Focus: Seeing others as God sees them means seeing that outsiders are not always unclean.1

Function: To confront the listener's perception of outsiders by a fresh reading of the Naaman narrative.

Form: Inductive -- suspended story, Bible story (Naaman) that raises the question, Bible story (Jesus at Nazareth) that gives an answer, rest of the story.

During the height of the Montgomery "bus boycott" of the mid 1950s, my Grandfather and my Uncle Rex, then in his early teens, saw a little of the bigotry in the city then. That episode was a time of civil unrest, triggered when Rosa Parks refused to sit "in her place" at the back of the bus. They went for a haircut to Wallace Holcum's barber shop, just down from the Greyhound bus station.

Others were waiting their turn. A large white man motioned for the "shine boy" to come over and work on his shoes. The young black boy, not quite in his teens, quickly moved into position beneath the massive figure and in a lazy motion drew out an already soiled rag with which to wipe off the man's shoes. He began with a circular motion that was abruptly halted as the barber shop vibrated with the hatred of the large white man: "Boy, don't you use that dirty, old rag on my shoes!" The boy straightened and stepped back. His arms went limp, and he almost dropped the rag.

The idle chatter and noises fell off, replaced by the same tension that had fallen over the city, a blanket of fear almost as deafening as the chatter before. All eyes were drawn to the shine boy. Hoping to avoid an incident, the barber tossed a clean rag at the boy. He stood there with the two, one in each hand, in the shadow of the large, now red-faced, white man.

If you had been with my Grandfather and my Uncle Rex, how would you have reacted? Would you have said anything?

Prejudice is an attitude that surfaces in some unlikely places and expresses itself in various ways. In the days of the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 5:1-27), we read about a man who was biased against Israel. The text says that Naaman was a "great" man. This description no doubt was given to him because of his successes as the commander of the army of Syria, a rival military leader through whom YHWH had given victory to Syria. He was a man of position and wealth, a mighty warrior -- and a leper. He was a mighty man, who had been cursed by the "gods."

With his "AIDS-like" disease, he turned to what must for him have been a last resort. He heard about the chance for a cure in Israel. An Israelite slave girl, taken captive in a Syrian raid into the south, said there was a prophet in Israel who could cure leprosy. Naaman informed his king and made the trip to see the wonder-working prophet -- a foreign cleric, who didn't even get out of his chair to greet him! The prophet sent his messenger out to meet the commander.

Naaman was insulted by Elisha's lack of protocol. "Doesn't he know who I am? Who is he to treat the Syrian Commander like this? I thought he would come out and wave his hand and say an incantation like back home. Is this the way they do things in this god-forsaken little kingdom that pretends to be a part of the modern world? I'll go back to my own prophet. We've got better clinics anyway. And just like a Jew, too -- snooty! -- and after I came so far. Just wait until the king hears about this!"