Reformed

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 31:31-34, Romans 3:19-28, and Luke 8:31-36.

Kids do many things naturally: learn to walk, to talk, to push your buttons. They do not naturally learn to share, to not hit when angry, to not say hurtful things. They have to be taught. They need to learn the rules. Most of these rules are for their own protection: don't touch the stove, don't run into the road, don't try to pet a strange dog without asking the owner first. Some are rules for living with other people: say “Please” and “Thank you,” don't butt ahead in line, don't tell strangers at the store they are fat, don't discuss bowel movements at the table in restaurants. We teach our kids these rules for their own good and we usually have to remind them a lot when they are young. By the time they are older we hope they have internalized the rules to the point that they don't have to think twice about such things.

So why do we have rules and laws to obey when we are older? Obviously, some situations we encounter as adults cannot be foreseen from childhood experience. Specific and complex situations require specific and complex rules. But a major reason is that a rule, or even a code of law, is not a perfect way to make things right. The major problem is compliance.

For instance, there are some people who apparently have a hard time generalizing from rules like “Don't butt in line” to “Don't try to pass a whole line of cars despite oncoming traffic and then just pull in suddenly without paying attention to the other drivers in the lane you are entering.” Or they can't make the leap from “Don't take someone else's toys without getting their permission” to “Don't steal someone else's lunch from the break room fridge.” A lot of people seem to not understand how a general moral principle applies in specific situations. Often they only see this when the situation is reversed and someone cuts in on them or eats their lunch.

And some people just don't seem to internalize rules, period. It's like they are morally tone-deaf. In some cases it is not that they intentionally break the rules; they take no notice of them. All they take into consideration is their own desires. The law is for others to obey, not for them. If they ever do think about laws, it is only the ones that protect them, not the ones that inhibit them. A mob boss knows his legal rights; he ignores those of others. Psychopaths and sociopaths fall into this category.

Another problem is one you initially see in childhood: people who go by the letter of the law but not its spirit. Laws have a purpose, a desired outcome, for which they are composed but they must be expressed in words and words have limits. Most of us parents have been in the situation where we are on a long drive. The kids are squabbling in the backseat. “He's touching me!” one screams. “Stop touching your sister,” you yell to the miscreant. And so, he obeys the letter of your rule by merely wiggling his fingers mere inches from her face. “I'm not touching you,” he taunts. She screams again. “Stop annoying your sister!” you say, revising your dictum. He retreats to his side of the car and then makes faces at her. She complains again. You tell her to ignore him and you sigh. You son's parsing of the precise words used in your command bode well should he grow up to be a lawyer.

Sadly, it doesn't even matter if the intention of the law is clearly stated. The second amendment to the constitution says, in its entirety, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The first half of that sentence lays out its intention. This applies to a well-regulated militia and the purpose is to maintain the security of a free state. And we know that James Madison proposed this amendment because some citizens were afraid that a standing army in their new nation could be used to oppress the populace. So this allowed states to have volunteer militias to protect their towns, communities or their state. It was not considered an individual right, not even by the Supreme Court, until quite recently. The intention of the law was made quite clear and stated in the first 12 of its 26 words. I sincerely doubt that the founders of our country envisioned our present situation, where there are more guns in the US than there are people, where there are 100 times more firearms in the hands of individuals than in the possession of the military and 400 times more firearms in private hands than law enforcement has, and where just 3% of gun owners possess half of those guns. Are they all in a well-regulated militia and making our states safer? Judging by the 30,000 firearm deaths we suffer each year, you may well sigh.

There is a stated purpose to the laws in the Bible. They are about life. In Leviticus God says, “So you must keep my statutes and my regulations; anyone who does so will live by keeping them.” (Leviticus 18:5, NET) The very first commandment God gives humans is about life: be fruitful and multiply. And it's the only command we have wholeheartedly obeyed! We have multiplied and filled the earth with human life. No slacking on that one.

The next commandment God gives is also about life. God tells the first humans not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or they will die. Without going into it in the depth that I'd like, basically God tells them not to take a shortcut in learning about how to misuse the good gifts he's given them. Yet they do, and that shatters the image of God in them. Thus our relationship with the God who is love is poisoned, as are our relationships with each other, and our relationship with ourselves. Our spiritual life is poisoned. And human arrogance, our attitude of “I know better than anyone else, including God,” continues to poison what we do. And that poison eventually leads to death.

The first covenant or agreement in the Bible God makes is about life. He has just rebooted creation because “The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:11, NET) After the flood, God reiterates to Noah and his offspring the command to be fruitful and multiply. (Genesis 9:1) And just like you do with a toddler, God lays down the law by telling us what to do and what not to do to keep us from harming ourselves or each other. So he explicitly makes murder against the law. And the reason given is that humanity is made in the image of God. (Genesis 9:5-6) Murder is symbolically killing God. As a bearer of his image, however distorted by sin, every person has inherent worth. Yet we still kill each other. And eventually, we do get around to killing God but this time not symbolically.

Jesus summarized the whole law in just two commandments from the Old Testament: love God with all you are and have (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) And indeed the Ten Commandments fall into that pattern. The first 4 are about what to do and not do in loving God and the remaining 6 are about what to do and not do in loving others. And that “what you do to humans you do to God” applies to Jesus, God incarnate. He says, whatever we do or do not do to the poor, the hungry, the sick, the prisoner, or the alien, the least of his siblings, we do or do not do to Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46) We are to make life better for others. In that way, we are serving Jesus.

After the temple was destroyed and they were taken into exile in Babylon, the Jews became serious about obeying God's law. In fact they went overboard and elaborated and added onto the law. They often got so focused on the law they forgot what its purpose was. Jesus took his critics to task on that. Ironically, by the time Martin Luther appeared, the church had done the same thing. It had come up with an elaborate system of laws, many of which were not even found in the Bible. And like the lawyers and Pharisees, they had found loopholes and ways to get around the ones that were inconvenient, even if it meant people would get hurt. Because they too had lost sight of the purpose of the laws.

Luther was brought up in this system and was a creature of it. His problem was he took it seriously. And it was driving him crazy. He couldn't keep 100% of the law 100% of the time. And he thought that God would only accept 100%. He didn't love God. He hated him.

But when Luther was assigned to teach the New Testament, he found in Paul's letters the key to this problem. He found the gospel, the good news that Jesus brought to us and bought for us with his blood. Basically, the good news consisted of a few basic facts.

First, God is loving. God doesn't hate us. He loves us. Enough to die for us in the person of his son Jesus. And like any loving parent, he wants us to grow and become better people. After all, we are created in his image. So he wants us to grow to be more like him, again as seen in Jesus, God expressed in human form. And he lays down laws for our spiritual growth and health.

Second, God is wise. He knows we are going to fall short of our glorious potential. Any parent who believes their child will always obey them, or even always act in their own best interest, is in for a rude awakening. God is a wise parent. That's why he sent Jesus, not only to teach us with words but with his life and to free us from our slavery to sin.

Third, God is gracious. He is favorably disposed towards us. We don't have to earn his favor. In fact doing that to the nth degree 100% of the time would be impossible. But being loving and gracious, God will forgive us and then give us help in living up to our potential.

We just have to trust him on this. Trust is the underlying basis of all relationships. To work with someone there has to be trust. For God to work with us, we have to trust him. Trust is built on one's history and we know we can trust God because of what he has done for us in Jesus. And when we trust him, then he can accomplish what he wants to. He will anoint us with his Spirit to help us become what we were created to be, children of the God who is love.

The problem Luther ran into was the same Jesus and Paul ran into: people so obsessed with the law that they didn't realize the law cannot actually make people good. You can post a speed limit but you cannot make people observe it. The whole 7^th chapter of the book of Romans is Paul explaining how the law not only cannot make you good, strangely enough, it can tempt you to evil. Like the fruit of the tree of good and evil it can open your mind to other ways in which you can act that go against the law. It's like telling a kid not to do something. Suddenly that's all they focus on. Why can't I drink? Why can't I smoke pot? Why can't I have sex with my boyfriend or girlfriend? What other good things are the grownups keeping from us? It's the serpent in Eden's argument all over again.

At best the law acts like a diagnostic tool. It's like saying your fasting blood sugar should be below 100, or your blood pressure should be below 120/80. It's good to know that and to measure yourself against that standard and to shoot for that but by itself that information cannot lower either number. To achieve that there needs to be an internal change.

We need to be reformed, literally, remade into a new form. In our passage from Jeremiah, God says that in his new covenant, he will put his law within his people and write it on their hearts. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus, the author of the new covenant, said to his disciples, “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:15-17) That is how God's law, the expression of what he wants us to be, will get within us. We cannot do it ourselves. We can only do it with God's help and only by letting God come into us and change us.

After my accident I could not heal myself by just living by the rules of healthy living, eating right and getting exercise. I couldn't walk. I needed to trust a surgeon to cut me open, get his hands inside me and fix what was broken and torn. Parts of me had to be replaced. That's what we need to let God do to us: get inside us, fix us and replace what is beyond repair. We need to be remade. Jesus said it was essentially being born again.

When we talk of the Reformation, we think of it as historians do: the reformation of the church. But we are the church. We need to be reformed as individuals or else the body of Christ and the structures and rules we have built up will never be reformed. You can have the best rules and laws in the world but if people don't follow them, nothing will change.

Luther didn't want to start a new church. He wanted to reform the Roman Catholic Church of his day. It wouldn't let him. It excommunicated him. But people had read his writings and wanted change even if they had to go outside the official church. And Luther had to rethink everything he had been taught in the light of the truth of the gospel found in the Bible. And it required him to reimagine what the church should be and could be.

Today the church is again bound by rules and traditions that may have served it well in the past. But the world has changed. All branches of the church are shrinking, at least in the West. Numerous factors have contributed to this but I want to focus on the one that I think is key. Can people see the Spirit of Jesus at work in the church? Do they see the one who welcomed and ate with sinners? Do they see the one who set aside the rules when it meant that otherwise someone wouldn't get healed or helped? Do they see the one who asked disturbing questions of the rich and those in power and those who loudly proclaimed their religious orthodoxy and holiness? Do they see the one would was willing to be condemned by those in authority for speaking the truth? Do they see the one who was willing to give up everything and take up his cross and die to do the right thing and save the world?

We need a new reformation, not of institutions so much as of people. If we let God make us new, from the inside out, it will change the external world. But it has to start somewhere. It has to start with someone. And that someone can be you.

Helpful

The scriptures referred to are 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5.

When I was working as a nurse on a Psych floor, I was in charge of the chalk board in the dining area. Every morning I would write the date and day of the week because each day in a hospital feels the same and that is disorienting to patients. I would also write the weather. I decided to also add some interesting bit of trivia, of which, as everyone knows, I have an endless supply. I became known to the patients as Mr. Trivia. I still love random, odd facts but I also realize that it is more important to have knowledge that is useful. Unfortunately there are some people who get so caught up in all the details found in the 31,000 verses and 66 books of the Bible that they seem to lose track of the useful stuff in there. At the jail, while I have created handouts on the essential beliefs of the faith and the basics of following Jesus, I also have a whole file of Biblical FAQs about such things as the nephilim, Jewish holidays, demons, etc, that I copy and send to inmates asking about such things. I have another group of files about various religions and denominations to send out when I can't find a book that covers what is asked for. And I have recently started a file folder of religious esoterica, to cover such things as New Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, angelology, the Book of Enoch and other things that, while interesting, are not really useful for understanding or for living the faith.

Apparently this obsession with the minutiae of religion is not new. Last week in our reading from 2 Timothy Paul wrote, “warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.” (2 Timothy 2:14) This week he warns of how “people will not endure healthy teachings, but to have their hearing tickled, they will heap on teachers for themselves to suit their own desires, and will turn off their hearing of the truth but turn out to hear myths.” (my own translation) In his letter to Titus, Paul says, “But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.” (Titus 3:9) The word translated “unprofitable” basically means “useless.” And it is the antonym of the word Paul uses in talking about scripture in today's reading. Paul says, (again my translation) “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for persuading, for straightening out again and for training in justness, so that the person of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” The Greek word for “useful” can also mean “helpful.”

Why is that important? Because it means the Bible is not an encyclopedia of random facts about God and related matters. It is meant to help us get closer to God and to follow Jesus. And yet there are people who seem to think that its primary use is as a database for debates. So folks use it as a pretext to argue about evolution, despite the fact that the Bible's composition predates science, and despite the fact that the Bible is not really interested in how things developed physically but in how we are supposed to grow spiritually and morally. Those are practical, not theoretical concerns.

In fact there are precious few texts for those who are wholly devoted to the mystical. Usually you simply have to take a single text and meditate on it. Here's some trivia: the word “heaven” occurs 582 times in scripture but “earth” occurs 987 times, 405 times more often. The Bible is much more focused on how we live now on earth than in how we will live in heaven. I've noticed that people who speculate an awful lot about heaven are like people who always imagine what it's like being rich and successful: their daydreams often substitute for the actions that would actually get them to their goal.

Paul mentions 4 of the ways in which God-breathed scripture helps us. First, it is useful for teaching. So if we are not to get sucked into the black hole of the trivial stuff, what are we to teach? In the Great Commission Jesus sent the disciples into all the world to make disciples, baptizing them and “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18-20) So our priority should be to transmit what Jesus taught. And his teachings were very practical. They were about how we should treat our neighbors, the disadvantaged, even our enemies. He taught us to forgive others as God forgives us. He taught us to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be humble, to be generous, to be wise. Even when when his disciples asked him about the end times, he brought it back to the present: “Blessed is the slave whose master finds him at work when he comes.” (Matthew 24:46) As as some wag put it, “Jesus is coming! Look busy!” Paul writes to Titus about how God's grace teaches us “to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” (Titus 2:12-13, NET, emphasis mine) So much for those who say Christianity is about “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by.”

Secondly, Paul says that God-breathed scripture is useful for persuading. Most translations use the words “rebuking” or “reproof” but the primary meaning of the Greek word is “proof” or “conviction.” So Paul is speaking about using scripture as evidence, which fits in with another possible meaning of the word, “persuasion.” Many people have come to Jesus because they recognized in scripture the ring of truth. What it said resonated with them. When Jesus' taught the 5000 he had fed about the necessity of eating his body and drinking his blood, it turned off a great many of his followers. And he asked the Twelve if they were going to leave, too. And Peter said, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) Because they knew the rest of what he taught was true, they were willing to accept the parts they didn't yet understand. He had persuaded them, and in large part because he was able to back it with scripture. If we don't count the parallel accounts in the gospels, Jesus quoted the Hebrew Bible more than 40 times, citing at least a dozen of its books. The New Testament as a whole quotes the Old more than 300 times, including all but 5 books in the Hebrew Bible. That sounds like trivia but my point is to show how much Jesus and his disciples relied on the scriptures that existed in their time to make their case. So keen are the insights we find in the Bible even secular people quote it as received wisdom, often unwittingly.

Thirdly, Paul tells us that God-breathed scriptures are helpful for "straightening out again." That's the literal meaning, with most translations opting for the word “correction.” But it means returning something to its original state. Ironically, the Bible is particularly vulnerable to distortion. People have used it to justify racism, slavery, misogyny, greed, torture, and murder. They pluck texts out of context and twist the meanings. They ignore or try to explain away bits they don't like. They magnify minor points and diminish major ones. As Jesus put it, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23:23-24) In other words, when using the Bible one needs to be balanced and give matters their proper weight. We shouldn't spend too much of our time and effort on the little things and neglect the larger issues. In theology and in ethics as in art, when you exaggerate certain features of your subject, you get a caricature rather than a true picture, in this case, of God and his message. Knowing scripture well and being able to discern the essence of what God intends to communicate to us is vital to getting things back on track.

It's not hard to see the kind of distortions that have derailed our efforts to spread the gospel. So-called Christian leaders and politicians and celebrities have tried to make the faith all about money and prosperity, or all about sexual issues, or all about opposition to other faiths, or all about political systems or nations. It's not that the Bible doesn't have some things to say about such topics, but that is not the main thrust of its message. For one thing, the competing religions mentioned in the Bible were about sex and human sacrifice and the emperor worship cult that existed back then, not characteristics of major religions today. On the other hand, neither democracy nor today's political parties nor for that matter most modern nations existed 2000 years ago. So we have to be very careful in applying the Bible to anything specific in those areas today. When it comes to matters that still persist, money is mentioned 144 times, riches 182 times, wealth 29, adultery 70 times, fornication 45, and sodomy 5. When we come to what Jesus mentioned in the passage from Matthew when he excoriated the scribes and Pharisees and if we add the issues he said in the parallel passage in Luke, we find that justice is mentioned in the Bible 125 times, judgment 294, mercy 360, faith 356, and love more than 400 times. It's pretty obvious those are what God is mainly focused on, and what our sharing of the gospel should emphasize.

Finally Paul says that God-breathed scripture is helpful for training in justness. I could have gone with the word “righteousness” but it is a churchy word that few understand and many confuse with self-righteousness. But because the Greek word is associated with justice, I opted for justness, or being a just person. So it is not merely about being blameless in personal morality but also in social morality. It is not enough to refrain from things harmful to oneself, you also must not do things that are harmful to others, nor, through inaction, allow them to be harmed. In fact, by taking the near universal Golden Rule of not treating others as we would not like to be treated, and stating it positively, ie, that we should treat others as we would have them treat us (Luke 6:31), Jesus made Christians into activists. We cannot turn a blind eye to injustice or be content with a status quo that condones or allows unnecessary suffering by others. After all, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and Levite who passed by the man beaten and left for dead did not further mistreat him. But it was the Samaritan who went out of his way to give the man the help we all would want if we were in the victim's situation. And that is what we are to emulate. (Luke 10:30-37) Steeping oneself in scripture helps one become a person who loves his neighbor or even his enemy as Jesus tells us to do.

And the purpose of this use of scripture is, as Paul says, is “so that the person of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” Again the Christian is a person with a mission and God doesn't want us either incompletely trained or poorly equipped. In fact, most experts will tell you that the most important part of being prepared is to be mentally equipped. Your knowledge and wisdom and spirit are crucial. You are not going to win over a person to Christ by peppering him with trivia or going down the rabbit hole of debating things like evolution or abortion or homosexuality. What you need to be equipped with is knowledge about Jesus—who he is, what he has done for us and what our response should be. You need to be equipped with the wisdom to know what to say and when to say it and when not to say it. As the book of Proverbs says, “a word at the right time—how good it is!” (Proverbs 15:23)

But the most vital part of being equipped by scripture is to use it in the right spirit. In his extended metaphor of the armor of God, Paul enumerates all these things that protect us: belt, breastplate, shield and helmet. He only lists one weapon: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17) That's why I have been emphasizing the translation “God-breathed.” God expresses himself in the Bible, revealing what he thinks is essential and what is important for us to know and to do. But just as you have to be on the right frequency to get a radio transmission, you have to be tuned into God's Spirit when you study his word to make sure the message you are receiving is not garbled nor that some of the message has dropped out.

As Shakespeare pointed out, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” If we are not careful, our adversaries can grab our weapon and use it against us. They usually do this by quoting verses out of context and without trying to understand the background or the commonly accepted interpretation or even a common sense one. Sometimes it's friendly fire. I recently heard a fundamentalist preacher say that Jesus' prescription for masturbation was to “cut off your hand if it offends you!” Wow! Just wow! I have heard Monty Python quotes used more appropriately than that mangled attempt at hermeneutics. And he is just handing critics of Christianity ammunition. An opponent will divert you onto tempting side issues if they can't counter your main point. We need to stay on message and get it right.

Paul said scripture was to help us be "fully equipped for every good work." And since actions speak louder than words, let us use actions to express the gospel. Jesus said to teach others “to obey everything I have commanded you.” The best way to teach at times is to show, not tell. If I tell you God loves you but do not show that love by helping you when you need it, the words ring hollow. It's even harder to believe the words “I love you” if the speaker is simultaneously kicking you in the ribs. What a person does speaks volumes about who they are and what they believe and what they value, regardless of any words to the contrary.

The Bible is supposed to help us in our mission to spread the gospel and plant the seeds of the kingdom. It is supposed to help us work out how to show our love for God and for other people in various situations. It is supposed to guide us as we follow Jesus. It is supposed to help us become more Christlike. And it is okay to enjoy digging into the details so long as that doesn't hinder or divert us from or contradict those primary uses. Jesus didn't come to start a debating society. He came to found the kingdom of God. He came to call us and to heal us and make us whole and equip us for every good work. We must never get so focused on the written word of God that we forget that Jesus is the living Word of God. He is the focus of the written word. As Luther said, the Bible is like the manger that held the Christ child. It would be stupid to get so caught up in analyzing the workmanship and appropriateness of that feeding trough that one neglects the wonderful, loving person in the center of it. It would be churlish not to respond to the arms reaching out to us. It would be a lost opportunity not to embrace him.

A lot of Christians carry Bibles around with them. That's fine, so long as they don't leave Jesus at home on a shelf. We are called to be Christbearers. We are to carry the living Word of God everywhere and into every situation. The words and the Spirit of Jesus, the light of the world, must so permeate our thoughts, our speech and our actions that we fulfill what he said to his followers: “You are the light of the world...let you light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16) If we let the living Word of God dwell in us, even the illiterate should be able to read his love and even the blind should be be able to see his light.

Get Help

The scriptures referred to are 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c, Psalm 111, and Luke 17:11-19.

In a discussion of vaping on NPR 2 separate callers said that what led them to stop was being “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” As any health professional will tell you, people who are unhealthy rarely change or seek help until the situation becomes unbearable. A man will ignore frequent incidents of chest or left arm or left jaw pain until the day it feels like an elephant is sitting on his chest. Only then will he call the doctor, usually to be told to call 911 because he is probably having a heart attack. This is especially a problem with men. Women will usually go to the doctor for earlier symptoms. Maybe that's why women generally live longer than men and why married men live longer on average than single men. The wives of the married men nag them until they see the doctor for health problems they would ordinarily ignore.

In today's Old Testament lesson it is a woman who gets a man to seek help on his health problem. What the Bible calls leprosy is probably not Hansen's disease, which we call leprosy today. From the descriptions in Leviticus 13-14, leprosy in the Bible seems to include a number of skin conditions, such as psoriasis or fungal infections. And just like today, there was a stigma attached to having a visible and disfiguring disease. Despite this, Naaman was able to rise to the position of commander of the army of the king of Aram, modern day Syria. And ironically it was a prisoner of war, an Israelite woman who became the slave of Naaman's wife, who tells her mistress of the prophet Elisha. And his wife probably nagged Naaman to go seek help.

What our reading skips is the part where Naaman gets permission from his king to go to Israel, a rival state, for a cure. The king of Aram sends a letter to the king of Israel saying, “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.” That's the letter that is so distressing that the king of Israel tears his garments, a sign of mourning or, in this case, agitation. He apparently thinks that he is expected to cure Naaman, who can use his failure as a pretext for war.

Elisha, who is in town, hears of this and tells the king to simply send Naaman to him. But when the army commander arrives, the prophet will not come out to meet him, possibly to avoid ritual contamination. Instead he sends a messenger with instructions. Naaman is incensed by this discourtesy and goes off in a rage. But his servants talk some sense into him. He goes and washes seven times in the river Jordan and is cured.

There are some lessons to be learned here. First, when you need help, get help. This sounds obvious but we often neglect this essential saw initial step. We often wait until it is too late. We tell ourselves, “It's not that bad.” We don't heed the signs and when things get so dire that we have to get help, the situation is much worse and harder to deal with. I once had a woman ask me if it was normal for your nipple to turn black and collapse in on itself! And this from someone who had beat breast cancer before! But her husband had had a major stroke and she had devoted herself to his care rather than get her obviously recurring breast cancer attended to. She knew that the treatments would render her too weak to care for him. But I was his home health nurse and would have made sure they both were taken care of. As it was, first she died and then in 6 months, he did. As they say on every plane flight, when the masks drop down from the overhead compartment, put on yours first, then help the child or elderly person next to you. Otherwise you will both be in trouble.

So when you have a problem, get help. Even if you did nothing to cause it. Because once you realize you have a problem, if you don't seek help, then everything that follows does become your fault. And today there are support groups for just about every problem that exists. Many meet in churches. The church ideally should act as a larger support group. In a world that is spiritually and morally sick, the fact that people are leaving churches rather than seeking them out saddens me. Yes, some churches and some clergy have acted badly but the same goes for some doctors. When they encounter a bad doctor most people don't stop going to doctors; they just look for a good one. If you had a bad experience with a church, find a better one, one that nourishes you spiritually, one that embodies God's love.

The second lesson we learn from our story is be humble and do what the doctor says. In the age of the internet some people want their MD to do what Web MD says to do. While it's vital to be well-informed on your health, Dr. Google doesn't know you as well as your doctor hopefully does. Your doctor's experience may have taught him things that a general article on the subject written for the average person might not have. And he may know that the medicine or treatment you see hyped on the web is not the magic cure-all it says it is. Right now medical marijuana is being heralded as a panacea. But so far the science says it is beneficial in just 4 specific medical conditions. Like any drug, it has side effects and it doesn't work on all people. And until we have standard strengths and dosages, you should be cautious in using it for anything based merely on anecdotal evidence. And, yes, it can be addictive. Anything that makes you feel good can be addictive. Or are we on our smartphones all the time because we are fervently researching ways to make the world better?

In our reading from 2 Kings, instead of the method of cure Naaman expected, Elisha tells him to wash himself 7 times in the river Jordan. Naaman fumes because, after all, the rivers back home are much nicer than this foreign one. He, an impressive man, wanted an impressive ceremony for his healing. Perhaps Elisha knew that Naaman had to be taken down a peg or two. So he needed to be humble and do what the healer told him to do, not what he'd rather do. Humility was not considered a virtue in the pagan world. It still isn't very popular. Yet it says in Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

God can't help you if you think you know better than he does or if you act as his rival rather than his subject. When we come to God, we should not presume to tell him how to handle a situation. We may want grand miracles, whereas he may prescribe something less showy. Jesus refused to do spectacular miracles just to please the crowds and his critics. Jesus spat in mud and rubbed it on a blind man's eyes to cure him. Often he healed with just a word. In today's gospel Jesus just tells the lepers to go see a priest. On the way they are healed without Jesus saying anything more. Jesus didn't want people to think he was doing magic, relying on special rituals or incantations to heal. The power came from God, who couldn't be compelled to do things by certain words or rituals. God did them out of his gracious will.

And similarly Elisha didn't want Naaman to think the power was in the words or the gestures or even in the prophet himself. By doing something as mundane as washing in an ordinary river—in other words, by simply obeying God's word—Naaman would discover that his healing could only be attributed to God.

Our Old Testament passage cuts off before Naaman can show his gratitude by offering the prophet a gift. Elisha refuses. Again it was God who healed Naaman. Elisha will not take credit. In the gospel, one leper, upon realizing he has been healed, returns to Jesus to thank him. Jesus sees this as the man giving "praise to God." Jesus often tried to dissuade people from making a fuss over him but to tell people what God has done for them. So our third lesson is to give credit where it is due and give thanks to God.

These are really simple lessons but the world needs to learn them. Everywhere we see people with obvious problems who don't seek help. We see arrogant people who don't listen to those who know better. We see people who hog the credit and don't thank God. We all need to recognize that we are not perfect. We have problems and we need help. We need to be humble, not proud. We need to seek wisdom, not pretend we have all the answers. As it says in Isaiah 5:21, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” Our psalm says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And by fear we mean a healthy respect for our Creator, and an acknowledgment that not we but he is in control. As the psalm says, we need to read and study and obey his words. And we need to be grateful to him for what we have. There are people who have power and riches, as Naaman had, but not wellbeing. They may seem to have everything but they don't have peace. Only God can give that.

One last lesson: listen to those who love you. If Naaman hadn't listened to his wife, and later to his servants, he wouldn't have been healed and he wouldn't have found God. Your loved ones on on your side and if they say you have a problem and need help, believe them. And don't dismiss the advice of someone just because they aren't powerful. This whole process gets started because a woman, a slave, a prisoner of war, tells her mistress where her husband can find help. God was working through that humble slave. Don't despise sound wisdom from surprising sources. God can use anyone. Even you.

Get Help. Follow expert advice. Be humble. Give thanks. And tell everyone what God has done for you.

Garden

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 1, 2, and 6.

I was listening to an interview with Antonio Banderas and he was talking about how he began his career after the death of Francisco Franco and his oppressive rule of Spain. There was a new freedom in the arts to explore things that had been suppressed. So when Banderas started making films in Hollywood, he was surprised by an odd contradiction in the Land of the Free. Certain depictions of sex were controversial in mainstream movies, as he discovered playing Tom Hanks' lover in the Oscar-winning Philadelphia. However, violence of any kind was permitted.

Actually there is one kind of violence that you rarely see depicted in our movies and fiction: violence against animals. I was struck by this when reading a James Bond novel (not one of Ian Fleming's). Bond is breaking into the bad guy's lair when he is confronted by two vicious guard dogs. Were they human guards, 007 would have shot or garroted them or snapped their necks. Instead he uses a weapon that shoots a sleeping gas to harmlessly knock out the dogs! This idea that henchmen are fair play but animals are not is also on display in the first Johnny English film. In this parody of the superspy genre, Rowan Atkinson's wannabe secret agent similarly faces two snarling Dobermen as he assaults the villain's headquarters. But in his case, he pulls out two steaks, throws them in opposite directions for the dogs to go after and is thus freed from having to subdue them physically.

Science has confirmed that our empathy for animals is higher than for humans, or at least, for grown humans. When subjects in an experiment were given fictitious newspaper accounts about an attack with a baseball bat, those in which the victim was an adult elicited less empathy than if the victim were, from most empathy to least, an infant, naturally, but then a puppy, and next a 6 year old dog. Age only made a difference in empathy for humans, but not for dogs. The researchers thought it was the relative helplessness of the victim that caused the disparity.

In the Bible, King David reacted strongly to a parable involving the death of a lamb (2 Samuel 12:1-5) and one of the reasons God gave for wanting Nineveh spared from judgment was his concern for the domestic animals there (Jonah 4:11). And why not? They are part of his creation and he pronounced them good. In fact in Genesis 2, seeing that man should not be alone, God creates all the animals and brings them to the man as potential companions, before he creates Eve. (Genesis 2:18-20)

Unfortunately some people have seized upon a different part of the creation accounts and used it as justification to do whatever they want with our fellow inhabitants of this earth. “And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.' And God created man in His image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth.'” (Genesis 1:26-28, JPS)

“Rule” and “master”: the language used sounds like God is giving us absolute power over the earth and all life. But it also says that humanity is created in God's image and God is shown here to be creative and appreciative towards all he made. So God cannot be saying, “Destroy and harm what I have made.” In fact, the reason given for the great flood is “The earth was ruined in God's sight and the earth was full of violence.” (Genesis 6:11) So, no, God is not turning the earth over to mankind and saying “Anything goes.” Going back to the creation accounts, it becomes obvious that man was supposed to be the gardener in the Garden of Eden. (Genesis 2:5) We're in charge in so far as we are stewards of this planet. God is the final authority.

The news is full of changes in the natural world. The polar ice is melting and thus so is the habitat of polar bears. The fires in the Amazon are destroying the habitat of 400 mammal, 300 reptile, 400 amphibian and 3000 fish species, fully a tenth of all the known species in the world. The number of birds in North America has declined by 3 billion, almost a third of what we used to have. Many scientists are worried that we are triggering the 6^th mass extinction in history. We are allowing in real life what we almost never permit in movies: the suffering and killing of animals.

So if we are charged with taking care of this world for God, and we have an inbuilt empathy for our fellow creatures, I have to ask this question. Are we doing all we can?

Let me tell you what the Keys Deanery is doing. We are challenging the Episcopal churches in this diocese to do something concrete to fight our climate crisis, something in line with being God's gardeners. In 2018, the world produced an estimated 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide, one of the primary greenhouse gases. That's the equivalent of 6 semi-trucks full of coal per person on earth. And, as we know, trees absorb and use carbon dioxide to grow. In fact, according to engineer Yatit Thakker, whose work I am using for reference [here], a 2 ton tree can remove 7 tons of carbon dioxide a year. He figures it would take 5 billion trees to handle our current emissions. Of course, those emissions will continue to grow at the present rate and so he proposes every person plant a tree per year for every year they have lived and will live.

That's not going to happen. But if everyone of the 2.2 billion people in the world who claim to be Christians planted just 2 trees a year, that would just about do it. It's unlikely that everyone would. But the movement has to start somewhere. The Deanery of the Keys has introduced a resolution to our Convention this month challenging every church to plant 500 trees per year for the next 10 years. That would be 380,000 trees. Now we can't plant them all on our church properties but we don't have to. We can use charities like the National Forest Foundation, which will plant one native tree for every dollar you donate. [here] Or Trees for the Future which provides seeds and tools for families in sub-Saharan Africa to plant trees. [here] Both of these non-profits are rated highly by Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities on their transparency and how much of their donations actually go to the works they promote.

Our resolution may or may not be accepted. The number of the trees daunts some churches. But we live in the Keys, a chain of islands that may be underwater in the next 100 years if we don't start doing serious work now on reducing global temperatures. And so in our convocation this week, the representatives of the Keys churches have determined to do it regardless if it passes. And we hope that the example of our 5 churches in the smallest deanery in the diocese will inspire others. After all Jesus started with just 12 ordinary people and look what they managed to do.

God created the world and pronounced it good. He created animals as our companions. He created us, endowed us with intelligence, reason and skills and put us in charge of caring for his creation, to care for it as gardeners do. He can't be happy to see the gardeners have dug up great swaths of the garden looking for riches, or set millions of acres on fire to clear the land, or polluted the waters with industrial waste, sickening and killing animals as well as our fellow humans. We are made in God's image and scripture tells us God is love. (1 John 4:8) That love extends to all he has created. St. Francis knew that. And he reflected that love not only with his lips but with his life. And we can as well.