“Now there were four men with leprosy “at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? Then they said to each other, “we are not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace” (2 KINGS 7:3, 9).

OFTEN, we hear people in conversation use such expressions as: “I am not selfish”, I do not like selfishness or people who are selfish in all their dealings” among others. To that extent, it suggests that selfishness is not a virtue that should be possessed.

According to Oxford Concise Dictionary 10th Edition, the word selfish is an adjective, but when used as selfishness becomes a noun. Ordinarily, it means: “concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure at the expense of consideration for others”. The four lepers in our text today would not want to profit themselves alone, but would like others to benefit like themselves even though they were rejected and separated because of their leprosy.

Following from the Mosaic Law, lepers were not allowed in the city, but were to depend on charity outside the gate (Leviticus 13:45, 46; Numbers 5:1-4). Because of the famine and the presence of the Aramean army, their situation was desperate. The lepers discovered the deserted camp and realised that their lives had been spared. At first, they kept the good news to themselves, forgetting their fellow citizens, who were starving in the city. But when they realised themselves and because they did not want to be selfish, they decided to take the good tidings to the royal palace, if only it could be a way of affecting others positively. They could not hold the news to themselves and by that became free from selfishness.

Today, this is a bane both in the political and religious circles. We have scores of selfish people. This category of persons thinks deeply more about themselves, their families and even children yet unborn. With regards to allocation or sharing of resources, appointments, positions or allied things, they only think of what could benefit them and not the common good. Is the noise about corruption not about those who nibbled and gobbled into resources that were meant for the common good? No matter how we look at it, some persons have gotten more than expected at the expense of others. And that is why the roads, electricity, unemployment, poverty and youth restiveness among others can scarcely be attended to. Until and when people realise that our Common Wealth is for all and not for some persons who appropriate them for themselves, can things be better for us as a nation?

It also important that we observe that even the Church of God is not spared from this attitude of selfishness. There are some, as long as it will favour them and their cronies, do not bother about others. Of course, they become clannish and indulge in ethnic jingoism. Our Bible told us of how four lepers were able to affect the lives of others by bringing the good tidings to them, which eventually brought to them economic relief in such a dangerous time. Were these lepers to be from Nigeria and by extension some of our present-day Churches, they could have retained the information to themselves. And by this retention, they would have been the only people to survive the desperate situation.

After all, it was said of them, “The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them they returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also”, (2 Kings 7:8).

Therefore, as we go through this year under God, may it be our prayer and resolve not to be selfish. May we not be pre occupied with our own pleasure, while neglecting those around us. Yes, we like the lepers should not “wait until morning”.

Ven. Ernest Onuoha
Rector, Ibru International Ecumenical
Centre,Agbarha-Otor, Delta State.
www.ibrucentre.org