Servants, Not Sovereigns

A Meditation on 2 Kings 5:1–14
Proper 9, RCL Year C

The Expectation Gap

Naaman was a great man — commander of the Syrian army, close to the king, victorious in battle. He was also a leper. His disease was the one enemy his military prowess couldn’t defeat, the one problem his position couldn’t solve.

It was a servant girl — a young Israelite captive in his household — who suggested to his wife that he might find healing through a prophet in Samaria. So Naaman arrives at Elisha’s door with everything except an appointment. He’s brought silver, gold, festal garments — the currency of miracles, he assumes. He’s traveled from Syria with letters of introduction, royal credentials, and clear ideas about how healing should unfold. Ceremony befitting a military commander. Ritual proportionate to his rank.

Instead, Elisha doesn’t even come to the door. He sends a messenger — a servant, no less — with instructions that sound more like a recipe than a revelation: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”

Naaman is furious. The prescription doesn’t look like medicine. It lacks the proper packaging. Where is the grand gesture, the laying on of hands, the invocation of the God of Israel? Why the muddy Jordan when the crystal rivers of Damascus run cleaner? “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?”

He turns to leave, his dignity intact but his disease unchanged. The great commander will return to Syria exactly as he came — powerful, respected, and dying.

But then his servants speak up. These nameless attendants offer counsel that will either save his life or cost them theirs: “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

It’s a striking reversal. The servants become the teachers. What first appears simple proves quietly transformative. Insight emerges from the margins.

Voices from the Margins

We often miss miracles because they arrive unannounced. They come through servants, not sovereigns. Through interruption, not ceremony. They speak in voices we’re trained to ignore.

The pattern runs throughout this story. A servant girl sets the entire journey in motion — a young Israelite captive with no credentials, no authority, no standing to offer medical advice to a Syrian commander. Just a displaced girl who somehow knows what the powerful don’t: that healing might be found in the most unlikely place.

When Naaman’s rage threatens to end his healing before it begins, salvation comes again from the margins. His servants risk everything by challenging his judgment, calling him “Father” and speaking with the intimacy of those who know him beyond his titles. They see past his wounded pride to his deeper need. They understand what he cannot: that healing requires not more effort but more humility. Not a louder command, but a quieter surrender.

This is the scandal of the story — insight emerges from the very people whose voices shouldn’t matter. We develop sophisticated filters for credibility that may simultaneously filter out grace.

I once stood at the altar rail of a small United Methodist church in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, holding the communion cup. I was a thirty-six-year-old seminary student then, freshly out of my first year at Duke Divinity. We were about two-thirds through Holy Communion when he knelt — a weathered man, rough around the edges, with hands calloused by a lifetime of work. As he reached to dip the bread, his hand began to tremble — violently. I thought, with no small judgment, “Is this the town drunk?”

But the next day he sought me out at the church. He didn’t wait for introductions.

“I need to explain about yesterday,” he said.
I told him he didn’t need to.
He said, “Oh, but I do.”

He told me about his father — a powerful man in town, respected and feared. As a young man, they’d had a falling out, and his father had used his influence to have him committed to the state hospital in Raleigh. Sixty days in a strait jacket. When he was released, he vowed never to speak to his father again. And he kept that vow. His father died decades later, unreconciled.

“You know that part in the communion invitation,” he said, “the part about coming forward if you’re at peace with your neighbor, if you’ve forgiven as you’ve been forgiven?”

I nodded.

“Well, every time I approach that Table,” he said, “I remember that I never forgave my father. That’s why my hand shakes when I reach for the cup.”

I sat still for a moment. And I remember thinking, “And I thought they taught theology in Divinity School.”

Here was a man I had dismissed, whose trembling hand I had misread entirely. But his weathered wisdom about forgiveness and the Eucharist carried more theological weight than my first year of academic study. Like Naaman’s servants, he spoke from the margins — calloused hands, rough edges, no formal credentials. Yet he grasped something essential about the cost of communion, about the weight of unfinished forgiveness.

I had almost missed the lesson because I didn’t trust the teacher.

The Scandal of the Simple

So Naaman listens. He swallows his pride and makes his way to the muddy Jordan. Seven times he dips himself in waters that seem unworthy of his disease, unremarkable for his desperation.

Why seven times? The repetition itself becomes part of the medicine — not the dramatic moment of transformation we expect, but the patient practice of trust. Dip. Rise. Dip again. Each immersion an act of faith that this simple, undignified prescription might actually work.

There’s no fanfare, no official witnesses, no dramatic declaration. Just a Syrian commander, alone in the river, following directions that make no sense. The healing comes not through spectacular intervention but through quiet obedience to what seems absurd.

This is how grace often works — not through the earthquake, wind, and fire we expect, but through the still small voice that whispers, “Try again. Trust this.” We are drawn to the heroic gesture, the radical transformation. But the invitation is usually smaller: Will you dip yourself in the Jordan? Will you trust the voice that came from below?

The muddy river becomes the vessel for miracle not because it possesses magical properties, but because it strips away Naaman’s ability to claim credit. He can only receive what he cannot earn, accept what he cannot control.

The scandal is not just that healing comes simply, but that it comes through surrender rather than achievement.

The Transformation

And it works. On the seventh immersion, Naaman emerges from the Jordan with flesh “like the flesh of a young boy.” The leprosy that no military victory could defeat, no royal physician could cure — gone. Washed away in water that seemed too ordinary, too accessible, too free.

But the deeper transformation is what happens next. Naaman returns to Elisha not with the arrogance of a vindicated commander, but with the humility of someone who has learned to receive. “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” he declares. This is not the voice of conquest but of conversion.

The man who arrived expecting ceremony leaves understanding grace. The commander who demanded dignity discovers that true healing requires the willingness to be vulnerable, to follow instructions that make no sense, to trust voices that carry no credentials.

The healing was always available. The Jordan had been flowing long before Naaman arrived. But transformation required his willingness to enter the water, to repeat the simple act, to trust that grace might be found in the most unlikely places through the most ordinary means.

Our Own Jordan Moments

The story ends, but the questions linger. What are our Jordan invitations? Where is God offering healing that we’re rejecting because it doesn’t match our expectations of how grace should arrive?

Perhaps it’s the counsel we dismiss because it comes from someone too young, too ordinary, too different from us. Perhaps it’s the simple practice we avoid because it lacks the drama we think transformation requires. Perhaps it’s the vulnerable step we refuse to take because it seems beneath our dignity or inadequate to our need.

We, too, arrive at healing with our own ideas about how it should unfold. We bring our credentials, our expectations, our demand for ceremony proportionate to our pain. We want the clear rivers of Damascus when God is offering the muddy Jordan. We seek the grand gesture when the invitation is quiet and small.

But the servants still speak, offering wisdom from the margins: “If the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

What voices are we trained to ignore? What simple acts of trust are we avoiding because they seem too humble, too ordinary, too free? Where might we be missing our miracle because we don’t trust the package it comes in?

The Jordan is still flowing. The invitation still stands. The question is not whether healing is available, but whether we’re willing to wade into waters that seem unworthy of our need, to trust the voices that speak from below, to discover that grace often arrives unannounced — through servants, not sovereigns; through interruption, not ceremony.

Will you dip yourself in the Jordan?