This summer my toddler turned 2 years old.  She’s just discovering the world around and loves to be outside. So much that she throws tantrums when it’s time to go inside.

Outside in our yard this summer, my toddler suddenly started noticing down branches in the yard.  When she saw a branch on the ground, she would pick it up and look at me with a very expressive worried look on her face.  She would then point up into the trees and say “Brroo(ken).”  Her toddler language for “broken.”  She wanted me to take the stick and put it back on the tree where it belonged.

Naaman is an army commander, of high status and rank, and a powerful man.  Yet, in having everything one might aspire to gain for earthly status and wealth, he also had leprosy.  A disease that would soon remove him from his community and strip him of his power, wealth, and glory.   Through a slave of Naaman’s wife, he heard of the God of Israel, wrote a letter asking for healing to the king, and the prophet Elisha overheard of Naaman’s plea for healing.  Elisha encouraged the king to allow him to come to experience the work of our living God.  When Elisha met Naaman, he instructed Naaman to bathe in the river to cure his leprosy.  Expecting a big show of healing, Naaman got mad that Elisha only gave him simple instructions.  One of his servants asked him, “if it would have been a difficult challenge, would you not have done it? Why not try the easy task?”  Naaman did as told by Elisha and was made clean of his leprosy.  Naaman returned home and went on to proclaim the God of Israel above all else. 

In a similar way, the lepers in the gospel are given similar instructions.  The 10 lepers are experiencing the same disease as Naaman, one that has already stripped them of whatever lives they used to live and sent them to live outside of town, outside of the temple, and outside of community.  Marginalized and ostracized, these lepers seek healing from Jesus.  They seek to be healed of their disease, but this healing is also a restoration to wholeness of life.  Just as Elisha sent Naaman to the river, Jesus sends the lepers off too.  Jesus sends the 10 lepers to find the priests for healing.  A simple task for them to follow through with.  One they may have tried before, but this ask for healing brings Jesus’ miraculous healing with it.  All 10 were healed, and the one who was the outsider to even this group of lepers, the Samaritan, returned to give thanks to Jesus. 

The 10 lepers and Naaman are suffering from a disease that gets them pushed out of town, destroying their relationships, their livelihoods, and their community.  It is a disease that debilitates their ability to live whole lives.  The climate crisis that we are in is doing the same to God’s whole people on earth.  The effects of global warming are like a disease on our planet that is pushing people from their homes, causing communities to become stressed under the effects, and debilitating our global ability to live whole and thriving lives. 

For Naaman, the instructions are simple for healing.  He fights back against the instructions that Elisha has given him.  He wants the instructions to be different.  For the 10 lepers, they seek out Jesus as one who can show them mercy and healing. 

As we experience this disease of climate change in our planet, we often hear of solutions offered in ways to care for our planet and restore healing and wholeness to life on earth.  But we often protest these instructions, like Naaman.  We talk of healing the planet through reduction of waste, decreased use of plastics, clean energy, renewable resources, and topsoil and runoff water protections.  But just as often, we protest these changes instead protect investments and money into business that destroys the planet, capitalizes on finite minerals and resources, and harms life on earth for the sake of gaining riches now. 

Like the 10 lepers, we turn to Jesus crying “Lord have mercy on us!”  But just as Jesus sent the lepers to the priest for healing, Jesus sends us to take action for our own healing too.  The instructions are provided for us, science is giving us answers and action.  Our call as disciples is to listen to these instructions for the healing of our planet and live them out for the sake of wholeness of life on our planet.

Psalm 111 is a praise psalm, offering up words of praise to God for all that God has done, for all the gifts of the earth and ways God provides abundantly to all of creation.  This psalm of praise credits all of creation to God’s works of love.  As we praise God for the glory of the world, we also need to look at the ways in which we have or have not taken good care of these gifts from God.  In preaching, the Psalm could nicely accompany a challenge to care for the planet harmed by climate change in how we care for the same creation that we praise God for creating.

In the same way that my toddler picks up sticks and points to the trees saying “broo(ken)”, we need to be looking to the world around us, seeing and pointing out the places where creation is broken, asking for and working for the healing of our planet.  I might not be able to replace that broken stick back on the tree trunk it fell from, but I certainly can take care of that tree so it remains healthy for the sake of the world.  We may not be able to undo all harm, but we can certainly take care of the planet that we have and bring healing to God’s good creation.