People in worship at the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship & Music Conference saw their written prayers swept away in a river flowing through Anderson Auditorium at Montreat Conference Center.
The river was a long length of fabric, carried in by mostly young dancers who then deposited it on the stage. Later, worshipers placed their prayers for healing atop the river.
Humility was the theme for the service. “Rather than false modesty, the call to clothe ourselves in humility is to realize, demurely, that we are not always the main character in the story,” said conference preacher Dr. Margaret Aymer, vice president for Academic Affairs at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “Today’s service celebrates God’s gift of healing and wholeness.”
David LaMotte sang “Boots and Gloves,” reflecting on Hurricane Helene and the compassion that followed. The dancers brought in the river while worshipers sang “Shall We Gather at the River.”
Aymer based her sermon on the healing of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1–19a). She said humility is not humiliation but “an invitation to reorientation, to shifting our perspective and changing our actions so we right-size ourselves in relationship with others and God.” She used a gaming term to illustrate: “You have to be willing to listen to the NPCs,” or non-player characters, who “are a part of the game, but they’re not the main character.”
In Naaman’s story, two NPCs teach lessons in humility. The first is an enslaved Israelite girl captured by the Arameans and forced to work for Naaman’s wife. “She has no power, no authority, no wealth and no status. She appears once, has one line, and then disappears from our memory,” Aymer said. “She is an NPC, yet the story cannot progress unless Naaman listens to her.”
But Naaman hears only half of what she has to say, namely “cure skin disease” and “Samaria.” He goes to his boss and is sent to the king of Israel. He thus goes as an emissary of a king to a king.
The king of Israel cannot cure Naaman either. The enslaved girl said nothing of a payment, but Naaman — rather than showing humility — brings “an exorbitant show of wealth, a sign he is worthy to be cured,” Aymer said, “as though health and wellness belong only to the affluent.”
Naaman is “flummoxed at the prophet’s flat refusal of payment,” Aymer said. The army commander “sees his cure as a war bounty.” He’s “insulted by a prophet who doesn’t even come to the door to speak to him. Naaman still does not have the humility to imagine a posture not of intimidation, but of intercession; not of forceful demands, but of faith petition.”
It is humility that “offers us a chance to look beyond our own status to see every other person as the embodiment of God,” she said, “to see God’s power at work beyond our own imagining, beyond our wealth to see the benevolence and bounty of God, who gives us far more than we can ask or think,” Aymer said. “When we put on humility, we begin to perceive this God-beloved world more fully. We see God is in control and we are not, that God loves us more fully than we could even imagine.”
Naaman eventually learns to listen to the NPCs again, including his own servants, who “challenge Naaman’s lack of imagination, his unwillingness to put down his power and wealth, his disdain for a river he believes is too ordinary to wash his powerful Syrian body.” The servants “challenge his bravado to not do a task any child could do,” she said. They candidly tell Naaman, “All he said to you was wash and be clean.”
“Friends, we need to listen to those NPCs, the people who cook our meals and clean our rooms. No person is truly an NPC, and we do not always know how God will heal us,” Aymer said. “When we look for heavenly signs, God sends us angels wearing boots and gloves.”
“We may think these divine messengers are NPCs, but the truth is they are the main characters, sent with shawls of humility until we are right-sized, humiliated and able to trust our God once more.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
McKenna Britton, Communications Associate, Mission Communications, Interim Unified Agency
Analise Brown, Registrar & Administrative Assistant, Office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium, Interim Unified Agency
Let us pray:
Jesus, open our eyes to see. Open our hearts to respond to the least of these, our brothers and sisters. Amen
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