11/08/2026 - "A Healing Place" (2 Kings 5:1-14)

Scripture 2 Kings 5:1-14:

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.“By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

~

Namaan is one of a few examples in Scripture of somebody living with a chronic illness, which is something I can relate to and I know many of you can as well. For me, I easily get headaches and migraines because of bright lights and loud sounds. So now I wear tinted glasses and sometimes earplugs to prevent them from coming on. You might have had and continue to have long, difficult battles with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and conditions that doctors are still struggling to give a name to. And if you don’t, you probably have a loved one who does.

Naaman’s condition is called leprosy in most translations, although it’s possible it was another skin condition and leprosy is just the closest translation we have to it. And we can imagine that when his symptoms first showed up he put all the wealth and power he had as the commander of the army of Aram to work trying to find a cure. Just like today he might’ve gone from doctor to doctor, treatment to treatment, trying to find something to cure him. Maybe he was able to find an ointment that reduced his symptoms, figured out what cloths made his symptoms worse and which didn’t, but he never found a cure.

By the time our story starts, he doesn’t seem to be looking for a cure anymore. But, as I’m sure many of you who live with chronic illnesses can relate to, he keeps an ear out in case he hears of some other new option. Some other new treatment, medication, or even prayer that might just help. So when he overhears his wife’s captured slave girl tell his wife about a prophet in Samaria who could cure him, he goes immediately to the king to get permission to try.

And this is no small task! Aram and Israel’s relationship was always pretty contentious. The two kingdoms are not in all-out war if the king is willing to send the head of his army into Israelite territory with a letter explaining that they come in peace. But it’s clear by the king of Israel’s reaction that their relationship is tense if his first reaction to Namaan’s request is that the king of Aram is looking for an excuse to outright invade Israel. But Namaan is willing to do anything, go anywhere, and pay anything in order to get cured. And ultimately, he is when he washes himself seven times in the Jordan river like Elisha commanded him to

Which is the part of the story where a lot of us stop relating to Namaan. Because many people who live with chronic illnesses don’t get cured. There may be treatments that help them live a normal life or as close to it as possible, but a cure is out of reach for most. And this doesn’t apply to just physical conditions, chronic illnesses. All of us have needed healing and will continue to need healing, whether it is physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.

Whether it’s depression or anxiety or PTSD or any number of mental health conditions.

Whether it’s after the death of a loved one, after an accident, after a house fire, or any other number of traumatic incidents.

We can even need healing from theology that still haunts us even though we no longer believe in it, or churches that pushed us out of their pews and away from our faith community when we were no longer willing to follow their harmful ideology.

And Heaven knows our entire country needs healing from the violence, injustice, and pain that has continued to build and compound since maybe even our very founding.

We may never be fully cured, but we will always keep seeking healing, keep seeking a better way to live and move forward.

Over the past year, I have come to learn how many of you found your way to UCLB, and why you chose to stay. And for many of you, the inciting incident was because you had something in your life you were healing from. For some of you it was the loss of a spouse or a child. For others it was a medical diagnosis that came out of the blue that led you to seek spiritual comfort and care. And for many of you, it was running up against a faith institution that you no longer agreed with at best, and that caused you serious harm at worst.

So when you were left adrift wondering where to go, you found your way here. And while you may not have found all the answers to life and faith in these pews and in the fireplace room over cookies and coffee, you found community. And in this community, you experienced the love of God and your neighbors, and you found healing.

160 years ago, Rockland Union Church was started as an alternative to the predominately Methodist and Catholic influence in this area. We say that our founders wanted to have fun, to dance and play cards, but it went deeper than that. Our founders wanted a place where they didn’t have to pretend to be somebody they weren’t. They wanted to bring all of themselves to their church, into community with each other; including their pain and loss and grief, but also their joy and freedom. So they built a church where everyone could “Come as they are.” A place where people could set down, at least temporarily, the pressures of society to look and act a certain way, the pressure to believe a certain theology, and the pressure to pretend that life was picture-perfect when it wasn’t. They built a church where people could come and find healing and freedom. And now, 160 years later, the Union Church of Lake Bluff is still a place where so many people have found that healing and freedom.

We’re a church that still invites everyone to “Come as you are,” but we all want to leave better and more whole than when we came in. But that healing and freedom cannot start and stop at our doors.

While of course we want to invite people into our pews so they can experience that healing and freedom, we also must bring that healing and freedom into our community. We pride ourselves on being an outreach church that provides help and financial support in times of crises. We strive to be the people who drop everything to show up for somebody when life crashes down on them. And that is all amazing, those are all important ways we step in when harm is happening to try and mitigate it and help people, organizations, and communities stabilize.

But how can we as people of faith, as a church, go beyond that too? How can we take what healing and freedom we have found here in our pews and bring it to others? Because just like Namaan found out when Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan River, healing isn’t glamorous. It’s not grand gestures and miracles from Heaven most of the time. It’s often as simple and commonplace as taking a bath or a shower.

But unlike Namaan, healing takes time, and effort. It is not a quick cure. It is steady, often thankless, work that we may never see the full results of our lifetimes. It is showing up and continuing to show up even when it looks like there’s no payoff. It is continuing to volunteer in the kitchens that keep people fed. It is continuing to keep having hard conversations, even if it seems like the other person isn’t listening. And it’s continuing to let the smallest moments of success continue to drive you, whether it’s a hug from somebody to thank you for your listening ear, or knowing that somebody doesn’t have to worry about dinner tonight because of the casserole you dropped on their doorstep just because. It’s continuing to show up and be the hands and feet of Christ to everyone once the crisis has blown over and the new ordinary has settled in.

So may we continue be the kind of church that shows up in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.