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(2 Kings 5:l-l4)
When someone reverses his role we are often caught off guard. The reversal of roles gives us surprise often mixed with amusement or skepticism or insight.
Senator John McCain surprised a lot of people last week when his upset win over George Bush in the New Hampshire primary abruptly reversed his role from underdog to the candidate to beat for the republican nomination for U.S. president. As we have seen, magazine covers love role reversals.
Jorg Haider, the leader of the rightwing Freedom Party of Austria, went from endorsing Hitler's employment policies and Waffen SS soldiers as honorable to endorsing compensation for those forced into slave labor by Nazism. This abrupt role reversal produced mainly skepticism. It takes more than one speech convince us that the leopard can change its stripes.
Sometimes role reversal leads to total shock and incomprehension. Dr. Harold Fredrick Shipman, a 54 year old bespectacled family doctor, had become well liked in Hyde, near Manchester, England, where he practised private medicine for 20 years, often making house calls on the sick. Everyone was just plain shocked to learn that he had murdered at least l5 of his elderly women patients with no apparent motive whatever. The shock is enough not only to put folks off Dr. Shipman for life but to make them suspicious of all doctors who work on their own with twinkling eyes.
Sometimes whole groups of persons change roles quickly and have to deal with their personal surprise. A news story this week reported that Silicon Valley psychiatrists have identified a new illness that affects the new millionaires who earn their money through the Internet. It's called the SUDDEN WEALTH SYNDROME and it produces a deep identify crisis, anxiety, guilt and dysfunction, the psychologists said.
Today in our Old Testament story we see several role reversals. Let's see if we are going to be surprised by them and what we can learn as we look at them.
The political setting of the story of General Naaman is itself a role reversal for us because we are used to Syria and Israel being eternally in a state of war as they have been ever since the founding of Israel a half century ago. It may be a surprise to learn that about 2800 years ago the same two political states were in a state of peace. Syria was the superior power but Syria needed peace with Israel because both nations were threatened by a rising power to the north in what is today modern Turkey.
Naaman was the five star commander in chief of the Syrian armies. Powerful though he was, he was afflicted with what was at that time, and for a thousand years afterward right down to Jesus' time, the most dreaded disease of humanity - leprosy. Despite his control of armies there was nothing he could do to stop the spread of his affliction. Power like fame and wealth are no guarantees that roles will not be reversed and adversely so. The health and mental deterioration of former President Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer disease is a vivid reminder of the sad fact that the powerful may fall.
One day his wife said: "Naaman, you remember Rebecca, that little girl you captured as a slave who bathes me in oil and makes me smell good for you. She tells me there is a prophet in her home nation of Israel. This prophet is named Elisha and he can cure someone of leprosy. Why not try him?"
"What! Me, the commanding general of Syria, go off to tiny Israel to see a minor prophet there? I've tried all the doctors and magicians we have in Syria." But when you're desperate enough, you often compromise your role, especially, if like Naaman, you then dream about the prophet and a cure.
So Naaman tells his own king of Syria about his forthcoming trip. He needs no appointment and just strides in upon the king and lays down his situation. "Yes, you can go to Israel, and I'll give you a letter of introduction to the king of Israel and some very fine presents to convey to him."
And off Naaman went on the best transport of that day - a caravan of chariots each chariot driven by eight fine horses - with military aides and servants and a cartload of goodies.
Upon arrival in Israel Naaman went right to the king and presented his diplomatic introduction. This abrupt visitor upset the king of Israel who did not welcome an obligation to cure a powerful general of Israel's powerful neighbor.
The king pitched a tantrum, marching around the throne room, tearing at his clothes and crying out, "Cure this man of leprosy!"
Then Elisha comes into the picture, the prophet about whom Naaman had heard from the little Jewish girl in his house. Dealing with the king of Israel had not brought him healing though we tend to believe that the traditional sources of power and wealth and prestige will have all the answers.
From the royal palace Naaman headed for the humble cottage of the prophet. It must have been an impressive show as the Syrian chariots roared into the village and came to a halt in a cloud of dust before Elisha's cottage. And there Naaman waited - expecting the prophet to be overawed by his distinguished guest and to come out bowing and scraping. And Naaman waited and waited, honking the chariot horn I suppose with long, impatient blasts.
Finally, instead of Elisha appearing, the door opens and the houseboy comes out. "Who does this prophet think he is? I just came from the palace of two kings and this lowly prophet greets me with this servant. What message do you bring me, boy?"
"Go wash in the Jordan seven times!"
"What! Me go bathe in your puny little local, muddy stream when I've got beautiful clear rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris back in Damascus. Anyway, if I needed a bath, I'd use one of l6 bathrooms in my own house!"
So Naaman rode off in raging anger, ready to go home where at least his role would be respected. Fortunately his servants were wiser than he: "If the prophet had said to do something difficult, you would have tried that. Why not try something so simple as washing in the Jordan? You've come this far by listening to a housemaid. Why not listen to the house boy?"
So off to the Jordan Naaman went and dipped himself, once, then twice, and finally seven times into its water. And, lo, he came up cleansed, cured of his affliction with skin as healthy as that of a youth.
Role reversals can produce humor as in some of these scenes. Are there some further surprises and insights?
Though full of bluster with his self-importance, Naaman listened and he learned. He modified his role of macho power to listen to his wife, to a servant girl, to a house boy, and to his personal attendants. It is so difficult for powerful persons, and powerful organisations, to listen to the weaker, more puny voices around them.
My own mighty nation of the United States has refused to listen to tiny Cuba on its doorstep for forty years. So much bluster because a powerful nation chooses not to listen to a weaker one, because to do so would require revisiting the history of the two countries.
The mighty government of China refuses to listen to the Falun Gong practitioners. I would guess the reason is that the rulers do not want to acknowledge their inability to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people and refuse to acknowledge that any inspiration apart from Marxism may have a better go at filling the void.
Too much role reversal in each case! It is painful for the powerful to assume the role of the humble and to listen to what those who are weaker may be able to tell them. How about you? Are you refusing to reverse or at least suspend your preferred role - be it social, religious, economic - long enough to be open and accessible to someone other and apart from you may have an important word of truth for you?
Our Gospel incident from Mark l can be linked to today's Old Testament because Jesus, centuries after Naaman, is dealing with the same affliction of leprosy. In this case both Jesus and the leper reverse roles. Chapter l2 and l3 of the Old Testament book of Leviticus lays down the most rigid and narrow guidelines for dealing with lepers and both Jesus and the leper ignore those rules. As a rabbi Jesus should not have gone near the leper; and the leper should never have gone near Jesus.
By the by, the rigid rules in Leviticus segregating lepers should not be read as callousness toward the ill. They were rigid and narrow principally to protect the healthy. Until recent times even in the most progressive societies persons with leprosy were segregated in colonies and folks with tuberculosis were quarantined in special hospitals and homes, in both practices to show concern for the well being of those not afflicted with these diseases.
Jesus took a risk in touching the leper because that action could have been seen as contaminating his whole ministry. Why sacrifice everything with this hands-on healing? Whatever his motives, Jesus was not hung up on acting out the roles of the conventional rabbi. It is an axiom that only very strong persons are comfortable in trying on new roles; and the opposite is also true that ery weak persons can willy nilly abandon whoever they are to assume new roles: in extreme clinical cases that's called schizophrenia.
Jesus was a strong person, the source of the Apostle Paul's ambition to be all things to all persons. Jesus could assume many, seemingly opposite roles, because at his core he knew exactly who he was.
The end of Naaman's story links his story with the later healing in Mark. At verse l5 of 2 Kings 5, which is not part of today's lectionary reading, we learn this: THEN NAAMAN RETURNED TO THE MAN OF GOD (Elisha), 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.'"
Indeed, Naaman learned much from his experience. We can't be certain that his several role reversals added up to a fundamental change in his character, outlook and conduct, but the story points that direction because at the end he acknowledged the one true God as the source of his healing, of his role reversal.
And the leper who was treated by Jesus gained exuberant confidence to the extent that he immediately began telling everyone about Jesus even though Jesus had asked him to keep it all quiet.
Both lepers gained a much deeper insight as to who they were.
The latest film by the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar is called ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Todo Sobre Mi Madre.) It has already won many awards and seems destined to be Oscar winner next month as best non-American film of l999. The film is about role reversals of a rather colorful, even notorious kind - transvestites in modern Spain. The phenomenon of transvestites, men needing to dress as women and vice versa, has always both scandalised and fascinated straight society.
Almodovar goes a bit further in the role reversals by telling the story of two transvestites who break their conventional mold in that they are thoroughly masculine in their character even as they act out their feminine side in wardrobe choice and body makeover and facial make up. These radical role reversals within role reversals have touched straight audiences with unexpected insights and sympathies.
Sometimes the more extreme or opposite the role reversals, the more profound the learning. Adults can learn from children. Men learn from women. The strong learn from the weak. The well learn from the sick. The rational learn from the mystical. Majorities can learn from minorities. Straights can learn from gays. Orthodox can learn from non-conventional thinkers. The powerful, whether nations or individuals, can learn from the weak, whether weak nations or dispossessed persons. And all may learn from the divine who is the source both of our unities and our diversities and the ground from which all integrity and healing flows.
Sometimes what we gain from role reversal may be in the first blush only amusement. Many of us are waiting with bemusement as to what will ensue once President Clinton is retired from the White House and in the case that his wife is elected to the US Senate. That could be an entertaining role reversal.
Sometimes we only have an original opinion re-enforced as we see a role reversal. No matter what Herr Jorg Haider may say his critics will continue to suspect he is a latent new Hitler.
Sometimes the experience of role reversal visits us with a new insight, sympathy or softness which is often the case when we are touched by beauty or truth.
And sometimes the role reversal leads to new life as with Naaman and the Galilean leper of the Gospel of Mark. And that is what we call salvation. And that is pretty radical and the most exciting role reversal of all.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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