The Humility of the Small Instruction: The Witness Our Neighbors Can See

The unused wash is still dry at the river the block already named. Last month this church printed we would have done a great thing toward the street after a named wound went public on the sidewalk. One hallway received that sentence as cover. The stoop received a quieter unused-wash version by Tuesday.

A neighbor at the next house is deciding whether this church still goes down into ordinary obedience, or whether leftover ceremony is the only public news the street is allowed to keep.

This is a sermon about the witness 2 Kings 5 sets in public. If you preach it as a map of anyone's private pride, you will lie. If you preach it as Naaman of Syria, a real leprosy, a real little girl, a real letter, a real door, a real Jordan, and a God who meets a raging captain through a child's word and a servant's question, you give this church a God who will not let rank write the only sentence a watching neighbor has to live under.

Text

Hear the door as Holy Scripture tells it, from the World English Bible: "Now Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable, because by him Yahweh had given victory to Syria; he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.