One Foot in the World 3: Simple Things

“Has to be done in a certain way, or it doesn’t count. There’s a special knife, special robes, and a special hat. It’s surprisingly specific. It’s going to take me ages to get them all together.”

Being Human S4 E1, ‘Eve of the War’ (2012)

So you know Naaman the Syrian?

 

Here he is, trying to give Elisha a thank-you present. My own thanks are due to Bible Vector for this nice out-of-copyright picture.

If you’ve been a Christian for some time and you’re shaking your head, well, this just goes to prove my point that we need to be teaching the Bible to one another in greater depth, but leaving that aside, here’s the story.¹ Naaman was one of the king of Syria’s top military guys, but he also had a skin disease of the sort you really definitely didn’t want in the Ancient Near East. His Israelite slave girl suggested that her compatriot the prophet Elisha would be able to cure this condition and Naaman thought that possibility was worth a shot. So he got together an insane amount of cash and pootled off to Israel.

The getting togther of said insane amount of cash was the first indication that, when Naaman undertook that act of faith of going to see the prophet, he brought with him not only gold and silver and outfits and horses and chariots, but also a vast collection of misguided preconceptions as to how this process ought to go. He was clearly expecting to pay a high fee for his miracle, whereas Elisha quite rightly wouldn’t accept anything in return for being the channel through which God manifested some element of his almighty power. On top of that, instead of going straight to Elisha, Naaman initially went to the king of Israel – Jehoram son of Ahab at this point – who consequently assumed that, in sending one of his esteemed generals with a request that Jehoram couldn’t possibly fulfil, the king of Syria was trying to engineer a pretext for war. Presumably what Naaman was thinking was that if Elisha had the power to cure illnesses, he must have been a top-of-the-heap kind of guy, in with the in-crowd and in favour with the king – whereas in actual fact, at the last meeting between Elisha and Jehoram that we have recorded, the former reprimanded the latter for persisting in his parents’ idolatrous ways, and would have refused to even speak to him if Jehoshaphat king of Judah, whom Elisha respected, hadn’t also been there.² Still, Elisha now sent word to Jehoram to send Naaman to him. So Naaman went, and arrived in full pomp and circumstance, and was met by a messenger who told him to wash seven times in the Jordan.

Well, that didn’t fit with how Naaman had thought this was going to go either. Wasn’t this holy man supposed to at least come out of his house and stand there and call on the name of his God and wave his hand over the afflicted area, and thus cure him? That was how these kinds of healings were supposed to work, wasn’t it? And, all right, if he had to wash in a river, if that was part of the treatment, fine, but he knew of much nicer rivers back in Syria that would surely be far more effective than this muddy little trickle of a thing they called the Jordan.

Naaman had stepped out so far in faith: he’d taken the word of a slave-girl that the prophet of the LORD could work wonders, and he’d gone all the way to Israel off the back of that. But his ideas about how the wondrous works of the LORD ought to be achieved were pure worldliness. He was expecting them to be achieved through wealth and in a context of high societal status; he preferred a flash-looking ritual process, or at least something that would take place in the surroundings he was accustomed to and liked, to the simple thing the LORD commanded him to do. He thought he knew what obtaining favour and blessing from the LORD was supposed to look like, but he was basing those presuppositions on his own purely worldly experiences; so when the real word of the LORD came along, looking very different to how he expected, he didn’t believe that obeying it would achieve the ends he desired.

The story has a happy ending, of course, but only because Naaman agreed to let go of his worldly preconceptions, or at least suspend them for long enough to obey what the LORD had said. God hadn’t asked him to do anything particularly difficult or demanding; in a way, that was the problem. It was all just too low-key for Naaman. Surely no extraordinary supernatural effect could be accomplished by so little a thing; surely resources and prestige and impressive rituals (perhaps with special robes and a special hat) were required? Or, if he were to accept God’s instruction, surely it would work better with some adjustments to bring it onto more familiar territory?

No. No, it wouldn’t. Theoretically, we all know that: when God says to do something, you do it, no more and no less. The totality of his power is demonstrated all the more when it operates outside the structures and commodities the world thinks is important. You’re all with me so far, right?

So now, with that in mind, can I take you to the end of Acts 2?

And they were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. And there came to every soul fear, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all those who believed were together and they had everything in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing them to all, as any had need; and day by day remaining in attendance, united, in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they received food in delight and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favour before the whole people. And the Lord added those being saved day by day to their number.³

 

What a lot of bread to be broken. Mmm, bread.

Wonders and signs; people coming to salvation every day. Sounds pretty amazing, right? Sounds like a seriously desirable end? So what was it that was causing this jazz to happen? Well, I can see four things in that first sentence: teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer. Four simple things that the believers devoted themselves to, that they persisted in – all of them day by day, not some of them once or twice a week and on special occasions – and look what happened. The rest of the paragraph, I think, is explaining rather than expanding that list: devotion to fellowship leads to holding everything in common (these are cognate terms in the Greek); and thereby everyone’s needs are supplied, leading to thanksgiving and praise as part of devotion to prayer; you get the gist, I won’t work through every detail (consider that homework if you like). Day by day, the church should meet for teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer. Four things. That’s it.

But surely no extraordinary supernatural effect could be accomplished by such simple little things? Surely we need more than that if we’re to achieve the ends we desire, the spread of the gospel and the glorification of God? Surely we need resources (like buildings and salaried ministers), and prestige (through, say, advertising and slick apologetics and enough of a respected place in society to influence policy-making), and impressive rituals (whether in our mind that looks like high mass with robes and incense, or concert-style musical worship with strobe lights and smoke machines, or even just a really well-put-together kids’ holiday club)? Or surely God’s instructions would work better with some adjustments to bring them onto more familiar territory: ‘everything in common’ sounds a bit uncomfortably commune-ish, for instance, so maybe we could tone that down and just ask everybody to pay tithes of their income into a church fund that pays for those buildings and salaried ministers we decided we needed? Now the thing looks almost like a social club with an unspecified membership fee. Familiar territory indeed.

On one level, yes, God has asked something difficult and demanding of us, in that we’re to take up our cross and crucify our flesh on it on a daily basis. But on another level, our Lord’s yoke is easy and his burden light.⁴ As the Church, we’re to devote ourselves, day by day, to teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer. That’s it. And I really do believe that if we do that, without veering off after our worldly preconceptions about how this process ought to go, how we expect our desired ends to be achieved, we’ll open up the way for extraordinary things to happen. The totality of God’s power is demonstrated all the more when it operates outside the structures and commodities the world thinks is important. He is ready and willing to bless our obedience; he blessed Naaman’s, irritated and reluctant as it was, and unlike Naaman, we, why, we are already our Father’s children with his favour and blessing irrevocably bestowed on us in Christ. Naaman was an outsider to God’s people – and in a way, that gave him an excuse for his worldly attitudes. We who have the truth of the gospel and the full body of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit living in us have no such excuse.

In this little series, I’ve been arguing that the church – as far as my experience of it has extended – has one foot in the world. I’ve been arguing that we’re stunting our own growth by failing to make space for all members of the body to exercise their higher giftings.⁵ Perhaps you’ve received the impression that I’m urging us to do more and work harder, piling up more demands and commitments on top of what we’re already doing; that’s really not what I’m going for. In some ways, I think, we need to do a lot less. Naaman didn’t need to bring shedloads of cash or visit the king or undergo a fancy ritual or bathe in his own preferred rivers; he just had to do a simple thing God asked of him. And we too, adelphoi, we just need to do the simple things God asks of us.

Teaching. Fellowship. Breaking of bread. Prayer. That is what the operation of the church should look like, day by day. Everything of the world that we’ve attached to that can be unceremoniously stripped away.

Are you still with me? And even if you’re not, would you pull a Naaman and give it a reluctant try? I anticipate that the results could be truly extraordinary.

Footnotes

¹ You can check it out for yourself in 2 Kings 5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+5&version=ESVUK.

² That story took place a couple of chapters before: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+3&version=ESVUK.

³ My own translation, but with no substantial differences from the ESV: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+2&version=ESVUK. Quick note for interest: my phrases ‘devoting themselves’ and ‘remaining in attendance’ are actually rendering the same Greek word.

⁴ For those ones, you’re looking at Matthew 16:24/Mark 8:34/Luke 9:23, and Matthew 11:30.

⁵ If you’re wondering where the exercise of higher giftings fits into the four things laid out in Acts 2, I’d say it’s covered by ‘the apostles’ teaching’: both of those things refer to the preaching of the word.