Have you been a fool lately?

6^th Sunday, February 12, 2006

Have you been a fool lately? It’s a pretty personal question, isn’t it? However you define it, nobody wants to be thought a fool. In today’s vocabulary, a fool can be someone easily exploited, or someone so irresponsible they ignore the consequences of their decisions. In Shakespeare’s day the fool often was a highly influential person in the royal court – sort of a combination of Jon Stewart and Jim Carey, with the ability to entertain as well as provoke. But in Old Testament Hebrew, the word meant “silly”, or “ridiculous”. Then, as now, no one wanted to look foolish – particularly if they were highly regarded.

Our scripture passage this morning relates the story of just such a person. In this passage, we read about Naaman, a Syrian general, who had a problem. Naaman had leprosy. Actually, to give it the proper emphasis, I’ll say it the way it is written in the Bible: “He was also a mighty man of valor, but a leper”. In other words, the defining characteristic of his life was his disease, much like we might describe some by saying “He has AIDS”. Leprosy – or Hansen’s disease as it is known today, is a bacterial infection which attacks the skin, nerves, and mucous membranes. It develops very slowly and, untreated, people with the disease live for decades in horrible disfigurement. While it is still very much with us, it is now treatable and on the decline around the world.

But up until the age of antibiotics, leprosy was a terrible curse. Although it is only mildly contagious, it has been known for millennia that it is spread by close contact, so he only treatment was quarantine of people with the disease. Leviticus, written perhaps 3500 years ago, devotes two chapters to the subject. We don’t know how ancient Syria dealt with lepers, but in the time of Elisha, a leper in Israel was required to stay 100 feet away from everyone else and carry a bell warning people of his or her disease. If your husband or wife or child developed leprosy there were only two choices – either they went to a leper’s colony or you all did. Worse, any skin disease – psoriasis, eczema, ringworm – for example, could earn you a sentence to a leper colony where over time you probably would develop the real thing.

And Naaman was a mighty man of valor, but a leper. As it happened, a young girl from Israel was captured by the Syrians and brought back to be a servant to Naaman’s wife. This girl, seeing the distress in the household, said to her mistress, “Gee, its too bad your husband can’t go to our doctor in Israel”, and this news eventually got to Naaman who does a curious thing: he goes to his boss, the King of Syria and has a letter sent to the King of Israel requesting that he heal Naaman, apparently leaving out the details of how this is to be accomplished When the King of Israel got the letter, he was upset. The Bible says the King he tore his clothes. “Am I God, to kill and make alive, that this mans sends his general to me to heal him of leprosy? He is just trying to create an excuse for going to war with us!” But God intervened in the person of Elisha, who sends a message to the King saying, “Don’t be upset – send him to me, that he might know that there is a prophet in Israel”. In due time, Naaman shows up at Elisha’s door.

Elisha doesn’t even leave his house. He sends a servant to tell Naaman to go wash in the Jordan river seven times and he, Naaman, will be healed. That’s it. Seven baths in the Jordan river. Feeling like a fool, Naaman heads angrily back to Syria.

Does this surprise you? Well, lets fast-forward the time-frame to 2006. Imagine if you will that the crown price of Saudi Arabia has terminal cancer. He has consulted the best doctors in Ridyah, Geneva, and NY, but although worth billions, his diagnosis is always the same – terminal. He tries all the traditional Islamic cures, eastern medicine, and vegetarianism to no avail. But on a visit to the US he hears from one of the servant girls about a doctor in NC who can heal him. So, he asks King Fahd to write a formal request to President Bush, asking the president to arrange the cure. Can you imagine the phone calls between Washington and Raleigh? Fortunately, one of Tom Grigg’s former patients happens to work at the state department and says, “Oh, he must mean Dr. Griggs in Hillsborough”, and its not long before a train of limousines is winding its way up Hugh and Cookie Wilson lane. The prince sits in his limousine while one of his aides knocks on the Grigg’s door. Despite his desperation, its taken a lot to get him to come all the way to NC, to a Christian doctor, and a retired one at that. Tom is busy mowing, so he tells Pat, “just tell the prince to bathe in the Eno seven times and he will be cured”.

When the prince hears this he is furious! He expected a million-dollar clinic, white coats, tests, MRI’s, sonograms, and some serious attention, and he is being told, “Go wash in the ENO!!!” Do they think I’m a fool? he says. What’s wrong with the rivers of Arabia, or the Red Sea? I’m not going to stand for this. So he starts back to the airport, vowing to jack oil prices up another dollar per gallon, and when one of his aides sees a sign that says “Eno River”. “You know,” his aide says, had Dr. Griggs sent you to the cath lab, you would have done it – here’s the Eno, what could it hurt?” So, feeling like a fool, the prince gets out of his limo, takes seven baths in the Eno River - and God heals him.

Sometimes, to be obedient to God, you have to be ready to act like a fool. Have you been a fool lately? I think I must be a particularly hard case, because God has been putting me in these situations for the last 35 years. It might help you to understand me better to know that Chris and I have a checkered past. Yes, its true. We have not always been Baptists. There were the Presbyterian years, the Reformed years, and then – the charismatic years, dalliances with Catholic Pentecostals, the home bible church years, until finally God brought us home safely to the Baptists. But during those early years I was influenced by a number of people who were openly willing to be fools for Christ. Next week Chris and I will be going to Houston to visit Berry and Joyce Davis, old friends from those days. Joyce is very ill. When we met them in 1972, we had just purchased a summer hotel on the banks of the Hudson River with the vague imperative of turning it into a children’s home. Joyce and Berry had recently sold their house and were preparing for a cross-country pilgrimage seeking God’s direction. They were both teachers, by the way, and to look at, fairly normal people, but after years of trying for a family, they believed that God was telling them that He had something else for them, to sell their house, and take a cross-country trip. On their return, they asked us if they might join us in creating a home for any of God’s children he brought our way. And so, for the next three years, they did.

If anybody hated looking like a fool, it was Berry. One Saturday morning he announced that God had told him to go down to the corner of Main Street and hand out tracts. Feeling like a fool he went. One of the people who accepted a tract was a young alcoholic named Wes and who began calling Berry, usually on the downside of a binge. Then one night Wes called asking for help. He had just been discharged from the hospital after a biking accident with his leg in a cast, had no transportation, no mobility, no food, no job, and nobody to take care of him. So, of course, Berry brought him home to one of our spare rooms. For the next 3 months while his leg healed, Wes gave up drinking, refinished furniture, listened to praise music, and became Uncle Wes to the household. Oh, and he accepted Christ and resolved to follow him. So, was Berry a fool to stand out on that street corner? But wait – you have to hear the rest of the story. In the meantime, Joyce – a careful shopper if there ever was one – was at the mall one afternoon and found a young woman in hysterics. The man she had been living with had just dumped her at the mall, telling her that it was over. She had no home, no family she could go to, and no place to stay that night. So, of course, Joyce brought Donna home. For propriety’s sake we decided that Donna should stay at our second house, run by a young married couple and housing several single women, even if only for a few days. But it wasn’t long before Joyce led Donna to the Lord. She got a local job and pitched in over at Sands Avenue as part of the group. Maybe it was being happy, and some much needed dental work that made her catch Wes’ eye, but within six months the two were married; within a year they had moved into their own place. When we left NY, they had 5 children, Wes was still driving trucks, they were still together, still attending a small Bible church near Newburg, NY. They must now in their fifties, and I’m hoping that they are looking back in wonder at the rich life God gave them together, in part, because Berry stood out on the corner of Broadway, feeling like a fool.

I’m no stranger to that feeling. There was the time I was driving by an adult book store that I passed every night on my way home from my respectable IBM job, That particular night as I drove by I became impressed that this was an evil that couldn’t go unchallenged any longer. The feeling got so strong that I made a U-turn and headed back. It was my first and, for that matter, last visit to a store of this type, and feeling foolish in the extreme, I went in with no clear idea what I was going to do. “Can I help you?”, the smiling attendant asked.

“Do you know how sad it makes the Lord Jesus that people buy this filth?” I said. The attendant stopped smiling.

“I don’t need any religious nuts in here”, he said. “Get out of the store”. But I was on a roll. “Don’t you care that you’re selling poison?” I asked. Then I really made him mad. Based on his Italian-sounding name I said, “You were raised as a Catholic – how do you go to mass after selling this stuff all week?”

“I’m telling you – get out of my store!”, and he pulled a revolver out from under the counter and started waving it in my direction. I was such a fool that I wasn’t particularly afraid – at the time.
”I’ll stay until I’m through” I said. “You’re not going to shoot me. Think about it. I’m just a local father who’s come in to protest what you’re selling. How could you shoot me and ever go back to church?” And then I did leave. By the time I got home I was shaking. What a fool I was, I thought! When I told her why I was a little late, Chris was incredulous, then she got angry, so angry that she marched around the living room cursing that store in Jesus’ name. Well, it didn’t burn down that night, but a year later, the store was closed. It seems the owner couldn’t keep the help. The convenience store next door had a water leak which shut it down for a month. The town began trying to clean up that strip of road and was making permits, etc, difficult. And no more adult book store. Coincidence? Who can say?

While nothing quite that dramatic has happened recently, God still puts me on the spot regularly. Every time I get up here to give a sermon, I feel foolish. If I could say no, I would. Last year I believed that God wanted Chris and me to celebrate our anniversary with a community picnic on Oct. 1^st. In my imagination, I saw God using the occasion to spark a renewed appreciation for the values and traditions that have made this community such a blessed place to live, increased fellowship with other churches, and not least, introduce us to families seeking a church home. Now, I serve a God who works miracles, and all of that may yet happen, but in the meantime, I feel like a fool. Thanks be to God that he only asks our obedience and faithfulness, not results.

I don’t want to give the impression that my only experience with “letting Jesus drive”, as Gregg put it last week, means doing outlandish things. The hardest things we do as Christians are rather ordinary: a lifetime of commitment to a spouse, keeping bread on the table, raising children with love and wisdom, caring for aging parents, taking a fire-call, visiting the lonely or ill, praying faithfully day in and day out. In our popular culture, being Christian in itself is regarded as foolish. In this day and age, what else explains why someone would actively seek to be a servant? Or desire a life of holiness? Or hope for the salvation of the world?

I will close with Paul’s encouragement from Corinthians 1:22-24:

For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Have you been a fool lately?