Day 3: MINISTERIAL LEPROSY
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The very unfortunate story is told in 2 Kings 5:20-27 of an assistant prophet who would not miss the rare chance of a noble ‘offering’ that had come the way of their ministry. Evidently, in the past, such offerings had been accepted by the senior prophet, and the assistant had had his share of the privilege. This time, however, for reasons the master would never explain, the master refused to accept the unparalleled package which had been very gratefully and most cheerfully offered by the stranger recently healed of leprosy; a man from another nation, another religion, another tradition.
Given that man’s status as the chief of defence and commander of his nation’s armies, his ‘envelop’ of gifts was much fatter than usual. That gift of all gifts, the senior prophet, Elisha, insisted he would not accept. Perhaps he discerned that, in spite of the willingness and cheerfulness of the giver, that gift possessed unclean and potentially implicating ‘attachments.’ Perhaps he realized that accepting that gift would turn the focus from God the Healer to the human instrument of the healing, and he was not going to share God’s glory. Elisha would have no part of that gift. But that was going to be too much of a sacrifice for Gehazi the assistant prophet. He followed the healed man with his eyes until he was safely far, then paid him a quick solidarity and congratulatory visit, with a prepared, premeditated lie-speech which he read out to the man, to the effect that the senior prophet had changed his mind about the gift; that a few needs had suddenly arisen in the house of the Lord, and the man was being singled out by God to be the pillar for meeting those needs in supporting ‘the work of the Lord.’
The fund-raising turned out to be very successful, and Gehazi the Assistant Prophet went back home very, very happy. However, when he was confronted with how he had managed so soon to be so rich, he lied. He had lied to obtain his wealth; he had to lie to retain it. He could not give a straight testimony how God got to bless him overnight with that powerful connection in the ‘White House’ of Syria. By the end of the story, Gehazi had become a leper. He had merely exchanged places with Naaman. He accepted riches that he never knew how they were obtained. He did not know if those riches had been Naaman’s covenant with the god of mammon, to be made rich at the expense of his health, even if it meant as socially abominable a disease as leprosy. Gehazi the covetous Assistant Prophet received Naaman’s fat gift, as well as what was probably Naaman’s covenant-leprosy. That leprosy, which was probably still on its way to the bottomless pit after it had been miraculously washed off Naaman, was hastily recalled upon himself by the young prophet’s greed.
Some gifts there are which do not enrich you; they impoverish you. They bring upon you problems which those gifts multiplied ten times would never be able to solve. You merely ‘buy off’ some people’s problems when you receive their gifts, no matter how fat or lean, no matter how cheerfully or otherwise given. Worse still when such helpless Naamans are exploited because they are rich, and gifts are unfairly procured from them fraudulently in the name of the Lord.
When God’s servants begin to chase the things that He Himself has said would chase them if they should seek first the Kingdom of God; when gain rather than God becomes paramount in choosing the destinations of such persons, they are on the way to becoming leprous-ministers.
Leprosy is a disease that makes a person an outcast from others; yet it is a disease that elaborate clothes could at times conceal. Spiritual leprosy may also be concealed from men with the elaborate clothing that has become the vogue among servants of the Lord. But the Most Superior Master, from Whom nothing is hidden, Who sees the hearts and not the clothes, Who sees not as men see, sees the rottenness of the flesh beyond the glamour of the clothes, and He says, “I have refused him” (1 Samuel 16:7). They have become leprous ministers, outcasts from His presence, while undiscerning men, seduced by their status, swamp them like bees, humming their praise.