Episode 411 The Healing of Naaman (1 Kings 5:1-15)

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the Elisha and Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1-15. The story focuses on the Aramean general Naaman, who is successful in battle but hindered by a case of leprosy that no one can cure. When an Israelite girl tells Naaman to visit the prophet Elisha in Israel, it sets in motion a drama animated by the peculiar expectations of people in power about how the world should work—proper chains of authority, proper expressions of hospitality…and proper rituals of healing. Naaman is offended when Elisha doesn’t come to the door to see him and even more upset that Elisha should tell him to bathe in the river Jordan. We talk about the ways our expectations of how things should be can hinder our ability to experience the miraculous, how people outside of positions of power are often the ones who can see most clearly, and the possibility that God’s healing power is already in the world, not requiring someone to mediated it with a wave of the hand but only someone who can recognize God’s work and point others in the right direction.