of knowledge and power

A woman pastor in the Bible School was reporting to me of the funeral she conducted on Saturday. She said she used 2 Kings 5, the story of the cleansing of Naaman. Two years earlier, I heard another woman preach this text to a group of young women. Both women made similar points. They focused on the role of the slave girl of Naaman's wife in the process of Naaman's cleansing.

Though the girl was a person of lowly status, they said, she had the knowledge Naaman did not. She knew where cleansing could be found, and she did not keep that knowledge to herself.

The text does indeed seem to draw a comparison between Naaman and the girl. She is "young," she is a "girl", she is a foreigner, a "captive" taken from Israel to Aram during one of the Arameans' raids. By contrast, Naaman is "commander of the army of the king of Aram", "a great man and in high favor with his master", one by whom "the Lord had given victory to Aram", and "a mighty warrior" (vv. 1-2). It is as if Naaman can do no wrong. Naaman has no weaknesses.

Except that "though a mighty warrior, he suffered from leprosy" (v. 1). The text seems to anticipate that this should come as a surprise to the reader. Persons such as Naaman are not sick. Yet he "suffered from leprosy."

The preacher used these details to make a point about the status of women in her own culture, indeed, in the church. Though regarded as the inferiors of men, God's Spirit chooses women to make God's purposes known. In fact, she preached the text under the suspicious glares of male pastors in attendance who were jealous of the honor of leading the funeral. Throughout the service, they kept looking, hoping, for the woman to make a mistake, to do something out of the time-honored order. Yet she conducted the service, beginning to end, flawlessly, beautifully, powerfully. "They were so surprised," she reports.

We talked on. We spoke of certain leaders adept in the evil arts of obfuscation, of secrecy, of hiding information from their people, of using power bestowed to hoard benefits. "That is the leprosy," the pastor said.

The affliction of Naaman was more than a disease of the skin. It was also more than the mere possession of power. Against the backdrop of the one who gave what she had for the sake of another, is the power of selfishness exposed. Only in light of the slave girl, or of a crucified Christ, might we turn and be healed (Isa 6:10).

-Joe

the Gift and the gifts

When thinking about the overarching theme of the Bible School, the mission that we want to be about, we have returned again and again to Ephesians 4. Specifically, verse 13: "until all of us come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (NRSV).

This sentence fragment includes both the mission and the vision. Through acquiring "knowledge of the Son of God" through the corporate study of his Story, we find ourselves growing into "the full stature of Christ".

What is the life that "the full stature of Christ" entails? How do we realize our vision?

When reading Ephesians 4, I have often puzzled over vv. 9-10. In the flow of the text, it seems tangential, a diversion from the flow of Paul's exhortation. The NRSV, in fact, encourages such a sentiment, for it supplies parentheses around the verses. As is often the case with interpretation, however, precisely that part of the text which seems out of place is key to the meaning of the whole. And so it is with Ephesians 4:1-16.

The text reveals a movement from one to many. There is one Body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father (vv. 4-6). Singularity soon gives way to plurality: some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers (v. 11).

What lies between the one and the many? How do we get from one to the other?

The text locates "Christ's gift" between the two. Christ's gift (singular) is the fountainhead of the gifts (plural) "he gave to his people" (v. 8b), namely, "that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers" (v. 11).

The gift of the one conditions the gifts of the many. If we want to understand our own gifts, we must know Christ's. What is the character of his gift?

Here the text speaks of Christ's ascension. "When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people" (v. 8). There is something necessary about Christ's ascension--his departure as a flesh and blood reality from this earth to "the right hand of God", the "heavenly" seat of all power in the universe--for our own empowerment.

Yet the ascension is previously conditioned.

Translated parenthetically, Paul actually makes the main point. The One who ascended did so only by first descending; "he who descended is the same one who ascended" (vv. 9-10).

What is Christ's gift, the Gift according to which we also receive our gifts?

It is none other than God's descent in Christ. The Word becoming flesh in Jesus' birth. Jesus' descent beneath the waters of baptism (an event itself blessed by the descent of the Spirit). Jesus stooping down to wash his disciples' feet. And finally, one dramatic descent, fraught with irony: the Son of Man "lifted up" on the cross in his descent to the dead.

What is the quality of Christ's gift? It is God's own self, the love of the One given for the many.

And what, then, in turn, are the qualities of our gifts? Whatever the differences implied within the various tasks of the so-called "five-fold ministry" (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers), there is still one ministry: the descent, the humility, the self-giving love operative in those who have joined themselves to Christ's Body.

As the One, so the many. As the Gift, so the gifts.

We see, then, that the movement of the text is not, after all, one-way. The many give themselves back to God, which is to say, also to one another.

" . . . until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (v. 13).

-Joe