The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9), July 6, 2025 ~ Russ Dean

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with
his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty
warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl
captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only
my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So
Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king
of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with
him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the
letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to
you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read the
letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to
me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a
message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn
that there is a prophet in Israel." 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
Abana and Pharpar, 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.
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should
restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear
one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are
nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then
that work, rather than their neighbor's work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry
their own loads. Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own
flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal
life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest
time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good
of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. See what large letters I make when I am
writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to
compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so
that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who
will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From now on,
let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body. May the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.
Commentary
The Hebrew text is a master class in humility – and we find a strong reflection of the biblical call
to humility in the letter to the Galatians, “if those who are nothing think they are something, they
deceive themselves.” Namaan is the commander of the army of the king of Aram (modern Syria).
He has just defeated the army of Israel. (The nation of Israel, which was first unified under King
David, was divided after the reign of his son, King Solomon. The Northern kingdom became
known as Israel, whose capital was Samaria. [Samaria was both a city and a region.] The
southern kingdom was Judah, whose capital was Jerusalem.)
The first element of humility is Israel’s defeat by a foreign power. Choon-Leong Seow
comments in the New Interpreter’s Bible that this defeat is seen as within the providence of God,
“for in Israelite theology no foreign army can be victorious over Israel unless it is by the will of
the Lord” (NIB, Vol. III, p.193). This theology is foreign to most in the Process community, but
we might learn from a reading that places us into that community. How might they have learned
from this? Might we apply a similar insight or instruction from asking: What experiences of life
(not direct actions from God) have humbled us, humiliated our pride, caused us to look with
more honesty at ourselves, our situation?
The next indication of humility comes from Namaan’s skin disease. “Leprosy” in the Bible
indicates any number of skin disorders – all of which made one ceremonially/ritually unclean. In
the ancient world, not understanding the innocuous nature of many such skin disorders, and an
added element of religious superstition, led many people to be alienated from society. Such
shunning set a person apart as a pariah, divided them from family and society, rendering them
poor and helpless. That Namaan remained within his community may indicate a bias given to
him in a highly stratified society; it may simply indicate that his disorder had not been made
public.
The condition was made known to a servant girl of Namaan’s wife, however – a girl taken as a
slave in the Aramean raid against Israel. That Namaan’s eventual salvation was effectuated by a
foreigner, a woman, a slave girl is another mark of the irony and humility found throughout this
narrative. She tells her mistress about the prophet Elisha. The mistress tells her husband who
tells his “lord” (the king) – who writes a letter to Jehoram (see 3.1), King of Israel, and sends
Namaan on a mission. The fact that a military general and his king would both put their trust in
the word of a servant girl, and in a foreign king they had just defeated, and in their deference to a
prophet they had never known, all suggest a kind of humility, if not desperation. (The two may
be related.)

When Namaan arrives and presents the letter to the King of Israel, the king of Aram (the king!)
offers more humility: “Am I God?” While the “divine right of kings” was not an expression
known in the ancient world, the assumptions of such a philosophy were very much the rule of the
day. The king may not have been God, but was next in line in power and control.
Enter the prophet Elisha, who comes onto the scene but offers his prophetic counsel only from a
distance. (He was working remotely!) Namaan is offended: “I thought that for me he would
surely come out.” (emphasis added) To add insult to injury, the prophet instructs Namaan to go
and bathe in the small, dirty Jordan River, rather than one of the grand rivers of Damascus.
As he turns to head home, not willing to stoop to such patronizing instructions, his servants
spoke up: “Why don’t you give it a try? We came all this way.” Imagine the courage of servants
to speak, offering advice to their master – and imagine the humility: Namaan listened. Namaan
obeyed, his servants!
Not only did Namaan wash in the Jordan, but he immersed himself, dipping his body completely,
seven times. The biblical number of perfection, and the dirty waters of the Jordan, and the
instructions of two sets of servants (one, a foreign handmaid), all of these humbling elements
come together in this story of healing.
God was in it all. God is in it all – in the courage of the servants, the cooperation of the kings
(yes, this was a “cooperation” based in a setting of war and power, but God is there, too), the
power of a prophet, and the willingness of one with great power to bow, completely. God is in it
all.
Paul’s instruction to the Galatian church is filled with similar indications of humility: “If anyone
is detected in a transgression… restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” Gentleness
represents a humble attitude of instruction/correction. “Take care that you yourselves are not
tempted.” Beware, for “There, but the grace of God, go I!” “If those who are nothing think they
are something, they deceive themselves.” We live in a world of haughty, arrogant leaders. From
a biblical perspective, this is a world of deceit. All are humbled before God. “All must carry their
own loads.” There are no servants and masters, the kin-dom of God is a family of equals. “Let us
not grow weary in doing what is right… let us work for the good of all.” We work, not for those
who “earn it” or “deserve it,” but for the good of all. The paradigm of the biblical vision is
completely at odds with that of the world, and it is based in humility – just as God has been
gracious to us, we must respond in kind.
All this narrative imagery regarding humility, bowing, immersing oneself, should remind us of
the God we find in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Gerald Hawthorne, in the Word
commentary, translates Philippians 2.6: “precisely because he was God… Jesus emptied
himself.” Vicki Randall says, “What Hawthorne and the NIV [translation of this verse] are
highlighting is the belief that the incarnation is not a momentary exception to Jesus’ divinity.
Rather, they suggest the incarnation is the precise fulfillment – ultimate expression – of what it
means to be God.” (Vicki Randall, “To Be Emptied,” in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of
God, p. 183.)

Jesus teaches us how to be “great,” and how to be saved and whole and healed – and it is not by
controlling others, or even ourselves, but by immersing ourselves in life, by humbling ourselves,
by giving our own power over to the power of love.
Scriptures about Humility
"God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn
and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble
yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you (James 4.6-10).
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (Philippians 2.3-8).
The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all
who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 23.11-12).
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23).
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly
than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith
that God has assigned (Romans 12.3).
Quotations About Humility
To lose oneself in the unfathomable,
to plunge into the inexhaustible,
to find peace in the incorruptible,
to be absorbed in the definite immensity,
to offer oneself to the fire… and
to give one’s deepest self to that
whose depth has no end.
— Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu
You can believe something with so much conviction that you’d die for that belief, and yet in the
exact same moment you can also say, “I could be wrong…”
This is because conviction and humility, like faith and doubt, are not opposites; they’re dance
partners. It’s possible to hold your faith with open hands, living with great conviction and yet at
the same time humbly admitting that your knowledge and perspective will always be limited.
— Rob Bell, What we Talk About When We Talk About God, p.93

Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis. . . . Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by
showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.” —
Thomas Merton
The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and
more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.”
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Interpretation, p.189 (quoted in James Howell, The Beatitudes
for Today, p.48)
If you are leading a useless life, you are not being humble, you are just plain lazy… Many a man,
while seriously believing that he was exercising an acceptable humility, has buried his talents in
the earth, hidden his light under a bushel, lived a useless life, when he might have been a
blessing to many… Our humility serves us falsely when it leads us to shrink from any duty. The
plea of unfitness or inability is utterly insufficient to excuse us … Your talent may be very small,
so small that it scarcely seems to matter whether you use it or not, so far as its impression on the
world or on other lives is concerned. Yet no one can know what is small and what is great in this
life, in which every cause starts consequences that reach into eternity.”
— Spiros Zodhiates, Greek theologian, quoted in Blanchard, The Beatitudes for Today, p.83-84
A man can counterfeit love, he can counterfeit faith, he can counterfeit hope and all the other
graces, but it is very difficult to counterfeit humility.
— Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)
He who knows himself best esteems himself least.
— Henry George Bohn (1796-1884)
After crosses and losses, men grow humbler and wiser.
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Always take the lowest place, and the highest will be given to you, for high structures require a
solid foundation. The greatest, in the judgment of God, are the least in their own opinion; the
more worthy they are, the more humility will be seen in them.
— Thomas À Kempis (C. 1380-1471)
Christ Jesus came to the world clothed in humility, he will always be found among those who are
clothed with humility. He will be found among the humble people.
— A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
Being humble involves the willingness to be reckoned a failure in everyone's sight but God's.
–Roy M. Pearson (1914- )
Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being humble. Do you desire to construct a vast and
lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the
deeper must be its foundation.
— Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Remark to dogmatic religionists, “I beseech you in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to think that you
may be wrong.”
— Cromwell, Quoted in Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, p.1
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our
severity.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede, p.62. (quoted in Howell, The Beatitudes for Today, p.48)
Just like newborns, whose fingers wrap, instinctively, grasping, grabbing, hanging on…
Sometimes we just can’t let go. We can’t let go of the past. We can’t let go of our prejudice. We
can’t let go of pride and partisanship. We can’t let go of what we know, of where we’ve been, of
what we want. May God forgive our need to claim and to cling, and teach us that the heart of
faith is trust: letting go.
“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it
never returns, it was never yours to begin with.”  May it be so. Amen!
— quotation is from Sherrilyn Kenyon, Unleash the Night
Elements for Worship
A Prayer of Confession
Forgive me when I think more highly of myself than I ought to think – and when I don’t think
highly enough. We all have gifts, and ministering to one another and teaching, encouragement
and compassion, even generosity and cheerfulness are “spiritual gifts.” May God help me to
claim my gift today. Amen.
— from Romans 12
A Litany
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit…
What can I do?
There are varieties of services, but the same Lord…
How can I serve?
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good: Wisdom… knowledge…
healing… miracles… prophecy… tongues… interpretation…
No, what can I do?
To one is given faith by the same Spirit.
And faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. So let me show my faith by my works. I can
do that!
— from 1 Corinthians 12 and James 2