Take Me to the River

God often works in unexpected ways. Is there a muddy river in which we need to take a dip?

Rivers have had a romantic and imaginative place in human history ever since Adam and Eve cavorted around in the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates near their Edenic home. Poets, writers and philosophers have extolled the beauty, power, persistence and imagery of rivers. Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, the first person to explore the idea of “camping” as a recreational pursuit (see Walden), said, “Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.” Naturalist John Muir, instrumental in the establishment of our national park system, echoed Thoreau: “The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us.”

Robert Redford directed a film version of author Norman Maclean’s 1976 semi-autographical book A River Runs Through It. The book was considered for a Pulitzer Prize, and the movie was nominated for three Academy Awards. The film, according to one source, “fueled a rise in the popularity of fly fishing for a number of years before the sport waned to previous levels.”

Naaman, the central character of the biblical drama in today’s first reading from 2 Kings 5, was not interested in fishing. In fact, he may have disliked water. Maybe he didn’t even have a swimming pool at his house in suburban Damascus. Or perhaps he was afflicted with potamophobia, a fear of rivers or running water. This might explain why he so strenuously resisted a trip to Israel to bathe in the Jordan River. Someone suffering from potamophobia gets a stage four migraine just thinking about a river or running water, let alone seeing it.

So, when Elisha sends word prescribing a dip in the Jordan River, Naaman has a panic attack. “‘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” (v. 12).

This response indicates that perhaps he was referring to the irony of taking a bath in the muddy Jordan when he could have splashed around in the more pristine waters of his native land. After all, how would we react if our doctor ordered us to swim in the Mississippi River? Not too enticing, right?

Naaman was totally, absolutely and without equivocation, spot on. Going to Israel to dip in the Jordan made no sense. It was illogical, irrational, absurd, ridiculous and unreasonable — all the things that the transcendent God and Creator of all things is to our finite human minds.

Isn’t it wonderful?

 

Rivers Flow Through the Bible

In the Bible, rivers flow from Genesis to Revelation, serving as metaphors for life, sustenance, spiritual growth and divine blessing. Generally, they’re symbols of God’s provision and power, and together they help shape the spiritual and theological narrative of Scripture. In Psalm 1:3, the righteous are compared to trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in season and prospering in all they do. Similarly, Isaiah 43:19 promises streams in the desert as a sign of God’s renewal and faithfulness. Rivers in these contexts symbolize the refreshing and sustaining grace of God, which flows abundantly to nourish the people of God, even in barren and challenging times.

Jesus builds upon this imagery in the New Testament, saying that those who believe in him will have “rivers of living water” flowing through them, referring to the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39). So, how would we describe the blessings of divine life, grace, peace, love and mercy? We might, as did Jesus and the writers of Scripture, use a river as our preferred metaphor.

But some rivers in the Bible denote judgment, justice and purification. In the plagues of Egypt, for example, the Nile River is turned to blood as a sign of God’s judgment against Pharaoh and his oppressive treatment of the Hebrews (Exodus 7:14-24). Similarly, in Amos 5:24, the prophet calls for justice to “roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” This dual imagery — of rivers as both nurturing and purging — reflects the character of God, who causes rivers of blessing to flow to the faithful and flash floods of judgment to the unrepentant.

We have metaphorical rivers in our own lives. Depending on our circumstances, we might describe these rivers as steams, brooks, fountains or cricks — indicating that our lives right now are cool, comfortable and refreshing; slow and evenly paced, teeming with trout; placid yet moving, as one might float leisurely down the Connecticut River on a John Deere inner tube while sucking on a Slurpee. In these times, God is with us.

But we might choose other synonyms and phrases to describe our current state of affairs — water that is swamping us; inundations of torrential flooding; downpours of disaster; a deluge of cloudbursts that threaten to overwhelm us and carry us away. In these times, too, God is with us. As God said to Isaiah, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you” (Isaiah 43:2).

 

Naaman Was not Interested in Rivers — Any River

Now we come to the first of two major characters in today’s story: Elisha and Naaman, described as a “commander of the army of the king of Aram,” otherwise known as Syria. Picture Hassan Abdel Ghani, senior commander of the militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel force that stormed into Damascus in early December 2024, causing the collapse of the house of Assad and sending Bashar al-Assad fleeing under the cover of darkness to Russia. Try to imagine Abdel Ghani with an illness for which there was no apparent remedy, except for the whispered suggestion of a Jewish servant girl and hints that he might need to visit a holy man in Israel.

This is the scene. That Naaman was open to the idea of consulting an Israeli prophet indicates that he was perhaps a man of faith. He almost certainly was a pagan polytheist, because the dominant religious orientation in Syria at the time was polytheism. The people worshiped gods like Rimmon (Hadad), a storm and fertility deity central to Syrian worship. Rimmon was particularly significant in Damascus, the capital of Syria, and Naaman mentions this god specifically in the verses just beyond our text. “But may the LORD pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the LORD pardon your servant on this one count” (v. 18).

Elisha said to him, “Go in peace” (v. 19).

This is a remarkable exchange. Naaman, after seeing that he was totally healed and cured of his leprosy, now proclaims Yahweh to be the one true God. “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” he cried (v. 15). Let’s make this clear: The Syrian commander of armies has undergone a conversion, a “Damascus Road” (note the coincidence), and now is a believer in the God of Israel.

But there’s a problem. When he returns to Damascus, he knows he is going to face some cultural obligations. Naaman’s position as a general likely required him to observe Syrian religious practices, including participating in rituals and temple activities. Worship in such contexts often involved national loyalty and political identity, making it difficult to separate personal beliefs from public duties.

Thus, Naaman’s begging for forgiveness in advance. This is startling enough.

But then Elisha, the holy man and prophet, says to the ninth century B.C. equivalent of Hassan Abdel Ghani, “Go in peace.”

What is going on here? He’s one bubble off plumb. Six of one, half dozen of the other — surely this is not the world we Christians live in, is it?

Never mind racial or ethnic considerations, we have a hard time being civil to each other when we disagree on doctrinal, social/cultural or medical issues.

Perhaps Elisha had a tool we all should have — a handy, little sharp-toothed saw that he used to cut the Assyrian general some slack. He had what the late Yale postliberal theologian Hans Frei called a “generous orthodoxy,” an expression picked up by Malcolm Gladwell, Brian McLaren and others.

We live in a culture where civil conversation is difficult to achieve, and here Elisha shows us how. “Go in peace,” he says to the recently healed and converted Assyrian.

He didn’t debate. He didn’t scold. He didn’t condemn. He said, “Go in peace.”

 

Naaman Takes the Plunge

Naaman was an unlikely candidate for healing. He was a man of prominence. As the commander of the Aramean (Syrian) army, he had the ear of his king and the admiration of his people. Yet all his power could not shield him from the affliction of leprosy, which in the ancient world was a symbol of physical and spiritual breakdown.

In his desperation, Naaman sought healing wherever it might be found, even from the God of Israel, whose prophet, Elisha, was said to perform miracles. What humility it must have required for this proud warrior to heed the advice of a young Israelite servant girl who encouraged him to seek out a prophet of a nation he had once conquered!

Yet Naaman was a proud man at heart. He appreciated the grand gesture. When Naaman arrived at Elisha’s door, he likely expected a grand spectacle — a dramatic display of the prophet’s power. Instead, Elisha sent a messenger to deliver a simple instruction: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean” (v. 10).

Naaman was insulted. The Jordan River was unimpressive compared to the great rivers of his homeland. Why should he follow such a seemingly foolish command? And why didn’t Elisha himself deliver this message, rather than a mere servant?

Being slighted is a very uncomfortable feeling. Naaman didn’t like it one bit. After initially rejecting Elisha’s instruction, Naaman’s servants persuaded him to obey. They wisely reasoned that if the prophet had asked for some great deed, Naaman would have eagerly complied — so why not do the simple thing? Only this timely and wise intervention persuaded him that it would be foolish not to give it a try, since he had already made the journey.

After agreeing to further humble himself, Naaman had an attitude adjustment and followed the prophet’s order to a T. Naaman dipped himself in the Jordan not once, twice, or thrice, but seven times, as instructed. When he came up for air after the seventh and final immersion, he was a radically whole person, healed, clean and disease free. “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean” (v. 14).

Even more impressive than physical healing was his spiritual awakening. He declared, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel” (v. 15).

Healing — whether from sin, pride or despair — requires humility and obedience. Together, these two virtues can feel like horse pills when you try to swallow either one of them. Obedience sticks in the craw, and humility is hard to swallow, and even when you do, you feel like gagging and chucking it up again.

But it is an acquired taste. Jesus had to learn it (Hebrews 5:8). Are we more privileged than him, that the lesson of obedience is one we don’t need to master? Naaman’s journey to healing started when he humbled himself enough to listen to the servant girl and then obeyed Elisha’s simple command. Humility and obedience are the twin channels through which God’s grace flows into our lives. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

It’s helpful to remember that God often works in unexpected ways. Naaman expected his healing to come in a manner befitting his status — perhaps a state dinner with the king, and certainly a private audience with the holy prophet of Israel. This did not happen. Our ways are not God’s ways. God’s power was revealed through a muddy river. Naaman sank in these waters and emerged as clean as laundered sheets. God often works through ordinary means, does he not? Small acts of obedience, everyday relationships and seemingly insignificant moments.

Do we have any rivers in which God is asking us to dip, as in a baptism foreshadowed by the apostle Paul in Romans 6-7? Naaman’s story invites us to ask, “What is the ‘Jordan River’ in our own lives?” Is there something God is asking you to do that seems too simple, too humbling or too insignificant? Perhaps it’s forgiving someone, serving in an unglamorous role or trusting God in an area where you feel vulnerable.

May we embrace obedience and humility, and trust in the inscrutable ways of God, even when they defy our expectations.

Amen.

—Timothy Merrill and Carl Wilton contributed to this material.

 

Sources

Goodson, Jacob. “Toward a generous orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s postliberal theology.” Christian Scholar’s Review, christianscholars.com, April 15, 2012. Retrieved January 11, 2025.

“Potamophobia.” Psychtimes.com. No date. Retrieved December 27, 2024.

The Other Texts

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Things that Come in the Morning. Many people enjoy morning more than any other time of day. Why is this? Because morning offers unique experiences. What are some things that come in the morning? The sun, i.e. light and warmth; the newspaper, i.e. the world at your doorstep; coffee and breakfast, i.e. energy for the day; a hangover. Okay, that last one isn’t so great. What we’re getting at (in terms of the text) is what the passage says about joy. When joy comes, it is like morning! Clearly, we can experience joy at any hour of the day. But going through adversity is like spending a long night awake, tossing and turning. When these anxieties are resolved, it is like the dawn of a new day. It’s like the smell of freshly brewed coffee. It’s like sitting down to breakfast in the sunroom. Pure joy! Pure blessing.

What Does the Text Say?

Psalm 30 is a hymn of thanksgiving for deliverance from a deadly experience. The psalmist states immediately the reason he will extol the Lord: Yahweh has drawn the psalmist up (v. 2) from Sheol/the Pit (v. 3). The psalmist has two enemies: death and his enemies. Sheol, referred to more than 60 times in the OT, is the realm beneath the earth where all the living eventually wind up. In the middle section of the psalm (vv. 4-7), the psalmist, secure in his prosperity, says to himself that his comfortable existence would be his life forever (v. 6). But the sudden onset of calamity deprived the psalmist of all those graces that constitute the good life, including the psalmist’s ability to participate in the worshiping community. The psalmist cries out to God (v. 10) and receives a favorable response (v. 11). The psalm concludes with a vow to give thanks to the LORD forever. The psalmist’s assertion that his soul had gone down to the Pit (while his body, presumably, continued to languish on his sickbed) reveals one of the early stages in biblical thought in which persons were considered to be composed of body and soul. This bifurcation of the individual into two “parts” will become more pronounced as first Persian and then Greek notions of dualism begin to influence biblical thought.

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Bad Seed, Good Seed. Cornfields across America are growing higher. “Knee-high by the Fourth of July,” as the old saying goes … or even higher by modern standards. Of course, this assumes that the farmers have planted good seed. And that they planted corn. Because, as we know, there is a direct correlation between the seed that is planted and the harvest that is gathered. Sow corn; reap corn. The apostle Paul uses sowing and reaping as a metaphor for a very cool life lesson. Want to know where you will be in five or 10 years? Want to know how happy you’ll be down the road? Ask yourself what you are sowing.

We use the sowing and reaping metaphor as well. We refer to some incorrigible and obnoxious jerk as a “bad seed.” Nothing good will come of him. The harvest he reaps will be grim. Or, in our gardens we may struggle with seeds that are hard to germinate. Eggplant, parsnips, peas and spinach can be difficult to get started. What does one do? Seeds like this can be scarified or nicked to allow moisture to seep through the shell of the seed, or the seeds can be soaked overnight before planting.

What is your most difficult seed to germinate? The sowing and cultivation of character requires a lot of work. Is it hard for you to plant the seeds of patience, love, kindness, gentleness, wisdom, preparation or peace? Sow patience and reap appreciation; kindness and reap in kind; love and reap love or faithfulness; positivity and reap joy and a long life; integrity and reap trust. But sow anger, and reap fear; infidelity, reap divorce or mistrust; filthy language and reap scorn and loss of friends; abusive behavior and reap ruin and trouble with the law; a smoking habit and reap cancer; drunkenness and reap loss of job and marriage. So, choose the right seeds, be the right seed and reap an abundant harvest. Your barns and silos will be overflowing, like that corn growing right now in Iowa or Nebraska that’s “knee high on the Fourth of July” … or even higher!

What Does the Text Say?

The primary preaching theme of this pericope emerges quickly: “God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow,” a concept adumbrated elsewhere in Scripture — Job 4:8, Proverbs 22:8, Jeremiah 12:13, Hosea 8:7 and 10:12, for example. From Paul’s perspective, we have a choice. On one hand, whoever plants seeds of the flesh will harvest a host of carnal sins — including conceit, competition and envy — and forfeit the promised inheritance of God’s kingdom. Conversely, whoever sows seeds of the Spirit will harvest “the fruit of the Spirit” and be empowered to crucify “the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:22-24). Paul is unequivocal: the chasm between life attentive to the Spirit’s guidance and life lived according to the flesh is vast. Thus, Paul exhorts the Galatian believers not to “grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at the harvest time, if we do not give up” (v. 9). Christians are to love one another, cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, and depend on the Spirit’s direction. Instead of living a self-indulgent life as a slave to our own desires, God’s grace demands that our interests turn outward, toward others, despite the inconvenience of it all. We become “slaves to one another,” says Paul, and “whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of God” (v. 10; cf. 5:13). The apostle implies that if we cannot have goodwill toward those who share our faith, how can we expect to love and care for those outside of the faith … for those who may be enemies or hostile to our faith? How, indeed!

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Go on Your Way. This text certainly has “evangelism” written all over it. But, for most of our congregations, eyes will glaze over. Not everyone has the gift of evangelism. Even Jesus appointed only 70 in this case. How does this text have relevance for Aunt Mabel, a nuclear family of five, a single parent or elderly pensioners? Two things stand out. First, the kingdom of God is near. The preacher can unpack what that means. Second, Jesus is dismissive about the 70 who come back all excited about casting out demons. Forget that, he says. What you can truly be happy about is that your names are written in heaven. What is cool about this is not just the implications for us about our salvation and eternal home, but the implicit understanding that “heaven” has taken notice of us. Our names are there. We are remembered. We are on the divine radar. Let us not be afraid.

What Does the Text Say?

“After this, the Lord appointed seventy others …” (v. 1a). Traveling in pairs was common practice in the ancient world, for obvious reasons of safety (a truth made in passing in the parable of the good Samaritan, found only in Luke’s gospel, at 10:29-37), and perhaps for such other reasons as mutual support, veracity of message and an example of the Christian life of harmonious cooperation. The aphorism Jesus quotes in verse 2 — “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” — carries a dual connotation. On the one hand, the Old Testament image of harvesting nations is the eschatological context of God’s final judgment (e.g., Isaiah 27:12-13). On the other hand, as here, the image expresses the masses who gladly heard the good news of the gospel and were ripe for gathering into the burgeoning church. They are sent with a variety of specific instructions. Curiously, the bulk of Jesus’ instructions in this passage, verses 4-11, concerns the conduct of his missionaries, rather than the content of their message. The mission met with unexpected success (vv. 17-20), but the ultimate source of joy for a messenger of Jesus is that those who proclaim the kingdom of God — “heaven” — are already members of it.

Worship Resources

Leader: Taste and see that the Lord is good.

People: Blessed is the one who takes refuge in God.

Leader: For in the shadow of the Almighty, we are clothed with compassion and love.

People: As the Lord showers mercy upon all who fear God, may we respond in a humble display of gentle care toward one another.

O God, the Father of the forsaken, the help of the weak, the supplier of the needy, you have diffused and proportioned your gifts to body and soul, in such sort that all may acknowledge and perform the joyous duty of mutual service; you teach us that love towards the human race is the bond of perfection and the initiation of your blessed self; open our eyes and touch our hearts, that we may see and do, both for this world and for that which is to come, the things which belong unto our peace. Strengthen me in the work I have undertaken; give me counsel and wisdom, perseverance, faith and zeal, and in your own good time, and according to your pleasure, prosper the issue. Pour into me a spirit of humility; let nothing be done but in devout obedience to your will, thankfulness for your unspeakable mercies and love to your adorable Son Christ Jesus. Amen.

—Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1801-1885), Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, English philanthropist.

May the blessings of God flow like a river within you, shine like sunlight from you, sparkle like the stars above you, and forever lead you on your way.

Hymns
O For a Heart to Praise My God
Just as I Am, Without One Plea
Shall We Gather at the River?

Worship and Praise*
Indescribable (Story, Reeves)
River of Grace (Nockels)
Speak, O Lord (Townend, Getty)

*For licensing and permission to reprint or display these songs on screen, go to ccli.com. The worship and praise songs suggested by Homiletics can be found in most cases on Google by using the title as the search term.

COMMENTARY

on 2 Kings 5:1-14