A Healing Imagination -- 2 Kings 5:1-14 (3rd Sunday After Pentecost)

Photo credit: Dave Hoefler, used with permission via Unsplash

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Bless his heart. Throughout this story, the mighty Naaman has next to no idea how to get the healing he so desperately wants. It’s ironic. In this story, Naaman is the one who has all the power. He’s a powerful general in the powerful army of a powerful king. He is a man who is used to getting what he wants – or taking it. But even so – Naaman can’t do this one thing he needs the most on his own. He needs help. He needs help to imagine a path toward healing.

This morning’s Scripture takes us to a kingdom outside Israel – outside Samaria – the kingdom of Aram, which has just defeated the kingdom of Israel in battle.[1] Naaman is the commander of that victorious  Aramean army. The Scripture says that he is “a great man.” He has the “high regard” of the King of Aram, which means that Naaman is just about as powerful as one can get. But. Naaman has leprosy – a range of skin diseases that would have threatened to push this powerful man out to the margins. This powerful man has a problem – a seemingly intractable problem – one he can’t fix... on his own.

But there’s this young girl – an enslaved girl. When the kingdom of Aram had defeated the kingdom of Israel – she had been one of the spoils of war. She’d been kidnapped, taken prisoner, enslaved, and she now serves Naaman’s wife. This young enslaved girl sees Naaman’s pain, and she whispers to Naaman’s wife: “Oh, if only my Master could visit this prophet in Samaria – Elisha – that prophet could cure him of leprosy.”

Naaman’s wife says something to Naaman, who says something to the King of Aram. And the King of Aram sends a letter to the King of Israel (whom he has just defeated) and says: “Heal Naaman of leprosy, and do it now.”  The King of Israel reads this and trembles in fear and rends his clothing – “Cure a man of leprosy!!! The King of Aram is just setting me up so that he can conquer me again. I know how kings are.”

But the prophet Elisha hears of this, and sends word to the King of Israel, “Why are you trembling? Send this man to me. I will heal him, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

And so the mighty Naaman rumbles on over to the prophet Elisha’s hut – Naaman, with all his horses and his chariots. Naaman has loaded up his caravan with ten talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. That’s a lot of wealth – more than hundreds of people would earn in a year.[2] Naaman arrives in splendor – ready to spend whatever he has to – to get what he wants – to get this healing he needs. 

Naaman knocks on Elisha’s door. And the door opens, and there is Elisha’s... servant, who says to Naaman, “My master says go wash in the River Jordan seven times and your flesh will be made well.” And he shuts the door.

Naaman – flies into a rage. “Wash myself? In what? In that nasty river? I am a mighty general from the Kingdom of Aram – our rivers the Arbana and Pharpar are better than all the rivers of Israel. Our army is mightier. And I have brought all this wealth. And this ... prophet... doesn’t even come out to greet me. Just sends some slave to tell me to wash in a dirty backwater river.” Does he know who I am? And there is in that a not-so-subtle threat. Does he know what I can do? 

The mighty Naaman can’t imagine how this might lead to healing.

He can’t imagine that – because he can’t see beyond that old, persistent paradigm. He can’t see beyond the domination worldview that has brought him to the heights of power.

Last week, as we started talking about imagination – the power to see and create a world better than the world we see now We acknowledged that the Powers have an imagination too – a dominating imagination.[3] The Powers see a world – and work to create a world – that they can control. Naaman lives in – and has flourished in – dominating systems structured and built on power- over. The dominating imagination sees a world of scarcity, and life as a competition for limited goods and limited power. Most people have to be powerless so that a few can be powerful. Most people have to be poor so that a few can be rich.

It is a fixed mindset.[4] There’s only so much to go around – grab what you can while you can. It’s a mindset “in which everything is given [– set and stuck –] in which no more futures can be imagined.”[5] In that mindset – in the dominating mindset – we start to see each other primarily as competitors. We must win to survive (and others most lose). Maybe even worse – we start to see other human beings as commodities – as somehow less than fully human – as a means to our ends.[6]

Here's  a concrete example. The dominating imagination looks at a national budget and makes the evaluation that in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy – so that the rich can get richer – we must take health care away from the poor, from lower-income working families, from the vulnerable – we have to cut food stamps. That’s what we have to do. There is only so much to go around – and our enough is not enough. The dominating imagination looks at the vulnerable and says, We want more – even if it kills you.

This dominating imagination is toxic in even more insidious ways. It generates these narratives – these myths – that we come to accept without questioning.  And some of them are myths that Americans hold dear.  There’s the myth of “self-reliance” and “the self-made man” – you know, that culturally-embedded sense that those folks we deem successful got there on their own.[7] They pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. They made something of themselves. They didn’t need a handout, or help. We know.. that is a fiction... a fantasy. When we know, we know.. that no one ever gets where they are in life on their own.

But, in the fixed mindset of the dominating imagination, we come to embrace this sense of “survival of the fittest” – each of us is on our own – you fight for what you want and need – and the strongest will rise to the top.[8] It becomes our operating framework.

Naaman looks at his predicament from the perspective of the dominating imagination and he says: “I will do what I have to do get this healing that I need. I will buy it. (He loads his wealth up on his chariots.) I’ll use my power to get my powerful king to order that it be so. And if, along the way, I have to threaten a prophet who doesn’t know his place, so be it.” Naaman has gotten where he is by amassing as much power and as much wealth as he can – at the expense of almost everyone else in this story and in his world.

And none of that – not one bit – can get him healed.

Naaman is stuck in this dominating imagination.

But a servant tugs on his sleeve. Out in front of that prophet’s hut:

Master, might I have a moment please? Naaman’s servants say to him – “Master, um, just an observation... I’m sorry to bother with you... you can ignore this if you want.... but.... if this prophet had asked you to do something great – some great feat – you would have done it right? Because you’re powerful... you’re a great man.”

And Naaman says, “Well, yes....”

“So... and I don’t want to speak out of my place... because you know these things far better than I... but if you’d do a great thing, how much more, if all he asks is for a small thing... just to wash in a river.”

Naaman is stuck in the dominating imagination. But you see there is another imagination at work here – a healing imagination, and it is able to do what the dominating imagination cannot – it’s able to heal Naaman and to make him whole.

Look at how this imagination works.

Who brings the healing here? When Naaman has no idea how to get the healing he needs, there is this young enslaved girl. As one scholar notes, in their world, she is “one of the most powerless people imaginable.”[9] But where Naaman sees only impossibility, this enslaved girl sees possibility[10] – and healing. She whispers this to Naaman’s wife – a bit more powerful than the enslaved girl – but Naaman’s wife is a woman – in those days, she’s considered Naaman’s property. The King of Israel with all his power has absolutely no clue. Then, the servant of a prophet from a backwater nation tells Naaman what to do. And then his servants coax and cajole him to do the small thing that will bring him healing. That’s how healing gets to Naaman. Not through the prowess of a great man, but through those he sees as small – if he sees them at all.

The narratives running around in Naaman’s head don’t work – because they are false narratives – so-called self-reliance and the self-made man. What we see is that Naaman isn’t even the protagonist in his own story. Or maybe I should say it this way. The enslaved girl, the prophet’s servant, the servants who serve Naaman, the backwater prophet, a couple of kings, and Naaman and his wife. They are all protagonists together. Every one of them plays a part in this healing.

There is a healing imagination at work here, and it rejects power-over as an ordering principle. In this story, God brings healing to Naaman through people Naaman would consider to be the least of these. In this story, “the seemingly powerful end up dependent on the seemingly powerless.”[11] God brings healing not through the derring-do of a great man, but through the compassion and collaboration of those who know most intimately the hurt and harm of power-over. They are the ones who see the way to healing.

This healing imagination rejects the commodification of human beings as a means toward an end. Naaman’s ill-gotten wealth can’t and doesn’t buy him one bit of healing. In fact, just after he gets healed, Naaman will come back to Elisha and say, “Thank you so much. I see that your God is god. Let me pay you for this.” And Elisha will say, No. The healing imaginationsees each person in this story as fully human, each a valued participant in the world’s thriving – not as a commodity to be bought, enslaved, and used.

Where the dominating imagination depends on

an economy of commodification and consumption,

the healing imagination embraces

an economy of mutuality, equality, and sharing.

Where the dominating imagination depends on

  a politics of oppression and violence,

the healing imagination embraces

         a politics of justice and compassion.[12]

We could look at what’s going on in our day, and look at how the dominating imagination is at work, and then think of how things might be different if we collectively used our healing imagination to see a better world. But I think that you can go and do some of that on your own.

With the time we have left, I want to talk about those myths – just briefly – those false myths of self-reliance and the self-made man – that keep us stuck in the dominating imagination.

Do you know that some evolutionary biologists have stopped talking so much in terms of “survival of the fittest” and are now talking about “survival of the friendliest?”[13] What they are saying is that we haven’t survived by killing off other species. What makes humans unique – and has kept us going (so far) – is the capacity we have developed to work together – the human capacity to see each other as partners, more than competitors, and to collaborate and create and re-create together.

In the Wednesday morning Transition Support Group, we’re reading David Brooks’ excellent book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Each Other and Being Deeply Seen[14]. He contends that what we have lost and neglected is the skill and ability to see each other as human. He says that there are ways not to see a person.[15] We center ourselves; we objectify others; we label each other too quickly, and fail to see more. That’s how Naaman, with his dominating imagination looks at everyone else in the story – servants and prophets and kings who can get him what he wants.

David Brooks invites us into skills and habits that take the time to pay attention – tenderness, curiosity, generosity – the time to see a person in the whole of their life experience, in their deep need – the way that the enslaved girl is able to see Naaman – and – through the power of her wisdom and compassion – set in motion a world of healing.[16]

This story lets us imagine a healing that Naaman couldn’t see – and then brings it to life. Naaman walks away healed.

Let’s not stop there, though.

Imagine just a bit more:

What if Naaman then turns to the servants who were brave enough to speak healing truth to him, risking his rage and wrath. What if Naaman now sees them as his healers, and ... sets them free... stops enslaving them... maybe offers them a fair wage, if they’d like to stay. What if Naaman shares some of those shekels. Imagine when Naaman gets back to Aram– and he really sees this young enslaved girl that he had never even noticed before, and he bows to her, and says, “My chariots are at the ready to take you home.”

Imagine all the ways this healing imagination could set people free.

Imagine this healing imagination let loose in the world

as we encounter and see each other as fully human,

fully loved and valued by God,

and then live our lives from there.

© 2025 Scott Clark

[1] For general background on this text and 1 Kings, see Choon-Leong Seow, “The First and Second Books of Kings,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. iii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 199); Matthew Richard Schlimm, Commentary in Connections, Year C, vol. 3 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), pp.125-26; Carol J. Dempsey, Commentary in Connections, Year C, vol. 3 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), pp.126-127.

[2] See Schlimm, p.125.

[3] See Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1978); see also Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2024), p.35, who speaks in terms of a “eugenics imagination,” in which “the ease and well-being of one group is tied to the immiseration and potential elimination of another.”

[4] Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, p. 32.

[5] Id.

[6] Brueggemann writes that this mindset “annuls the neighbor as a life-giver in our history.” See id. p.35.

[7] See Ruha, infra.

[8] Id.

[9] See Schlimm, p.125.

[10] See Seow, p.193.

[11] See Schlimm, p.125.

[12] This summary (with its compasrison/contrast) comes from Brueggemann, who writes of how the prophetic imagination challenges a dominant consciousness and offers an alternative consciousness.  See id: and also Walter Brueggemann, The Practice of Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), pp.6-19.

[13] I came across this concept of “survival of the friendliest” first in Ruha Benjamin’s work, pp.42-43. For more on the anthropology, see Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity (New York: Random House, 2021).

[14] See David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York: Random House Books, 2023), pp. 97-106.

[15] See id. pp.20-22.

[16] See id. pp.27-42.