She was a young, enslaved girl. We don’t know her name, but we do know that she was a prisoner of war. We can only imagine the vulnerability, loss and trauma she must have endured as a displaced person – an enslaved refugee in a foreign land.
The story is told in 2 Kings 5. Naaman, a commander in the Aramean army, has just won a significant military victory over the people of Israel. As part of the spoils of war, he has seized a young girl, forcing her to serve as a servant to his wife.
But now Naaman, the one who enslaved her, is ill. And the young girl knows exactly what is needed to cure him.
This is a moment of truth – living among the people who shattered her dreams, severed her relationships, destroyed her family and took away her possessions, freedom and cultural identity, she faces a profound choice.
How will she respond to those who have threatened her well-being?
Some 500 years ago, Ulrich Zwingli was faced with the same question: How should he respond to those threatening his and his city’s well-being? The circumstances were very different. He was the leader of the Reformation in Zurich and pastor in this very church.
In the spring of 1529, Catholic authorities were threatening to crush the Reformation in Zurich. Worried that his reforms were about to collapse – that the advances of the Gospel would be stopped – a frustrated Zwingli wrote an urgent appeal to the City Council, urging them to mobilize an army.
In a letter to the Council, Zwingli included a phrase that would later become a slogan of the Swiss Reformation. “For God’s sake,” wrote Zwingli, “do something courageous!”
For Zwingli, the focus was clear: courage, in the face of the enemies of the gospel, meant mobilizing for war.
What does courage look like when we face difficult choices? That question is as relevant today as it was 500 years ago or in the 9th century before Christ.
By all accounts, Naaman’s servant girl should have remained silent. After all, she was young; she was a woman; she was an Israelite; and she was enslaved. She had no right to speak.
Moreover, Naaman was a Gentile and an oppressor – reasons enough to be hated by the Israelites. And his skin disease made him even more impure from the perspective of Jewish law.
Nothing gave her the authority to speak, and yet she did. She found the courage to act in a way that transcended her identity as a victim… she found the courage to respond with compassion and even love.
“There is a prophet in Samaria,” she said – the land of your enemies, “who has the spiritual power to restore you to health.”
Courage is precisely what victims need to find their voice and resist the silence that others want to impose upon them.
Yet courage – especially in response to our abusers, perpetrators, or enemies – comes in many forms.
For Zwingli, courage in the face of the gospel’s enemies meant mobilizing for war.
For some Christians, courage often includes the expectation of punitive justice, demanding that perpetrators pay for their actions and suffer fair retribution for their violent crimes.
For many political leaders, courage includes righteous retaliation against enemies.
Some people demand justice in ways that close the door to the possibility of forgiveness and transformation for the oppressor, ensuring that the cycles of violence will only continue into the next generation.
Jesus, however, offered a different model. He did not deny or ignore the terrible violence, oppression and injustice of his day. But neither did he seek retribution or revenge. In Luke 4, immediately after announcing his ministry in the synagogue by reading from Isaiah 61, Jesus mentions the story of Naaman and his miraculous healing.
Though he doesn’t name the young girl, we recognize in her actions something that goes to the very heart of the gospel. Jesus was never afraid to confront injustice; however, the justice he preached opens the door for the transformation of the oppressor. In the Gospels, justice is not retributive; it does not give the oppressors what they deserve, but rather what they need: truth, love, compassion, the possibility of transformation and forgiveness.
In the story from 2 Kings, the young girl refuses to see the vulnerability of her oppressor as an opportunity for vengeance or retribution. Instead, her voice embodies hope and inclusivity for someone who has caused her incredible harm.
She had the courage to love, offering her perpetrator what he could not obtain through his power: healing, freedom and the possibility of a new beginning. She gave Naaman not what he deserved but what he needed: the chance to be transformed.
That is love beyond human comprehension.
Five hundred years ago, a new movement in the church in Zurich and throughout other regions of Europe found courage in their relationship with Jesus, in his life and teachings, his death and resurrection, affirming that God’s call to loving your enemy is not “idealistic” or “naïve.” For them, the courage to love, made possible by the work of the Holy Spirit, was the only path to a new humanity. This movement came to be known as Anabaptism.
That is the Christian tradition we are commemorating here today. Unfortunately, Zwingli and other European church leaders of that era perceived the Anabaptist movement as a threat and responded with violence and persecution.
For God’s sake, do something courageous!
Early in the morning of October 11, 1531, Zwingli led a group of Zurich soldiers to a battlefield just outside the city to face the Catholic army threatening his vision of a reformed Zurich. Almost immediately, they were overwhelmed. As they attempted to retreat, Zwingli was killed, along with at least 500 other citizens of Zurich.
Today, as we commemorate the memory of the early Anabaptists, I invite us to ask ourselves – both as individuals and as churches: what does it mean to “do something courageous, for God’s sake”?
Empowered by the Holy Spirit, can we find the courage to break cycles of violence?
Photo: Following the “disruption,” César García, MWC general secretary, preaches on The Courage to Love/Preshit Rao
Can we directly confront our past, not to affirm and revisit our victimization, but as a way to heal our wounds and those of others, and to mend fractured relationships?
Can we become beacons of hope in a world where fragmentation and division seem to be advancing on every side?
Can we envision our future pointing toward a new creation, where compassion and love open the door to new beginnings?
The courage to love – actively, imaginatively and vulnerably – is more than a technique for conflict resolution; it is a deeply embedded spirituality, a remarkably original strategy. In a world where evil begets evil and violence generates more violence, love has the power to break those chains. Love has the potential to heal both the one who loves and the one who is loved.
Christian friends – following in the footsteps of Jesus, let us together have the courage to love, for God’s sake!
César García is general secretary of Mennonite World Conference. Originally from Colombia, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.