2 Kings 5:1-3 & 7-15c
Saint Luke 17:11-19
Anyone who has had any exposure to theatre has, at least once, heard the colloquialism, "there are no small parts, only small actors."1
That is most certainly true in the case of Gavroche in the play Les Misérables. He is a small actor, with a small part, who plays a large role in moving the plot along.
Don’t worry if you didn’t recognize that name. I had to look it up in the Playbill cast of characters.
Gavroche is the trouble making, but kindhearted, street urchin who wanders around Paris, eats what he can find, and sleeps where he can. Because he is so small he can move with impunity to spy on Javert, the obsessed police inspector, and the forces bent on destroying the revolution. He is continually bringing back important information even though both friend and foe dismiss him because of his size.
At a crucial moment when inspector Javert has infiltrated the ranks of the revolutionaries it is little Gavroche who spots him, identifies him, and exposes his treachery. After the larger-than-life inspector has given his false information, the little fellow reveals the true identity of the spy by singing:
Good evening, dear inspector,
Lovely evening, my dear
I know this man, my friends,
His name’s inspector Javert
So don’t believe a word he says,
‘Cause none of it is true
This only goes to show
What little people can do.2
Little people, doing little things, can bring great men to their knees as Gavroche did to Javier or lead them to restoration as the unnamed little people did for a mighty commander named Naaman in today’s first reading.
This proud and powerful man is about to be felled by a little thing.
They didn’t know it then, but we know now that Leprosy is caused by a simple slow growing bacterium with a very long name. Now it is manageable with medication, but for Naaman it would mean total isolation from his friends, his family, his community. He would not only lose his position in the army but everything and everybody he held dear.
We know what that is like! Better than ever before we understand what Naaman was facing.
He was going to have to stay away from the people and places he loved. We know what that is like. While we had to limit our indoor gatherings to eight or ten his limit was zero unless it was with fellow lepers in his “bubble.”
He was going to have to keep his distance. We know what that is like too. Naaman however was not only going to have to stay six feet from others it would be more like 60 feet at best. And he would have to shout, like the lepers in the Gospel, “Tamei! Tamai!" Unclean! Unclean!” as he walked down the street to warn others that he was contagious. We had to isolate at home.
And he didn’t just face a mask mandate, he would have to keep his whole body covered in clothes that were essentially rags. Just think about what some would have said about that!
His life looked bleaker than ours’s did when his was infected by something as small as a bacteria and our lives were infected by something as small as a virus that caused the whole of society to, at times, seem like it ground to a halt.
Little things can have profound effects. It can even cause the proud and powerful to listen to the little people around them. Naaman is about to find out what little people can do but first he must put aside his pride for an instant and listen to the voice of a slave girl.
For reasons I do not understand some verses got left out of the story. They are important because while “little voices” can lead us in the right directions sometimes it is the voices of the powerful that can lead us astray. The slave girl says “prophet” and the commander and his king hear “potentate.”
Naaman goes to his king who not only sends a letter to the prophet’s king with a request for healing but includes a treasure trove of what can only be called “bribes” to convince the King of Israel to heal an enemy who just defeated him in battle. Is it any wonder that when Naaman tells his king what the little girl had said the king totally misunderstands the whole situation.
“Go and visit the prophet,” the {Naaman’s} king told him. “And I’ll send a letter of introduction to the king of Israel.”
So he went off, taking with him about 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothes.
A big-time bribe that backfires.
Naaman delivered the letter to the king of Israel. The letter read, “When you get this letter, you’ll know that I’ve personally sent my servant Naaman to you; heal him of his skin disease.”
When the king of Israel read the letter, he was terribly upset, ripping his robe to pieces. He said, “Am I a god with the power to bring death or life that I get orders to heal this man from his disease? What’s going on here? That king’s trying to pick a fight, that’s what!”3
Leave it to the powerful to almost start a war! When the little voices get shut out terrible things start to happen.
Only a prophetic voice can stop the potential carnage and lead to healing.
So enters God’s prophet who hears that his king is having a melt down and tells the king to just send the ailing man to him.
With the great fanfare and bluster that the powerful are so proud of Naaman shows up at the prophet’s house with horses and chariots and, no doubt, a great cloud of dust.
Elisha is having none of it. He ignores Naaman’s attempts to control the narrative through coercion or seduction. Instead, Elisha takes Naaman’s peacock presentation and raises it to the level of the divine, where a Living God needs none of his show.4
He offers a little solution, not in person but through a servant, another little person with a small voice. “Take a bath in the Jordan” the message reads. “About seven times should do it. You’ll be as good as new. If there is anything else call the prophet in the morning.”
The powerful man looking for a power show is not only not impressed he is furious.
“Look,” he said, “I thought at least he would come out and talk to me! I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call upon the name of the Lord his God and heal me! Aren’t the Abana River and Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? If it’s rivers I need, I’ll wash at home and get rid of my leprosy.” So he went away in a rage.5
What we have here is a powerful man pouting which is a recipe for disaster.
Once again it is the small voices of his servants who puts there commander on the right track to healing. Servants who took orders and didn’t give them. Servants who Naaman told what to do and not the other way around. Unnamed servants who, in the grand scheme of things, were little people who were supposed to keep silent end up saving the day.
“Just do it!” is their advice perhaps being the first to utter the now famous slogan. “Just do it! What can it hurt! If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Just do it! Stop fussing and fuming and give it a shot.”
There is more resignation than faith at work here. Naaman has no more reason to believe that the waters of the Jordan would do the job than some people thought that a simple shot in the arms of enough people would return a country to normalcy. Unlike Naaman’s servants we all knew and still know, people who balked, and hesitated, and make up excuse after excuse for not getting “the jab” all because they were listening to people with political power who had no idea what they were talking about.
Naaman listened. He listened and we are told when he emerged from the river he looked down and saw something amazing. The little, simple act of taking a bath gave this powerful man the biggest and the best news ever.
He had commanded large armies and because of his status roamed the halls of power but as he saw himself, perhaps reflected in the waters of the river he was emerging from, he noticed that his skin was, the Good Book tells us, “like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”6
A big important man became like a little child and for that he gave thanks.
Just like the Samaritan leper did with Jesus. Another powerless outcast who serves as an example.
With no priest to show himself to or no family and friends nearby had nowhere to go. He was not like the others who could immediately show themselves to their priest, be certified, and then go home. This guy had only one option, so he returns to his new best friend in the world, Jesus, who not only healed him but made him whole by allowing him to return to his family, his friends, his community. He gave thanks, a little thing, but a big thing really.
Powerful people tend to think they know everything and that they are in complete control of their lives. They think that they can order the world to give them exactly what they want and that all the little people around them are only there to do their bidding, be their servants. They put their faith in the power and get caught up in the fear of losing it. They become enslaved to their chariots, fine clothes, palaces and their bribes thinking they, and they alone, can bend the world to their will.
But to all of that this story offers a big, “no”, a big “not so fast” and reminds us that it is the small actors, the little things, that can make all the difference.
We should know this because not more than a few years ago a small, microscopic virus entered into our world, just as a bacteria entered Naaman’s, and caused enormous havoc. It wasn’t those in power {some of whom only added to the confusion} but doctors, and nurses, first responders and researchers, and lab technicians whose names we will never know who saved our lives and the life of the world.
It was the little people, the nameless lowly servants of God who, like the unnamed young girl enslaved to Naaman’s wife and bound to her service, remembers that there might be a prophet in her home country that saved the day.
Or the unnamed messenger of that very same prophet who brings the general his marching orders and points him in the direction of his healing.
Or the servants of the commander who urge their master to follow through on the advice he was given even if it didn’t come from an important person, and go down to the river and “just wash, will you?”
The little people are the heroes of Naaman’s story and ours. Today we are reminded that we all have a part to play. In the wise words of the late Dr. Fred B. Craddock:
Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. Most likely this week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of cold water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.7
If nothing else today’s story reminds us that all of us have a part to play. It may be a small part, but we are to play it and play it well. Play it as if we were center stage at the Lyric Opera or headliners on Broadway. If we do, we just might discover that Gavroche was right and it will go a long way to show what, in the service of God, little people can do.
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1. Essay Writer, “There Are No Small Parts, Only Small Actors,” literatureessaysamples.com, May 15, 2019, https://literatureessaysamples.com/there-are-no-small-parts-only-small-actors/.
2. Alain Boubide and Claude Michel Schonberg, “Les Misérables Script,” Google (Word Press, 2011),https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=enBzLm9yZ3xtaWNoYWVsLWNvc3RlbGxvfGd4OjYzOGEzMGE3ZmFiYTNhOGY, 70.
3. 2 Kings 5:5-7. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).
4. Rachel Wrenn, “Commentary on 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15C,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, September 9, 2022), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-28-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-3-7-15c-5.
5. 2 Kings 5:11-12. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]
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