I wonder if you’ve ever preached on Naaman at a baptism service. Of course there could be a very cliched and unhelpful way of doing this, simply focusing on the fact that Naaman goes down into water and out again, baptism by immersion QED. You might end up with some iffy practical application there, Are we meant, for example to dunk believers 7 times? However, I think that there are some pointers in the story to baptism for believers by immersion and it si very much a baptism passage, not in that simplistic manner but in terms of how baptism should function and the bigger narrative behind it.
One of the things that has increasingly struck me is the way in which baptism finds its origin story in the Exodus. Paul makes that explicit when he says that the people of Israel were baptised into Moses (or the Mosaic Covenant) when crossing the Red Sea.[1] 40 years of wandering later, and the new generation who never experienced that are given the opportunity to experience it for themselves as they are taken by God across the Jordan River and into the promised land. They go through the waters, dying to their old life in exile, slavery, wandering and death and come out to new life in the land.
This helps us to make sense of why Naaman is asked to go and bathe seven times in the Jordan River.[2] It’s not just about this being an act of faith, picking a nearby river almost at random, nor is it to humble him because the river is less impressive than the one ones back home, even if he thought so. Rather, Naaman comes to Elisha, diseased, unclean, carrying death in his body. He needs to be made clean and whole, to receive life instead of death. This isn’t something on offer at arms-length outside of God’s covenant people.
So, Naaman must step down into the Jordan just as the people of Israel had done all those years ago and just as Jesus would do many years later. He must go through this experience seven times, the number representing completeness, wholeness, an entering into sabbath rest. Then what does he do when he comes back from the river? He tells Elisha that he will worship Yahweh, the true and living God. He has become part of God’s people, places himself under God’s covenant provision and protection and so now seeks life in God’s presence, the place of blessing. At that time, it meant being in the land. Naaman has a problem though, he must go back to serve his king back in Assyria. He cannot stay in the land, so he takes some of the land with him.[3]
And those are the things that God in Christ does for us, symbolised and made tangible in baptism. We are brought from a place where we are far off, outsiders, strangers to God’s grace, where we are unclean and where we are under the sentence of death and we are brought into God’s presence to live under his provision and rule.
[1] See 1 Corinthians 10:2.
[2] 2 Kings 5:10.
[3] 2 Kings 5:17.
Faithroots 