LEARNING FROM ROLE
REVERSALS
(2 Kings
5:l-l4)
When someone reverses his role
we are often caught off guard. The reversal of roles
gives us surprise often mixed with amusement or
skepticism or insight.
Senator John McCain surprised a
lot of people last week when his upset win over George
Bush in the New Hampshire primary abruptly reversed his
role from underdog to the candidate to beat for the
republican nomination for U.S. president. As we have
seen, magazine covers love role reversals.
Jorg Haider, the leader of the
rightwing Freedom Party of Austria, went from endorsing
Hitler's employment policies and Waffen SS soldiers as
honorable to endorsing compensation for those forced into
slave labor by Nazism. This abrupt role reversal produced
mainly skepticism. It takes more than one speech convince
us that the leopard can change its stripes.
Sometimes role reversal leads to
total shock and incomprehension. Dr. Harold Fredrick
Shipman, a 54 year old bespectacled family doctor, had
become well liked in Hyde, near Manchester, England,
where he practised private medicine for 20 years, often
making house calls on the sick. Everyone was just plain
shocked to learn that he had murdered at least l5 of his
elderly women patients with no apparent motive whatever.
The shock is enough not only to put folks off Dr. Shipman
for life but to make them suspicious of all doctors who
work on their own with twinkling eyes.
Sometimes whole groups of
persons change roles quickly and have to deal with their
personal surprise. A news story this week reported that
Silicon Valley psychiatrists have identified a new
illness that affects the new millionaires who earn their
money through the Internet. It's called the SUDDEN WEALTH
SYNDROME and it produces a deep identify crisis, anxiety,
guilt and dysfunction, the psychologists said.
Today in our Old Testament story
we see several role reversals. Let's see if we are going
to be surprised by them and what we can learn as we look
at them.
*******
The political setting of the
story of General Naaman is itself a role reversal for us
because we are used to Syria and Israel being eternally
in a state of war as they have been ever since the
founding of Israel a half century ago. It may be a
surprise to learn that about 2800 years ago the same two
political states were in a state of peace. Syria was the
superior power but Syria needed peace with Israel because
both nations were threatened by a rising power to the
north in what is today modern Turkey.
Naaman was the five star
commander in chief of the Syrian armies. Powerful though
he was, he was afflicted with what was at that time, and
for a thousand years afterward right down to Jesus' time,
the most dreaded disease of humanity - leprosy. Despite
his control of armies there was nothing he could do to
stop the spread of his affliction. Power like fame and
wealth are no guarantees that roles will not be reversed
and adversely so. The health and mental deterioration of
former President Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer disease is
a vivid reminder of the sad fact that the powerful may
fall.
One day his wife said: "Naaman,
you remember Rebecca, that little girl you captured as a
slave who bathes me in oil and makes me smell good for
you. She tells me there is a prophet in her home nation
of Israel. This prophet is named Elisha and he can cure
someone of leprosy. Why not try him?"
"What! Me, the commanding
general of Syria, go off to tiny Israel to see a minor
prophet there? I've tried all the doctors and magicians
we have in Syria." But when you're desperate enough, you
often compromise your role, especially, if like Naaman,
you then dream about the prophet and a cure.
So Naaman tells his own king of
Syria about his forthcoming trip. He needs no appointment
and just strides in upon the king and lays down his
situation. "Yes, you can go to Israel, and I'll give you
a letter of introduction to the king of Israel and some
very fine presents to convey to him."
And off Naaman went on the best
transport of that day - a caravan of chariots each
chariot driven by eight fine horses - with military aides
and servants and a cartload of goodies.
Upon arrival in Israel Naaman
went right to the king and presented his diplomatic
introduction. This abrupt visitor upset the king of
Israel who did not welcome an obligation to cure a
powerful general of Israel's powerful
neighbor.
The king pitched a tantrum,
marching around the throne room, tearing at his clothes
and crying out, "Cure this man of leprosy!"
Then Elisha comes into the
picture, the prophet about whom Naaman had heard from the
little Jewish girl in his house. Dealing with the king of
Israel had not brought him healing though we tend to
believe that the traditional sources of power and wealth
and prestige will have all the answers.
From the royal palace Naaman
headed for the humble cottage of the prophet. It must
have been an impressive show as the Syrian chariots
roared into the village and came to a halt in a cloud of
dust before Elisha's cottage. And there Naaman waited -
expecting the prophet to be overawed by his distinguished
guest and to come out bowing and scraping. And Naaman
waited and waited, honking the chariot horn I suppose
with long, impatient blasts.
Finally, instead of Elisha
appearing, the door opens and the houseboy comes out.
"Who does this prophet think he is? I just came from the
palace of two kings and this lowly prophet greets me with
this servant. What message do you bring me,
boy?"
"Go wash in the Jordan seven
times!"
"What! Me go bathe in your puny
little local, muddy stream when I've got beautiful clear
rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris back in Damascus.
Anyway, if I needed a bath, I'd use one of l6 bathrooms
in my own house!"
So Naaman rode off in raging
anger, ready to go home where at least his role would be
respected. Fortunately his servants were wiser than he:
"If the prophet had said to do something difficult, you
would have tried that. Why not try something so simple as
washing in the Jordan? You've come this far by listening
to a housemaid. Why not listen to the house
boy?"
So off to the Jordan Naaman went
and dipped himself, once, then twice, and finally seven
times into its water. And, lo, he came up cleansed, cured
of his affliction with skin as healthy as that of a
youth.
Role reversals can produce humor
as in some of these scenes. Are there some further
surprises and insights?
******
Though full of bluster with his
self-importance, Naaman listened and he learned. He
modified his role of macho power to listen to his wife,
to a servant girl, to a house boy, and to his personal
attendants. It is so difficult for powerful persons, and
powerful organisations, to listen to the weaker, more
puny voices around them.
My own mighty nation of the
United States has refused to listen to tiny Cuba on its
doorstep for forty years. So much bluster because a
powerful nation chooses not to listen to a weaker one,
because to do so would require revisiting the history of
the two countries.
The mighty government of China
refuses to listen to the Falun Gong practitioners. I
would guess the reason is that the rulers do not want to
acknowledge their inability to satisfy the spiritual
needs of the people and refuse to acknowledge that any
inspiration apart from Marxism may have a better go at
filling the void.
Too much role reversal in each
case! It is painful for the powerful to assume the role
of the humble and to listen to what those who are weaker
may be able to tell them. How about you? Are you refusing
to reverse or at least suspend your preferred role - be
it social, religious, economic - long enough to be open
and accessible to someone other and apart from you may
have an important word of truth for you?
Our Gospel incident from Mark l
can be linked to today's Old Testament because Jesus,
centuries after Naaman, is dealing with the same
affliction of leprosy. In this case both Jesus and the
leper reverse roles. Chapter l2 and l3 of the Old
Testament book of Leviticus lays down the most rigid and
narrow guidelines for dealing with lepers and both Jesus
and the leper ignore those rules. As a rabbi Jesus should
not have gone near the leper; and the leper should never
have gone near Jesus.
By the by, the rigid rules in
Leviticus segregating lepers should not be read as
callousness toward the ill. They were rigid and narrow
principally to protect the healthy. Until recent times
even in the most progressive societies persons with
leprosy were segregated in colonies and folks with
tuberculosis were quarantined in special hospitals and
homes, in both practices to show concern for the well
being of those not afflicted with these
diseases.
Jesus took a risk in touching
the leper because that action could have been seen as
contaminating his whole ministry. Why sacrifice
everything with this hands-on healing? Whatever his
motives, Jesus was not hung up on acting out the roles of
the conventional rabbi. It is an axiom that only very
strong persons are comfortable in trying on new roles;
and the opposite is also true that ery weak persons can
willy nilly abandon whoever they are to assume new roles:
in extreme clinical cases that's called
schizophrenia.
Jesus was a strong person, the
source of the Apostle Paul's ambition to be all things to
all persons. Jesus could assume many, seemingly opposite
roles, because at his core he knew exactly who he
was.
The end of Naaman's story links
his story with the later healing in Mark. At verse l5 of
2 Kings 5, which is not part of today's lectionary
reading, we learn this: THEN NAAMAN RETURNED TO THE MAN
OF GOD (Elisha), HE AND ALL HIS COMPANY. HE CAME AND
STOOD BEFORE HIM AND SAID, 'NOW I KNOW THAT THERE IS NO
GOD IN ALL THE EARTH EXCEPT IN ISRAEL; PLEASE ACCEPT A
PRESENT FROM YOUR SERVANT.'"
Indeed, Naaman learned much from
his experience. We can't be certain that his several role
reversals added up to a fundamental change in his
character, outlook and conduct, but the story points that
direction because at the end he acknowledged the one true
God as the source of his healing, of his role
reversal.
And the leper who was treated by
Jesus gained exuberant confidence to the extent that he
immediately began telling everyone about Jesus even
though Jesus had asked him to keep it all
quiet.
Both lepers gained a much deeper
insight as to who they were.
The latest film by the Spanish
director Pedro Almodovar is called ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
(Todo Sobre Mi Madre.) It has already won many awards and
seems destined to be Oscar winner next month as best
non-American film of l999. The film is about role
reversals of a rather colorful, even notorious kind -
transvestites in modern Spain. The phenomenon of
transvestites, men needing to dress as women and vice
versa, has always both scandalised and fascinated
straight society.
Almodovar goes a bit further in
the role reversals by telling the story of two
transvestites who break their conventional mold in that
they are thoroughly masculine in their character even as
they act out their feminine side in wardrobe choice and
body makeover and facial make up. These radical role
reversals within role reversals have touched straight
audiences with unexpected insights and
sympathies.
Sometimes the more extreme or
opposite the role reversals, the more profound the
learning. Adults can learn from children. Men learn from
women. The strong learn from the weak. The well learn
from the sick. The rational learn from the mystical.
Majorities can learn from minorities. Straights can learn
from gays. Orthodox can learn from non-conventional
thinkers. The powerful, whether nations or individuals,
can learn from the weak, whether weak nations or
dispossessed persons. And all may learn from the divine
who is the source both of our unities and our diversities
and the ground from which all integrity and healing
flows.
Sometimes what we gain from role
reversal may be in the first blush only amusement. Many
of us are waiting with bemusement as to what will ensue
once President Clinton is retired from the White House
and in the case that his wife is elected to the US
Senate. That could be an entertaining role
reversal.
Sometimes we only have an
original opinion re-enforced as we see a role reversal.
No matter what Herr Jorg Haider may say his critics will
continue to suspect he is a latent new Hitler.
Sometimes the experience of role
reversal visits us with a new insight, sympathy or
softness which is often the case when we are touched by
beauty or truth.
And sometimes the role reversal
leads to new life as with Naaman and the Galilean leper
of the Gospel of Mark. And that is what we call
salvation. And that is pretty radical and the most
exciting role reversal of all.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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