NAAMAN THE AMERICAN

2 Kings 5:1-14, Mark 1:40-45

There are two things important to say before I begin today's sermon. The first is a statement similar to what one often hears before a TV program or mini-series: "this story is based on real events." Well, the sermon today, which consists of a story, is that kindÉbased on a true story. With, of course, a few liberties taken. The second important thing to say is that the first delegation from this congregation to Haiti, to work with Pastor Luc's ministry, occurred in January of 1991.

Let us pray:
O come, Holy Spirit. Come as the fire, and burn. Come as the wind, and cleanse. Come as the light, and reveal. Come as the water, and refresh. Convict, convert and consecrate us until we are wholly yours. Amen.

The date is January 12, 1991, and a group of nine weary Americans step out into a blast of dusty, humid air outside the doors of Port au Prince International Airport; their first glimpse of Haiti is of dirty palm trees and street vendors dressed in American T-shirts. They are hawking their wares behind fold-up card tables: American whisky and cigarettes, cast-off American clothing, indigenous items carved of tropical wood. The ice and snow that they walked over to get to their terminal at Kennedy Airport that morning seemed a distant memory as they stepped into the 90 degree heat and sun and dirty greens and browns of Haiti, "The Land of Mountains."

They boarded a Mercedes minibus and rode past the people in the streets, some walking, some riding donkeys, and arrived at their hotel: The Magic Bud Inn. One member of the group had come from another destination and was already there, waiting for them. She emerged out of the darkness of the lobby (it was during the part of the evening when there were mandatory power outages in the city). She seemed eager to tell a story. She excitedly narrated the events of the previous day. Someone had been killed, just down the street: a member of the Tonton Macout, the notorious and brutal secret police that had kept the right-wing Duvalier family in power for so many years in Haiti. A crowd had castrated him and threw him onto a barricade of burning tires and garbage. They had left the body there for an entire day for everyone to see.

As she told the story, she could see in the eyes of her newly arrived companions the fear her words elicited. The group had debated whether to go at all, since shortly before their departure, there was an attempted coup by one of the Generals loyal to the old Duvalier regime, and the people were venting their anger at those suspected of having oppressed them for so long through acts of mob violence.

There in the hotel lobby, one member of the group remembered the discussion in preparation for the trip they had had in the Pastor's study, several months before coming: Will we be safe? Will we be targets of crime? Will we get sick?

Pastor Luc Deratus, their host for the journey who had been with them in the U.S., assured them on each score: "The Lord will take care of you. You must trust that God will protect you," he said with a quiet confidence tempered by years of living in the dangerous conditions of the land to which they were traveling. Pastor Luc, after all, was the reason they were going: to support his ministry, the three churches and school over which he presided.

The group held it together admirably, keeping their fear in check as they prepared to set up a medical clinic at several of the locations where Pastor Luc was ministering. Nevertheless, as they prepared themselves for worship at Pastor Luc's church in Port au Prince that Sunday, the members of the group talked of their anxieties, the shock to their system in encountering the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where more than 2/3rds of the residents survive on less than $1 per day. Some confided that they were able to sleep only with the aid of Xanax. "Better living through chemistry," one member joked.

In her journal, another member of the delegation wrote about her experience at the worship service that day, when during the altar call at the end, Pastor Luc called upon all those who desired healing, and he anointed them with oil, still in its original bottle: "Pompeii Extra Virgin" read the stained gold label. Ordinary olive oil, but it was obvious that through the faith of those people, it was more than just that. It carried something more: the healing power of Christ.

The woman wrote of the questions that had run through her mind that day, and how such a desolate place leaves little room for American sentimentality. Here's what she wrote that day:

Why were we there, moving around uneasily and looking about awkwardly? A young boy planted himself in the pew in front of me, and steadily stared at me through black eyes that were ringed with yellow like a cat's. I felt as though we had come down here for no other purpose than to observe them in their destitution, that we were looking at them as though they were pieces in a museum, or pictures at an exhibition. ¹

It was impossible not to ask such questions during an experience like that, especially at the beginning. But nonetheless, the members of the group found it somehow strangely transformative as they went about their work, setting up the medical clinic up in the mountains of Thoman, trying to provide some help in a sea of need. They found a strange kind of healing within themselves just to be there, just to survive the discomfort that was the daily reality of life for the people who lived there; the anxiety they had encountered in the beginning seemed to fade with the smiles of the people, the gratitude in their countenances. Somehow, in the dirty landscape pockmarked with coconut trees and caked with dust, they had found an entrance to the Kingdom of God.
One member of the group did a Bible study when they returned to The Magic Bud in Port au Prince, as they debriefed the week over some Beck's beers in the hotel cantina. It was on the story of Naaman in the Old Testament, from second Kings. "Naaman reminds me of an American," said the Doctor in the group, with a half-grin. "He's a Syrian general, they've just defeated the Israelites militarily, utterly crushed themÑhe's from the most powerful country on earth at the time, at least militarily. He's at the top of the heap. But there's a problem: he's got leprosy." The square-shouldered Presbyterian minister who was also a member of their delegation mentioned that leprosy wasn't only a skin disease at that time; it was a social disease. It was a disease that separated people out from society. It was greatly feared, and thought to be a punishment from God, he said.
"So, what would be the modern equivalent to leprosy in our culture?" asked the man with brown hair and a moustache, an assistant superintendent of schools back home. "I mean, leprosy's not on our radar screen. But, what would be the equivalent to us?"

After a pause, the youngest member of the delegation, a college student, piped in: "Anxiety," she said. "I think the chief problem of America is anxiety." She quoted her college psychology professor. "'We live in an age of anxiety.'"

"And what does he do? He goes to Israel for the cure," said the Pastor. "To the defeated country. It's almost like he travels to get Third World medicine, when he could go to the Mayo Clinic."

The nurse in the group continued: "And, he expects this elaborate cure from Elisha, the prophet he's heard so much about. Magic. Ritual. Pyrotechnics.

"Psychoanalysis," said the doctor. "But Elisha doesn't even come out to see him. Just tells him to go and bathe in the muddy river Jordan seven times. And after grumbling, he does it; he humbles himself and goes and does it. That's how he gets cured."

They paused, deep in thought. "I feel like this is our baptism," said a dark-haired woman with large glasses who had been silent through the Bible Study; she was also on staff at the church, their Pastoral Associate. "I feel as if that muddy river in Thoman, running by the village, where we were with the people--to wash in that like Naaman; it's our baptism. I feel as hard as this experience has been, to be here, to see all this suffering and to try to help--strange, but it's been healing for me."

People silently nodded their heads. The college student talked of her psychology class. "Like Eric Erickson said: the best cure for anxiety is to just go out and find someone to help."

The Pastor spied a bottle of olive oil on one of the chipped Formica tables in the cantina. He was surprised to see the label; "Pompeii Extra Virgin." He had a passing fantasy of some ritual, right there and then, of anointing one another with that ordinary oil, as if it would carry with it permanently the healing power of that experience; as if it marked forever their commitment to the poor. Yet he knew: their faith was enough. And the faith of the people they had encountered would always remain with them.

As they left the next day for the airport, they joked about how God had left them an oracle; God was speaking in Creole through the message written on the side of the little "tap-tap" that picked them up--the colorful pick-up truck like vehicle that the majority of people used as taxis and public transit. It said, "All things are possible."
But of course, they all knew that it wasn't just a joke. And that the hard work was still ahead: to work for justice for the poor, to create a new world--"all things are possible." They realized: Christ had somehow infected their hearts that week, and they now saw that all they had, all they were--their time, their abilities, their wealth--were not just some coinage to purchase the illusion of some secure future, a future which for all of us ends up in that same dust that seemed everywhere. No--all these gifts, right now, were to be applied to that eternity for which God had prepared them: that Kingdom--that feast table of rich and poor, black and white, sinner and saved--which, once entered, is hard to leave.
Amen.

¹ From the journal of Ruth Anderson.

February 19, 2006

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