toxic subjectivity.  Our eyes glaze.  The problems will vanish, we say.  The pain will go away.  Just a little more shopping.  Just give me a new toy, a new distraction, we say.  The earth will get better on its own, we say.  Global warming is debatable, we say.  There’s nothing we can do, we say.  Don’t worry.  Be happy.      

Addiction is a disease.  Like leprosy was for Naaman, we are powerless over it.  In the words of our collect today, in our weakness, we can do nothing good without God, and we need God’s grace to save us.  Some of us here today are actively involved in twelve step programs.  In this way, you are saving your lives.  You are being made clean by God’s grace.  But in this world we inhabit, all of us I believe must deal with our addiction, personally and collectively, and all of us, together, must turn in humility and in grace to wash ourselves over and over again in the waters of grace, if that’s what it takes, in order to be made whole and clean again.

Or as Dr. May writes: “Addiction is natural and pervasive in human life.  The human brain works, learns and grows by developing addictive patterns that differ only in degree from major substance addictions.  We become addicted to our beliefs, our relationships, our understandings, and almost every other dimension of behavior and experience.  Although addiction is natural, it severely impedes human freedom and makes us slaves to our compulsions.  Grace, the freely flowing power of divine love in human life, is the only hope for true freedom from this enslavement.”