Abstract
The Hardest Easiest Thing
Why is it that the simplest things are sometimes the hardest to do? The easiest path seems the hardest to take?
We love big goals, but we get put off when the big goal means many small acts of obedience to get there. We’re excited about losing ten pounds—I’m going to do it this time!—until we’re faced with the reality of foregoing the chocolate chip cookie again and again and again. I’m going to run a marathon! But when that turns out to mean adding one mile and then another, then another, week after week after week.
This is not a new problem. Phillips Brooks, writing in the late 1800s said, “I think there are many men who would go to China for a brother, if he needed it, who will hardly go down the street without grumbling, men who would give up their lives and never think of it, but find it very hard to give five minutes for a friend.” 1
Okay, it’s actually an ancient problem. We hear about it in our first lesson. Naaman is a mighty warrior, commander of the army of the King of Aram. If you look at him, you see a powerful man, a wealthy man. In the part our lectionary skipped today, we’re told that when he travels to see the king of Israel, he brings along ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. That’s travelling in style. That’s what we would notice.
But someone who lived in his household, someone we might not even notice, a servant girl, has noticed something else when looking at Naaman: a small white patch of skin on Naaman’s neck, and then another on his left pinky finger, and still another on his right earlobe. She knows what it is, and she knows it’s getting worse. Naaman is a mighty warrior, but he is also a leper.
Fortunately for Naaman, this girl knows someone who can help. So off Naaman goes with his million dollars’ worth of silver and gold and his steeds and his chariots and his fabulous garments to see the king of Israel—one mighty man to another, to get his cure. But the king of Israel can’t help him.
Instead, Naaman leaves the palace, and takes all his talents and shekels and finely-made clothing and goes instead to the house where Elisha the prophet lives.
And Elisha has the nerve not even to answer the doorbell. Instead he sends a messenger and tells Naaman the good news. This is going to be easy. Go and wash.
That’s it? That’s all he has to do?
But he can’t.
Or, he won’t.
Perhaps it’s pride. I’m sure sometimes that’s the problem. I can imagine dedicating myself and my energy to accomplish some great thing. And because I’m a Christian, I’m especially attracted to the idea of doing something great for God. Sign me up for some life-changing, noticeable, press-worthy project that’s going to make a great impact! But even here, I may lose enthusiasm when the great task calls for small acts, something anyone could do, baby steps, rather than big leaps, of faith.
I think of a woman who was a successful writer, the author of several novels. She was well-liked and respected in her church community. But she hadn’t always been a church-goer. I asked how she came to the church. I remember what she told me. She said “I was having troubles, personal problems, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt I must do something, take action. A friend told me I should pray about it.”
“‘Pray?’ I said.
“‘Yes,’” she told me. ‘Just pray.’
“I thought, I just can’t do it. It was a sort of pride. There must be something more I can do.
“My struggles continued. My friend continued her counsel: ‘Just pray.’
“‘Pray.’
“‘Yes. Tell God about it. Hand it over to God.’
“I just can’t do it, I thought. I tried that dangerous reverse pride: Who am I to bother God? Surely God has bigger, more important things to do than listen to my problems. There must be something else.
“So I lived with my problems for awhile, almost got used to feeling bad. One Sunday I agreed to go with my friend to church. We knelt for the prayers. I felt silly at first, awkward. But there I was, on my knees, and I thought, I may as well do something while I’m down here, and I prayed.
“I was not eloquent. My very first prayer ever was one word: ‘Help.’ There. It was out. I realized God was there all along, waiting for me, reaching for me in the most simple act of all. It took something so simple to help me realize God can handle all the complexities of life, of my complicated life. I had to come down from my proud place of thinking I was too complicated, too important, too busy, to bend low before God. I spend a lot of time on my knees now as part of a church community that believes in following a simple instruction: pray.”
Go wash, Naaman. It’s that simple. You want to be cured? Go wash.
Naaman, the mighty warrior, is told not to climb to the top of a very high mountain and return with the blossom of a rare plant on the first full moon after the vernal equinox; not to remove the sword from the stone that is guarded by the three-headed serpentine beast; not to conquer another kingdom. He’s not even told to hand over his silver and his gold. Nope. He’s told to strip down to his shorts and bathe in a second-rate river. Okay, let’s make it a challenge: do it seven times. Count to seven.
Naaman is told to act like a little boy again, a little boy who doesn’t care if the water is clean or dirty, who doesn’t care who will see him without his tailor-made suit, who doesn’t care what others will think if he takes a big flying leap and lands in the Jordan River and splashes around in it seven times, a little boy who does what he’s told—just because, that’s why—no matter how hard it is to do this very easy thing.
And, lo and behold, “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”
Phillips Brooks, again, in a sermon about taking on a Lenten discipline, wrote that it’s not difficult imagining God might ask us to make a great sacrifice for “some great cause, and I may do it, filled with enthusiasm…but it is hard to believe that the law of God cares whether I am punctual at my daily humdrum task, whether I speak kindly or crossly…whether I wrong the tender conscience of a poor stumbling brother who is looking for the truth, whether I tell this little lie or not.” 2
The small obedience, the little task, the faithfulness that costs nothing but putting aside the great weight of our pathetic pride—these may be the hardest, easiest things we ever do. And they just may be the very things that make it possible for us to join Naaman in words of praise: “Now I know God.”