I want to give you two stories of perspective.

One.

Over the years,

I have learned that every life circumstance,

even a crisis,

can nourish your soul.

Recently, the farm and home

that I have loved so much for so many years

burned down in a horrible fire.

Everything that I owned,

without exception,

was lost.

There was even speculation

that foul play was involved.

At moments like this,

we stand at a fork in the road.

If we take the fork most commonly traveled,

we collapse,

we give up,

feeling hopeless and defeated.

We focus on the negatives,

losing ourselves in the "problem."

We point to our unhappy circumstances

to rationalize our negative feelings.

This is the easy way out.
It takes,

after all,

very little effort to feel victimized.

We can, however,

take the other fork.

We can view the unhappy experience

as an opportunity for a new beginning.

We can keep our perspective,

look for the growth opportunities,

and find an inner reservoir of strength.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Handbook for the Soul (New York: Little, Brown & Co, 1995), 49.

Two.

My former professor and friend Gene Lowry

tells of going to preach at a church in the countryside of Missouri

that a student was serving while in seminary.

Like many built in the 19^th century

this church had a cemetery to it's side

with a stone and iron grate fence around it.

Lowry observed that

the parsonage was located

on the opposite side of the cemetery

from the church.

He questioned the pastor about this,

"Am I mistaken

or do you have to walk through the cemetery

to get to the church."

"Unless I want to walk all the way around

and over a couple of fences."

And then the pastor jokes,

"Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I fear no evil."

"What's it like?"

asked Lowry.

"I think of them as a cloud of witnesses,

people who built the church,

people who were born here,

lived here,

practiced faith here,

and died here...

people who passed on this community.

I walk through this cloud of witnesses every Sunday morning...

on my way to weddings,

to funerals.

But that's not what is strange."

"Huh?

Grunted Lowry.

"The parsonage is only about 20 years old.

When the man came with his bulldozer

to push out the dirt for the foundation

he found,

in the pile of dirt,

bones,

human bones."

After a little checking and talking

to some of the ancients around town

they found they had dug up the grave yard

of former slaves who had served the members of the church

but were buried behind the cemetery,

outside the walls of respectability.

Can you hang on?

I'll tell you the rest of the story...

but not just yet.

Read 2 Kings 5:1-14

Mazes.

Normally we try to avoid any sort of a maze,

anything that leads to confusion and despair.

but not for people.

Certainly not for kings, princes or politicians.

Not for someone as important as Namaan.

this is precisely where the poor man of our story finds himself:

in a maze,

a labyrinth,

a puzzle,

conundrum,

befuddlement.

Today, mazes are hot.

Labyrinths,

created on ancient patterns dating back 6,000 years,

are popping up all over the country.

People of all faiths

and people longing to re-connect to faith

come to walk labyrinths.

"I found peace and a sense of God's presence

that I had not experienced since childhood,"

responds a labyrinth walker.

Some of the earliest forms of labyrinths

are found in Greece,

dating back to 2500-2000 BC.

and are found at the core of civilization...

embossed on coins and pottery.

And now in our time

they've been mowed and shaped in fields,

installed in church foyers and cathedral naves,

laid out in back yards,

painted on parking lots.

Kind of A-maze-ing, huh?

Those who walk the labyrinths testify that

the experience evokes healing and self-knowledge,

serenity and anxiety reduction.

"If you walk it with the right frame of mind,

I think you're going to be a different person when you come out it,"

gushes Maggie Moschell to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Sounds far-fetched,

doesn't it?

We've all been forced to drive circles in parking lots,

scavenging for spaces,

and there's rarely any stress reduction in that exercise!

But labyrinth-lovers encourage us

to give the coil a chance.

Here's the drill:

Walkers start at the sole opening of the maze

and wind their way around the circles.

At the center,

some stop to read, think or pray;

sometimes people who are grieving

leave an object there.

Then they follow the same path out.

"It's a good metaphor for life,"

says Andrea Pronko, a Loveland, Ohio, arts director

who's also a labyrinth installer.

"You get really frustrated because you can't see where you're going,

and you have to trust that the path will take you to the center,

you must really walk by faith, not by sight."

(Julie Irwin, "Peace found in ancient coil," The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 29, 1999).

I don't think I'm over-simplifying to say

life feels like a labyrinth at times --

with tortuous turns and stupefying setbacks --

so maybe some insight can be found

in a meditative maze.

In today's lesson from 2 Kings 5,

the army commander Naaman has been whacked with a cruel condition:

He's a leper,

suffering from one of the sickening diseases of the skin that

ravages people throughout the world,

eating away skin,

bones and joints,

and often resulting in deformity,

paralysis or even death.

He's got a disease.

Any of you know about dis-ease.

Now you know why I started by talking about mazes.

The main thing we want

is out of our dis-ease.

So Naaman,

commander of the army of king Aram ...

is looking for healing,

for a way out.

He's a mighty man,

a gifted warrior,

able to throttle enemies with superior strategies.

Naaman knows spears and swords and patrols and sorties ...

but in the face of this hideous hide condition he is absolutely powerless,

he knows nothing about leprosy except that he's got it,

and he needs a cure.

Thus begins his walk in the labyrinth.

For him,

we can imagine that

the maze includes some meandering through

the resources available in his own country,

all of which fail to free him

from his affliction.

Next he turns,

at the suggestion of a captured little maidservant --

yeah, he's that desperate,

to seek some alternative holistic medicine

south of the border.

And being a man of power and wealth

Naaman brings with him

signs of his power and wealth.

Silver and Gold and Fine Clothes...

to lay on the healer

who set him free from dis-ease.

The practitioner,

a man of God named Elisha,

sends a servant out to greet him...

won't come out himself...

Naaman is a bit astounded...

he has come all this way

with all this silver and gold and fine clothes

and his entourage...

which is quite impressive...

And Elisha...

sends out...

not a nurse...

an RN or LN,

not a tech,

but the janitor...

the janitor...

the servant...

with a message...

a prescription...

take a dip in the muddy labyrinth called

the Jordan River.

Don't try to get out of your dis-ease

without going deep into it first.

Naaman becomes angry

and insists that

there are bigger, better and clearer rivers

in his own country.

"Could I not wash in them, and be clean?"

he sputters as he stomps away (2 Kings 5:12).

And he's right.

There are many rivers of healing available to us today.

In fact,

for almost every agonizing aspect of human life,

we can name an institution,

a science,

a method

or a school of thought

that has been created to respond to that particular problem:

• If you are physically ill,

  you can turn to medicine.

• If you are mentally ill,

  you can count on psychiatry.

• If you have trouble expressing your emotions,

  you can join a sensitivity group

  or an encounter group.

Many of these secular "rivers" of help are extremely effective.

But it is not enough for us

to have physical, mental and emotional wholeness.

One of the wrenching realities of life

is that many

otherwise sound and talented people

suffer from a kind of spiritual leprosy.

medicine, psychiatry, encounter groups and government programs

are not,

by themselves,

the river of healing.

What is needed for spiritual wholeness

is for the various aspects of human life --

body, mind, conscience, emotions, reason and will --

to be organized around a human spirit

that is committed to God.

If we follow the labyrinth to the center,

the process may seem murky and muddy,

unreasonable and inconvenient.

the fullness of life is found.

Following the path to spiritual wholeness requires humility,

the kind of humility that is finally willing to obey,

something as necessary for us as it is for Naaman,

the mighty man who struggles to follow

the seemingly unintelligible instructions of Elisha.

"Go, wash in the Jordan seven times,"

suggests the prophet,

and to a military man like Naaman,

accustomed to strategies

grounded in precedent and practicality,

these words sound absurd.

But some of Naaman's servants,

knowing full well that the mighty man can't resist a challenge,

egg him on by taunting,

"You would have accepted

a truly difficult command

from the prophet.

Why not respond to an easy one,

'Wash, and be clean'?" (2 Kings 5:13).

So Naaman nods in reluctant agreement,

strides down to the Jordan,

dunks himself in the muddy river seven times,

and emerges without a spot of leprosy --

he's completely healed and made whole.

Obedience is the key.

Obedience to the man of God who says,

"Enter the muddy maze."

Obedience to the word of a God who says,

"Walk by faith,

not by sight."

Obedience along the lines of modern labyrinth-lovers

who find that their disciplined walk gives them a chance to cry --

to open themselves to feelings of

hurt, sadness, grief, disappointment, betrayal, pain or fear,

and to bring these deep and honest feelings to God,

who coaxes them always toward completeness.

Sometimes we assume that life is

or should be

a straight-line experience

leading to happiness and wholeness.

A linear movement from a to z

with a pot of Gold at the end.

but my life is seldom a straight-line experience,

but rather is filled with innumerable conundrums

through which we can find a center --

a center which is always located in the will of God.

So what is the will of God?

Many of us stand with Naaman

pondering strange instructions.

Naaman's was,

"If you want to be cured of your leprosy,

go wash in old Jordan."

For a lot of us

the message that comes

in a silent ache of the soul

is,

"If you want to be cured of your dis-ease...

pray...

not just once, pray...

or be reconciled...

or get over your anger...

or get over yourself..."

for it is causing the destruction of your soul.

And at root,

we are all hearing forms of the same advice

that the church has been giving for centuries:

"Trust God

and be made whole."

It may not be the sentence we were expecting,

but it's the one we need to hear.

And to learn the will of God...

as in all acts of commitment to God,

once is not enough.

A single dip in the muddy labyrinth

is never enough for authority-resistant creatures

such as Naaman ...

and ourselves.

Seven plunges are required --

or 70 times seven.

drown our obsession with precedent and practicality,

and overcome our hostile resistance

to the guidance of our God.

Spiritual wholeness requires

a deep daily dip in the healing waters of obedience,

and the path of the quickly flowing maze

is completely perplexing.

When we go under we can't see at all,

the current pushes us

and we strangely lose our balance

and begin to wobble.

can't we at least be in a clean river

where we can maintain control?

"Not if you want to be healed.".

When we take this faithful leap,

we discover that

the water is healing

and the wandering itself is revealing --

the twists and turns of the labyrinthine experience

actually lead to clarity,

not confusion.

Amazing insights erupt

whenever we leap and swim
and wander the amazing maze of life

in obedience to God.

Walking the Lord's path,

we discover that it is truly more blessed to give

than to receive.

... that it is impossible to serve

both God and wealth

... that those who find their lives will lose them,

and those who lose their lives for Christ's sake will find them

...that peace finally comes...

not when the lamb has destroyed the lion...

but when the lamb and the lion lie down together.

... that unless we change and simply have faith like children,

we will never enter the kingdom of heaven

... that whoever serves

the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned

is really serving Jesus himself.

These surprising truths are made clear

only through multiple dips in the muddy maze,

for they are certainly not part of the path

that the world lays out for us....

these require taking turns that seem

unreasonable and inconvenient.

It is not always clear at first glance

what our Lord is doing with us.

There is a day in which

Jesus puts saliva on a blind man's eyes

and lays hands on him.

Jesus asks,

"Can you see anything?"

and the man responds,

"I can see people,

but they look like trees, walking."

So Jesus lays his hands on the man's eyes again,

and this time he looks intently,

and his sight is restored.

Finally,

we are told,

he sees everything clearly (Mark 8:22-26).

isn't it?

But so true to life in the labyrinth.
Sometimes our healing takes a path we do not expect,

or it seems incomplete at first.

We have to hang in there

and let Jesus continue working with us.

In our fix-it-quick or throw-it-away world

the insight of this passage

does not come easily...

but sometimes the vision Jesus gives us is confusing.

When that happens,

the point is not to cope with the confusion.

until we see that he is not done restoring our lives.

Fullness of life is found at the center of the muddy labyrinth,

at the core of the coil where Christ resides.

Only by walking his maze faithfully

can we commit ourselves completely

to the will of God,

and wend our way

toward a spiritual wholeness

that wraps together body, mind, conscience,

emotions, reason and Spirit.

It is in deep, daily dips in the waters of obedience

that we experience the healing that God provides.

So what about those slave bones

and the parsonage by the cemetery?

It gets worse before it gets better.

The people of the church did some checking

about their legal responsibility...

and in the end,

they dug the hole for the basement about 10 feet deeper,

put all the bones pushed out by the bulldozer down in the hole

and covered them with dirt

before they poured the foundation.

Lowry in retelling the story is flabbergasted,

"How can you live in a house

in the middle of a slave graveyard?

How can you live in a house

built on top of the bones of slaves?

How can you sleep at night?
How can you even go into the house?
How can you minister at this church

with the people who did that?

It boils my blood!"

And it does bother me...

but also it's kind of interesting...

where it is so obvious that God's will was not done...

who have ears to hear...

It is interesting...

that the one who represents Jesus...

the one who brings the gospel Word

into that church every week...

the one who proclaims God's message

to these people...

brings it from outside the walls of respectability

and walks through the shadows of the graveyard

...because he resides on the other side with the slaves.

And somehow...

maybe that is appropriate.