This Sunday I am returning to Christchurch Freemantle, and we’ll be thinking about prayer once again. You will be vey welcome to join me at 10am.

As I read through the Bible passages for today, I found myself wondering why, as people of faith, we often make life so difficult for ourselves. If the gospel is all about love and freedom, why do we so often end up tying ourselves in spiritual knots?

The first Bible reading comes from the Old Testament, where we meet Naaman, a ‘great man and in high favour with his master’, the King of Aram. However this man suffered from two conditions, both difficult to cure. Firstly and maybe most noticeably, Naaman had leprosy. Leprosy was a fearful disease, one which could label the sufferer as ‘unclean’ and have them cast out of society, it could also cause long lasting disfigurement and disability. Naaman had much to lose, and yet a young servant girl brings words of hope, in the possibility of a healer from her homeland.

The second condition Naaman suffers with is his pride, something he shares with his king. Upon receiving the hopeful news, he begs leave of his master, who bestows upon him gifts and presents and a letter of recommendation to the king of Israel. The king of Israel also has a complex condition, pride mixed with paranoia, and he becomes enraged with the audacity of the letter and its request. Thankfully it isn’t either of the kings with the gift of healing, it is the great prophet Elisha. Elisha sees through the letters of recommendation, the valuable gifts, the pride, the paranoia, and cuts right through it. As things are about to get heated politically, Elisha steps up.

Elisha soothes his own king, and sends a message to Naaman, with the most simple of instructions for his healing. All he has to do is bathe in the river Jordan, 7 times. Now this prescription may heal Naaman of his leprosy, but his pride has flared up.

I thought that for me he would surely come out and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!

2 Kings 5:11

Naaman isn’t just looking for a cure he is looking for a show. Naaman doesn’t just want to be healed he wants to be treated as though he is royalty. Instead, Elisha sends a simple message with instructions, but Naaman is too proud to follow them. There is something symbolic going on here, something prophetic about the future of our faith. Elisha is telling Naaman to be baptised, in the river Jordan where Jesus himself is to be baptised in a few hundred years time. It is simple, it is humble. He won’t do it. Naaman feels slighted, Elisha won’t even come out to see him, him the king of Aram’s best friend, the commander of all his troops. Elisha doesn’t answer to wealth and status, he answers to God. Elisha has already quietly, in his own way, spoken to God who has assured him that all Naaman has to do is swallow his pride, accept that the power of healing comes from the one true living God, and he will be healed. Naaman has to wash himself clean, completely and utterly clean (the number 7 is symbolic of absoluteness), and he will be healed.

Naaman is in a huff, if all he had to do was bathe in a river there are much better rivers at home he could have bathed in, why the Jordan? I have been to the Jordan, the spot where Jesus himself was baptised, and it is murky. I wouldn’t fancy bathing in it myself. Eventually his servants persuade him, and as he abandons his pride and bathes as he has been told to do, not only is he healed and his flesh restored, but he is given skin as smooth and supple as that of a young boy. Naaman is clean, clean from the leprosy, clean from his arrogance, clean in the way that we are all washed clean from our sins when we are baptised; and it is just so simple. No money or wealth had to change hands, no complicated ritual, Naaman just had to trust in the words of God, and be obedient.

You can read the full story here.

Elisha makes it easy for Naaman, it is Naaman who wants to complicate matters, but the faith of the Israelites, the faith of Jesus, was never meant to be complicated.

When Paul writes to the Galatian church he is angry with them, and the reason that he is angry is that they have complicated matters for themselves. When Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice all other rituals and sacrifices became obsolete, including circumcision. For the Jewish Christians, this was a huge stumbling block. Circumcision was considered to be a mark of cleanliness. Even in our ‘Christian’ country young boys were circumcised in the 40s and 50s believing it to aid with cleanliness, regardless of faith. For those Jewish Christians though, it was a marker of identity and of belonging, and if the new followers of the way weren’t willing to be circumcised (as adults!), then were they really worthy of being members of the community of faith. Paul is angry. Paul is angry because those who would have been circumcised when they were just days old are expecting full grown men to go through an agonising ritual, when there is just no need. Paul has already reminded the church that

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28

The Jewish Christians are so proud of their heritage that they are willing to make it a stumbling block to others. They are complicating matters, rather than making it easy on themselves and their fellow siblings in faith. All they need to do to become spiritually clean, like Naaman, is to be baptised. We make life complicated for ourselves and create stumbling blocks between us and God. We think we are not good enough, not holy enough, we don’t know the right words, or actions. We deem ourselves spiritual failures because we don’t know our Bibles well enough. Perhaps the only prayer we know is the Lord’s Prayer and even that we stumble over. Paul, and Jesus, want us to take it easy on ourselves. None of that matters. The only thing Jesus tells us to do is to be baptised, and then to love.

But oh how we love to complicate things. We create meetings, and programs, and courses and… and all these things can be great. They can be amazing, but are we over complicating things for the sake of it? Are we at risk of becoming so proud of the grand events we are planning that we forget to care for our neighbour down the street who is lonely. Are we so busy baking cakes for the next big church thing that we don’t have time to pop in for a cuppa with the widow who we know really needs to be able to speak about their loved one and hear their name spoken out loud? Perhaps we are scared of not being ‘good enough’ in our prayers that we never offer to ‘say one’ for another struggling soul. Do we, like Naaman think that prayer needs to be big and demonstrative and use all sorts of lengthy words, for it to work? Or are we willing to keep it simple, to give it a go, and trust God?

You can read the passage from Paul’s letter here.

Our gospel reading is one of the passages I find most frightening. Perhaps it is the first case of ‘door knocking’ in evangelism, something which I shudder at. Jesus appoints 70 disciples, not the 12 key players, but 70 of the anonymous faithful and sends them out on a mission. His instructions are simple. Tread lightly, carry nothing with you, bless others, and if they won’t bless you, simply walk away. Their mission is to talk with people, share food, listen, and maybe pray for them, with them. They aren’t being called to fill stadiums, or to host rallies. They are called to enter into the domestic settings of those who want to know more about Jesus. That is all. How often do we complicate matters? Friends of mine, faithful Christians, moved into a new area and wanted to get to know their neighbours so that they could become a blessing to them; and so, having retired quite comfortably, would host lavish summer parties with a pig roast and plenty of drinks to go around, and gifts for the children to take home. They were wonderful occasions, but, as tends to happen when you are the host of a party, you are so busy you hardly have time to spend with your guests. They discovered that the simplest way of connecting with their neighbours was to take their morning cuppa sitting on the bench in their front garden rather than hidden away at the back. So simple, and yet anyone who was passing by would stop for a chat.

Read Jesus’ instructions here.

And so it is with prayer. If we make it too big and wonderful, if we over complicate it with lengthy words and posh language, we lose the heart of what we are trying to do, which, quite simply, is to have a chat with God. Whether prayer is for our own purposes of getting to know Jesus better, or praying on behalf of others, in church, or homegroup, or in the pew at the end of a service over a cuppa, let’s keep it simple.

When Naaman let down his pride and kept it simple he was healed of his arrogance and of his skin condition, and found faith in the true God. When the Galatians stopped relying on obsolete (and painful) rituals, they enabled others to form a simple faith in Jesus. When Jesus sent others out to share the faith his instruction was to travel lightly, not overcomplicate matters, and above all, keep it simple.

So whether you are praying or even acting for yourself or others, make it easy on yourself, and keep it simple.