Readings:
2 Kings 5:1-15; Psalms 42, 43; Luke 4:24-30
*So he (Naaman, the Syrian army commander) went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, as Elisha had told him to do. And his flesh became clean once more like the flesh of a little child. Returning to Elisha with his whole escort, he went in and stood before him, ‘Now I know’, he said, ‘that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’*2 Kings 5:14, 15 *Jesus came to Nazareth and spoke to the people in the synagogue: ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country… In the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’ When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.*Luke 4:24, 27-30
After his forty days in the desert, Luke writes, ‘Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in him, returned to Galilee’ and to the synagogue at Nazareth where, at first, the congregation approved ‘and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips’. When however he began to speak of God’s healing of the pagan rather than the Jew, their doubts began with the comment, ‘This is Joseph’s son, surely?’ and things went from bad to worse. The sudden change in the congregation’s mood, from acclaim to murder-ous rejection, is extraordinary, until we reflect a little and realize we still react in much the same way.
The Old Testament makes it clear that Israel was chosen to be God’s people, not simply for its own sake, but ‘as a light to the Gentiles’, as a sign of God’s love for all creation. Its election was not just a privilege to be enjoyed, but a cosmic responsibility to be fulfilled, yet this truth was often forgotten, so that Jews would delight in their own sense of being the elect, a delight enhanced by the thought that everyone else was damned, the kind of narrowness which is attacked in the prophecy of Jonah. That same narrow attitude lives on and flourishes in Christianity, Until recently, most Christian denominations justified their separateness by claiming that in their body alone could salvation be found, so that any step towards another denomination was a step away from God. It would be nice to think that we had left such narrowness behind. Unfortunately, we have not. Priests and ministers who practise ecumenism may no longer be hurled over cliffs, but if they try to live the ecumenism of Jesus, who came to draw all people to himself, they will soon meet with disapproval. A minister had to leave his parish in Northern Ireland because he had exchanged greetings at Christmas with his Roman Catholic colleague.
The disapproval of ecumenism is usually more subtle, and dressed up in the language of orthodoxy. We continue having our separate churches (we must be loyal to our own traditions), separate training of pastors (for, after all, the needs of our respective people are different), separate schools (for it is right to ensure a solid grounding in faith for our own children). Preaching still tends to warn against dangers rather than to invite and encourage people to read the signs of the times and recognise God at work in the most unlikely places. If clergy, for example, spent more energy in pastoral help for Christians married across the denominations and less in creating difficulties in such marriages, more energy in promoting Christian unity and less in trying to uphold regulations prohibiting intercommunion, we would all benefit. We would recognize Christ bringing good news to the poor and proclaiming liberty to captives, not in some distant places, but in our own minds and hearts and in our own locality.
Prayer
O God, free us from all false and distorted images of you which prevent us from recognizing, learning from, and cooperating with you in your saving action in all peoples. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.