WEATHER ALERT:

Due to weather conditions, all in-person daytime and evening programs have been canceled across the church’s locations for Wednesday, except for the Recovery programs and Food Pantry at Overland Park. Decisions for Thursday daytime programs will correspond with local school district decisions and will be posted on the church’s website.

IMPORTANT:

Scheduled programming has resumed for Thursday, February 13 at all Resurrection locations.

God's Inclusive Love Made People Angry

January 22, 2025
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Daily Scripture

2 Kings 5:1-14, Luke 4:23-28

2 Kings 5
1 Naaman, a general for the king of Aram, was a great man and highly regarded by his master, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. This man was a mighty warrior, but he had a skin disease [traditionally leprosy, a kind of scale skin disease]. 2 Now Aramean raiding parties had gone out and captured a young girl from the land of Israel. She served Naaman’s wife.
3 She said to her mistress, “I wish that my master could come before the prophet who lives in Samaria. He would cure him of his skin disease.” 4 So Naaman went and told his master what the young girl from the land of Israel had said.
5 Then Aram’s king said, “Go ahead. I will send a letter to Israel’s king.”
So Naaman left. He took along ten kikkars of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. 6 He brought the letter to Israel’s king. It read, “Along with this letter I’m sending you my servant Naaman so you can cure him of his skin disease.”
7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he ripped his clothes. He said, “What? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this king writes me, asking me to cure someone of his skin disease! You must realize that he wants to start a fight with me.”
8 When Elisha the man of God heard that Israel’s king had ripped his clothes, he sent word to the king: “Why did you rip your clothes? Let the man come to me. Then he’ll know that there’s a prophet in Israel.”
9 Naaman arrived with his horses and chariots. He stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent out a messenger who said, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored and become clean.”
11 But Naaman went away in anger. He said, “I thought for sure that he’d come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the bad spot, and cure the skin disease. 12 Aren’t the rivers in Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all Israel’s waters? Couldn’t I wash in them and get clean?” So he turned away and proceeded to leave in anger.
13 Naaman’s servants came up to him and spoke to him: “Our father, if the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? All he said to you was, ‘Wash and become clean.’” 14 So Naaman went down and bathed in the Jordan seven times, just as the man of God had said. His skin was restored like that of a young boy, and he became clean.

Luke 4
23 Then Jesus said to them, “Undoubtedly, you will quote this saying to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we’ve heard you did in Capernaum.’” 24 He said, “I assure you that no prophet is welcome in the prophet’s hometown. 25 And I can assure you that there were many widows in Israel during Elijah’s time, when it didn’t rain for three and a half years and there was a great food shortage in the land. 26 Yet Elijah was sent to none of them but only to a widow in the city of Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 There were also many persons with skin diseases in Israel during the time of the prophet Elisha, but none of them were cleansed. Instead, Naaman the Syrian was cleansed.”
28 When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with anger.

Daily Reflection & Prayer

Today’s readings highlight God’s healing love crossing human boundaries. In 2 Kings, Naaman was a powerful foreign commander with a skin disease who found healing through Israel’s God. In Luke, Jesus reminded people in his hometown synagogue about this story, pointing out that God’s healing reached beyond Israel to help a Syrian. What angered Jesus’ listeners? “Israel’s God was rescuing the wrong people.” * Jesus was the God with a heart for healing and reaching all people, whatever their background.

  • Naaman almost missed his healing because he expected something more dramatic than simply washing in the Jordan River. Pride and preconceptions about how God should work nearly kept him from receiving what he needed. When have your own expectations or assumptions created barriers between you and what God offers?
  • Jesus used Naaman’s story to challenge his listeners’ belief that God’s favor belonged exclusively to them. This truth made them so angry they tried to harm Jesus. What makes it difficult for you to accept that God might be working through people in ways you didn’t expect, or for people you dislike or consider unworthy of God’s love and help?
Prayer

Lord Jesus, shape me into a person whose heart breaks for what breaks your heart. Keep me from anger when your love and healing extend to people outside my natural affections. Amen.

GPS Insights

Picture of Lindsey Arnold Seevers

Lindsey Arnold Seevers

Lindsey Arnold Seevers served on the Mission Ministries team and her Overland Park location colleagues to equip people to serve in Kansas City (and beyond!) through training and hands-on experiences. She also works closely with Hunger Ministry volunteers to help #FeedKC. She has moved on from the Resurrection staff but wrote this thought-provoking blog post for us in March of 2022.

 

I wonder if I could write a GPS so full of the good news that you might want to throw me off a cliff?

I’m writing today’s GPS Insight from the “welcome room” at the Resurrection Overland Park Food Pantry. We’re in-between the morning and afternoon appointments, so it’s pretty quiet in here, but down the hall, I can hear our volunteers chatting and laughing as they restock the shelves. It’s the perfect place to contemplate what Jesus meant by “preaching good news to the poor.”

You can’t eat a kind word or a smile.
A pocket New Testament might be comforting, but it won’t fill a growling little belly.
I can give a sermon to end all sermons but who wants to listen to that when they are sleeping in their car tonight?

The good news is that God is abundant beyond our imagination, constantly breaking through the artificial boundaries we draw between each other and around the Divine.

The good news is that, like Jesus, we are called into relationship with one another and especially with those on the margins, those who are experiencing oppression.

The good news is that because some of us have been lucked into an abundance of time, money, and other resources, we can share that abundance with others. A very real, tangible example of God’s love.

But (and here’s, maybe, the cliff throwing part

Preaching the good news to the poor asks those of us who are comfortable to get uncomfortable.

To give, and then give again.

To fight injustice and challenge the systems that oppress and keep people in a cycle of poverty.

To reconsider how we prioritize things in our lives.

To ignore the responses of those who roll their eyes or scoff at our giving, and our calling to something more.

I’m grateful for the quiet break in the day, but I’m ready to meet God’s children this afternoon and share with them the ABUNDANCE of good news (and the broccoli, and the cereal, and the mac ‘n cheese, and the diapers…).

© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References

* N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (New Testament for Everyone Book 4) (pp. 47-48). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.