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2 Kings 5:1-14
Proper 9C
How status works: The kings in this story set up a stark distinction. First, the narrator highlights the king of Aram’s many and great military victories. Ordinarily, this is an ancient near-eastern literary device to demonstrate, according to the CEB Study Bible “that a country’s gods were able to give victory to their people in…
2 Kings 5:1-14
Proper 9C
Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached a sermon on this text from 2 Kings 5, and I’m grateful to Richard Lischer for calling attention to it in a lecture he gave while working on his book The Preacher King. In the classic style of preaching that Dr. King so well embodied, he picked up on…
2 Kings 5:1-14
Proper 9C
This story has more interesting characters than a novel by Charles Dickens—stormin’ Naaman, commander of the Syrian army, this brave little girl kidnapped from Israel and enslaved, the clueless King of Israel, the greedy Gehazi, and, of course, the unflappable prophet Elisha. It’s a seemingly straightforward story about a little girl, a muddy river, and…
2 Kings 5:1-14
Proper 9C
Nearly everyone needs some kind of healing. It may be from physical or mental illness. Or perhaps it’s from haunted memories or grief. Yet while God’s people know to look to God for that healing, we don’t always get to choose its method. So we may not always particularly like the way God chooses to…
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