Jarrett McLaughlin
Grounded: Hold Your Ground
October 6, 2024
2 Kings 5:9-19
Cold Open:
Dennis Byrd played defensive end for the New York Jets.
Dennis Byrd may be most known for the paralyzing, career-ending injury he suffered after colliding with one of his own teammates, or perhaps how he did make an incredible recovery – not to where he ever played again, but that he was able to walk again was nothing short of a miracle.
Today, however, I bring up Byrd for a different reason.
When he traveled with the team, Dennis always packed a small leather bag that his dad had given him as a gift.
Before he left for his first training camp, Byrd filled the bag with Oklahoma dirt from his backyard.
In that backyard was a wooden post dug into the ground and he spent hours ramming his frame into it again and again, dripping his own blood and sweat into the soil below.
That red, red dirt was what he carried in that bag.
When his teammates asked him “What’s with the bag?”
Byrd would say, “It’s my roots. It’s where I’ve been. It’s who I am.”
Each time he played on a new NFL field, Byrd would untie the bag and sprinkle some dirt into his palm. Then, running onto the field, he’d open his fingers and let the soil fall onto the grass.
“Anaheim. Seattle. Pittsburg. Houston. Denver. Chicago. Cleveland. Artificial turf or natural grass, everyone of those stadiums has some Oklahoma dirt on it. ”
Sometimes you need to carry some dirt with you.
Sometimes you need to hold your ground.
It’s your roots, where you’ve been, who you are.
Our reading today comes from 2 Kings, chapter 5. Here we meet a Syrian General named Naaman who had contracted leprosy; a career-ending disease.
Though he had recently defeated the Israelites, a slave girl captured in his conquest tells him of a prophet in Israel with healing in his hands. Naaman comes to the prophet Elisha, hat in hand, seeking a miracle.
Before our reading, let us pray:
In the reading of your word, remind us of our true home. Amen.
Scripture:
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”
But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!
Are not…the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage.
But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, 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’?”
So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.”
But [Elisha] said, “As the Lord lives I will accept nothing!” He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord.
But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.”
[Elisha] said to him, “Go in peace.”
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Sermon:
As the summer waned and my sabbatical time with it, I made one last trip – this time to Maine.
Up near Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park there’s a small island – an island that can only be reached by boat. There’s a tiny church there and any preacher who wishes to lead worship can use the parsonage. It’s called the Isle au Haut and it hosts a whopping 55 year-round residents – with maybe triple that number in the summer.
I traveled there with my friend Wes who is a teacher in Boston. Our second night on the island we went to this trivia night hosted right across the street from the parsonage – it was outdoors in August with temperatures in the mid-60s – just perfect.
Wes decided to have a little fun with me being the preacher for the week and so named our trivia team the Jehovah’s Waitresses. We got some laughs when they ran down each team name and their score, but no amount of humor would save us from placing dead last.
(in our defense – of the four rounds we played, one was trivia about the state of Maine… and another was recognizing door knobs on the island itself – to say we were at a disadvantage is an understatement).
About halfway through the game, the young woman who was tallying scores could be overheard saying “Wait…I think that guy taught my history class in high school…Mr. Goldsberry – is that you?” On a remote island with 55 year-round residents, Wes somehow knew one of them.
They had crossed paths at a New Hampshire boarding school.
After our defeat was complete in trivia, we talked with Abigail and she said “I loved living in New Hampshire. After graduating, I went to the University of Texas and I loved it in Austin – but I grew up on Isle au Haut as did my fiancé and we both agreed – there’s just something about this place that kept drawing us back. There’s nowhere else like it. It’s home.”
Have you ever loved a place so much that you couldn’t live without it?
Is there some patch of dirt so sacred that you carry it with you wherever you go?
That’s an emotional question for me this week.
Montreat has been such a place for me.
I’ve been going there since I was 11 years old.
Those two and a half square miles hold some of my most transformative memories.
It’s where I’ve laughed the hardest I’ve ever laughed.
I’ve cried there and experienced transformative connection with God and with others.
I can say that I would not be standing in this pulpit were it not for the experiences that Montreat housed for me.
And so, yes, I love that patch of dirt.
I love the trees, the creek and the smoothed stones.
I love the mountain laurel and galax and the heart-shaped stump on the path up to Lookout mountain. That ground is more valuable than silver or gold.
So after the flood waters ripped right through Montreat, this is a very emotional question to consider, indeed.
But I think it is a crucial question if we are to understand our encounter with Naaman in the text this morning.
Naaman is a bigshot. He’s a successful general who conquered Israel.
It would be normal for him to have some disregard for his vanquished foes.
In fact, that condescension shines through when he rides all that way to see Elisha and yet the prophet doesn’t exactly give him the VIP treatment. Elisha doesn’t even grant him the courtesy of a face to face meeting. Instead he sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan 7 times. That really makes Naaman angry.
Thankfully a cooler-headed servant prevails – “it’s easy-enough…just get in the river and see what happens.” And wouldn’t you know – he’s not only healed. This war-wounded general, doubtlessly covered with scars and a story for each one, he is said to come out of the Jordan river with skin “like that of a young boy.”
Who he has been is gone – washed away.
He is utterly transformed.
And if there’s any doubt whether he has in fact changed – this foreign general who worships idols returns to Elisha and makes a bold declaration of faith: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
But in case we suspect him of only paying lip service – pay attention to what he does with the treasure he brought with him.
He insists that Elisha accept a gift – silver, perhaps even gold. Elisha refuses. But Naaman then begs Elisha for a gift – he asks for two cart-loads of Israelite soil.
I like to imagine Naaman telling his servants, “Lose the silver. Dump the gold. I need this dirt.” That’s how valuable the land is to him – it has become his roots; where he’s been; who he is.
In holding onto this ground, he is holding onto himself.
I see people do this all the time.
A shell from this or that beach.
A smooth river stone from some mountain stream.
We hold on to some tiny bit of ground that has become holy to us.
It’s how we hold on to an important part of our selves.
I remember going on this Confirmation retreat years ago with a bunch of 8th graders.
We were at this camp and we just had the best time together with some amazing conversations and then it was time to go.
I was driving half a dozen of them in my van and we saw where a tree had fallen and been cut into cross pieces.
I half-joking said “Hey Zach – go get one of those giant pieces of tree to take back as a reminder of this weekend.”
His face jerked forward and appeared over my shoulder: “SERIOUSLY?!?” he said.
I said “Uh…sure, why not.”
I opened the door, he and Clark retrieved it and we had all the Confirmands sign it and it sat in my office for a couple years. The plan was to burn it when they graduated high school but the Property Elder worried it might have termites and so made me throw it away.
All to say – as humans we attach ourselves to the land that has shaped us.
We carry back pieces of it so that we never forget.
We literally hold our ground because it is so very hard to remember our roots, where we come from, who we are.
It’s no different for Naaman – he is transformed, and that means he has a new problem.
Gone are the days of lamenting his skin disease.
Now comes the real challenge:
How do I go back home and live the same, old life now that I’m a completely different person?
The text ends with this odd exchange between Naaman and Elisha.
You almost get the sense Naaman is rambling in front of the prophet, as if he knows there’s something about his former life that will not pass the sniff test. Allow me to re-read that section with a bit more nuance.
“But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.”
Could the brother say ‘House of Rimmon’ one more time in a single sentence?
Naaman hasn’t even left yet, but clearly he’s nervous about life in the House of Rimmon.
And perhaps he should be.
Technically, it’s a place of worship for a Syrian deity he no longer believes in, but the House of Rimmon is really anywhere we are tempted to forsake who we truly are; the place where we are asked to compromise our deepest held values; the space where we are encouraged to forget about yesterday’s transformation and get back to life-as-usual.
That isn’t unique to big-shot generals like Naaman.
You, me – we all live our lives torn between who we truly are and who the world wants us to be.
Which means we all live in the House of Rimmon.
We have no choice – there’s no other place to live.
I suspect the prophet Elisha understood that, because his answer is as cagey as they come. He simply says to Naaman “go in peace.”
He doesn’t condone the House of Rimmon.
He doesn’t write Naaman a blank check and say “You know what, you’ve had this transformative experience but you just tuck that deep down in your heart – it doesn’t need to show up in your daily life. You just go back to being that big-shot general that you always have been.”
Elisha doesn’t say that – nor does he condemn Naaman for going back into the house of Rimmon. There really is no other place to live out this new-found faith of his – so instead he simply offers him a blessing –
“go in peace.”
Every week as worship concludes we offer a benediction – a blessing – over us all.
We offer a blessing because we know full well that all of us are headed back into the House of Rimmon. We are charged to live out the Gospel in a world that is not shaped by the Gospel.
If we are to remain grounded – if we are to be true to our truest, transformed self – we better carry some dirt with us.
a symbol of where we’ve been;
a reminder of who we are and the faith that lives within us.
Holding our ground becomes an act of courage.
May we always hold our ground courageously and may we also go in peace.