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Sometimes God Works in Reverse
Sometimes God works in reverse. When Naaman is in search of a cure to his leprosy, it isn't he himself or his king or even his wife who puts him on the path to a cure. It is a lowly servant girl, an Israelite captive now serving in an enemy household. She is the one who points him to hope and life. God works in the reverse of who we think.
When Naaman goes, he goes prepared with ten talents of silver, six thousand and shekels of gold, ten sets of garments and a letter from his king. Money, connections, and official recommendation. That will do it. But none of them give him the healing he needs. God uses the reverse of what we think.
How Naaman finally gets healed isn't through an epic quest or impeccable faith or because of who he was. Naaman actually was upset that an important guy like him didn't get a fancy show stopping healing performance. Elijah didn't even come outside. There were just instructions to go wash in the Jordan. God heals in reverse of how we think.
Now that may not be news to you. You may even somewhat expect that this is how God works. The lowly are lifted, the poor are blessed, the outsiders become the inner circle. And there's good news in that. God is more generous than the lines we draw.
But we fight it every step of the way. We don't trust God's reversal. Mostly because reversal for us looks bad. If God works through the lowly and now cast, what does that make us? We don't want to be lowly. We want to matter. We want to be respected. If God shows up in outsiders and aliens, what about us here now who are already in?
So we go about it like Naaman, preferring to do things our way first. We depend on wealth and possessions to sustain and satisfy. We look to people in power to give us the answers that we want. And we trust God as long as God is doing something great in mighty, the way that we think God should. And when God doesn't work the way we want, well, we try to explain how God should be doing things. We tell a tale to ourselves. We ourselves can handle whatever comes our way. We alone can fix it. We know how things work. That's the sin in us.
Because when we get honest about it, we think we know. We think we know that we can handle it and we try to fix it. But sometimes we can't. We just can't. Our importance, our possessions, our determination can only get us so far. Sooner or later, we end up short. We can't give ourselves the healing, the forgiveness, the life we need. We so want our importance, our possessions, our own abilities to save us. And by doing so, we resist the God who actually can.
When Naaman is told simply to wash, she can't believe it. That's it. That will cure me. Surely not. Where's the dangerous mission, the mountain to move, the expensive medicine to buy? There isn't anything impressive about scrubbing an river. Something that simple can't solve such a difficult disease. But God keeps persisting even through Naaman's resistance. His servants approach him and point him back to the promise. So he washes and he's healed. His money hasn't bought it. His importance hasn't secured it. God gives him what he cannot give himself.
And the jump to us isn't too difficult to see. God comes to us in Christ to give us the life that we cannot give ourselves. Christ forgives the sin that we cannot undo. And Jesus holds us in a love that we do not have to earn. God's grace frees us from having to do to secure our place. We don't have to prove our importance or have everything depend on us.
And living in that grace starts to change how we live with what we have. Much like in our story today, God doesn't need our silver, gold, or garments. We don't need to buy anything from God. Instead, God is the one who has already given us everything, including those things that we can never buy. It's proof that our stuff doesn't prove our worth. And since God has already given us our worth, our stuff is free to serve another purpose.
So do we keep more, get more, spend more on ourselves? Or does God's generosity start to shape what we do with what we have? And giving to God's mission here and now is the reversal of the world's priorities. God uses our offerings to serve our neighbors and to support ministry. And through us giving, God loosens our grip on the things that we think make us worthy, and which we hope will hold our lives together.
Today, our budget forum was a big part of us living out the Cyclicia, individually and as a congregation. Individually, we have reflected on giving our treasure, on tithing, on supporting God's mission and ministry through Saint Philip. And as a congregation, we'll make choices about how to be good stewards with those gifts. And part of that conversation is another staff member so that we can strengthen the ministry that's already happening and respond to needs that we haven't been able to meet yet.
Giving is a reversal. The things that we count on to give us life become the gifts that we share outwardly because our life is already a gift from God.
And God keeps bringing us back into that promise in various ways. In worship, study, conversation, prayer, God reverses the messages that get pounded into us all day, every day. Through Bible study, we discover God speaking to us. Through small group conversations, we learn of others' experiences and how they inform our own. Through himnity and music, God speaks to us in ways that transcend other ways of communication. God reverses those messages of fear and hate and us versus them that are broken world stokes. And instead, God speaks grace, love, and welcome to a people like us. God works to reverse our sinful idolatry of ourselves through community, through worship. We become part of something that's bigger than our individual selves.
God meets us as fallen human beings and speaks forgiveness. With some bread and wine, Christ gives us Himself with water and a promise God claims us as God's own. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with that cross of Christ forever. Through these ordinary things, God keeps giving us what we cannot give ourselves. Forgiveness, belonging, life. God's reversal is already reaching us, already shaping us, already freeing us to live differently.
And at the cross, Jesus enters the sin and suffering and death that we cannot overcome. And God raises His hymn up from the dead. And that is the reversal that gives us life now and forever.
Name and comes with money, connections, expectations. He received a healing that He could never give Himself. And here we are with our own expectations, our own resistances, our own needs. And God comes to us in Christ to give us the life that we cannot give ourselves. God reverses it all. God changes what we can't. God turns our ending into a new beginning.
Sometimes God works in reverse. Reversing sin, reversing death, reversing expectations. All for the sake of the world. Amen.