2 Kings 2.1-2,
6-14; Galatians 5.1, 13-25; Luke 9.51-62
At the heart of Christian life is the
decision, the decision to follow Jesus.
When you were confirmed in baptism you made promises to God, to
yourself, to the church. You promised to
turn from evil, to embrace Christ, and to give yourself over to God for
whatever God should will and wish for your life.
Baptism represents a crucial moment of
decision. A decision to accept God's
call on your life, a decision to be crucified with Christ to all that maims and
destroys, a decision to be raised with Christ to a higher mode of being all
together, a life more alive. But being
baptised is no guarantee that the decision will hold. It is God's pledge to you, and yours to
God. But, just like a marriage vow, the
pledge of baptism is not worth the paper it's written on unless the parties to
the vow choose, and re-choose, and re-choose again to be faithful to what they
have promised.
But having made the choice, the choosing
is not over. For having arrived at Bethel, Elijah then announces that he will be moving on to
Jericho. Again Elisha is confronted with the
choice: should I stay or should I
go? Should I stay here in the safety of
my brother prophets, or should I follow this man into whatever strange paths
God may have planned? The allusion to Jericho as a destination
gives us a little clue about the kind of plans God has in mind for Elisha. He will follow after the way of Joshua, the
man who crossed the Jordan
to take possession of the land
of Canaan for the Hebrew
people. His mission will be to close
down the rule of might and establish the law of justice, to oppose the worship
of idols and champion the worship of Yahweh.
Again, we read that Elisha chooses to follow his master.
But even then the choosing is not over! When Elijah announces that he will move on
toward the Jordan river, Elisha must choose
once more. Will he take on the mantle
not only of Jacob and Joshua, but also of Moses, the one who confronted the
power of Pharaoh and led the people to freedom through the Red
Sea? Will he be the one who confronts the political powers of his
own time with the message of God? Will
he be the courageous one, the man who holds the law of God to be higher than
any other power, even that of the civil authorities? Will he be the one who is willing to lay down
even his own life for God's cause?
Well, the penultimate moment of decision
arrives when, having crossed the Jordan River,
Elijah is preparing to take his leave.
His life's work now completed, Elijah asks his best and brightest
disciple whether there is anything that Elisha would ask of him. Now. I
want us to pause for a moment at this point.
Because I really think that the full import of what Elisha says here is
seldom understood by preachers. And
perhaps I am one of them. But listen to
what Elisha says: "Master, I would
have a double portion of your spirit".
Now most of us, I think, are inclined to hear those words as, in some
sense heroic, the appropriate response of a pupil towards his dying
master. Many of us imagine, here, the
heir apparent taking on the mantle of his mentor in some kind of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade kind
of scene. But what WAS this spirit of
which they spoke? And what were it's
effects?
The spirit that motivated and empowered
Elijah was, of course, the Spirit of God.
In the parlance of the Hebrew Bible, this spirit was 'ruach', a mighty wind which came
sweeping into a person's soul and carried them off to danger and torment for
the sake of Yahweh. I repeat, swept them
off to danger and torment.
In asking Elijah for a double-portion of his spirit, Elisha effectively
petitions God for a life like his master's, only more so: a nomadic life where no place is really home;
a political life confronting the powers that be; a life which often sinks into
depression because the people are deaf to God's word. Hear what I am saying! The coming of God's Spirit makes a man a
fool. It makes him turn his face towards
Jerusalem,
where his enemies are waiting for him.
It makes him preach a gospel of peace and compassion which makes
absolutely no sense in an economy where the way to security is to step on
someone else's head. It sets him apart for
a life of financial insecurity and social ambiguity. If you don't believe me, think of Martin
Luther King, or Oscar Romero, or the martyrs of Timor. Or, indeed, think of Jesus Christ.
'Well', I hear you ask, 'if that's what
the life of a prophet is about, then why did Elisha take it upon himself? And why should I take it upon myself? I don't want to be a prophet!' Well, the bad news is that if you've been
baptised into Christ then you've received the very Spirit which Elijah
received! God has therefore called you
to be his prophet in the world.
Ironically, the good news is exactly same. . . that anyone who has been baptised into Christ
has received the very Spirit which Elijah received.
Confused?
What I mean is this. When the
Spirit comes upon the church, she ordains us for a difficult mission, but she
also imparts those intangibles which the apostle Paul calls 'love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness and discipline'. Not apart from the danger and difficulty,
but in the very midst of them. That's the mystery of the Christian God and
the Christian way of life. Our God is a crucified
God, a God of love who lays down God’s life for our sake. So, therefore, is any life given over to the
way of that God in the world, the way of love.
Yet, at one and the same time, a life vulnerable to God's sufferings
also opens onto the wide open spaces of contentment and peace which also belong
to God. Somehow the two go
together. Somehow, by living differently
within this bleared, smeared world, we become signs and sacraments of a
different kind of world: a world in which the weak are not exploited for
profit; a world in which people are valued and cared for simply because they
are people. Therefore, despite the crap
we cop, God also gives us what can only be called a 'mystical apprehension' of
that other world, even as we live in the midst of this one.
So let us return
to where we began: the decision. The
decision to follow Christ is one which needs to be made over and over
again. In the beginning we think we see the benefits of Christian
life pretty clearly. All looks pretty
rosy, and so we dive in. Just like when
we first fall in love. But when the
tough times come, when our faith puts us in an awkward position—socially,
commercially, politically—we experience the real cost of faith, and so many of
us wonder whether we've made the right decision.
If that's you
this morning I can only address your uncertainty out of the experience of my
own faith, and the testimony of faithful people down through the ages. I testify that's its only when I was forced
to re-choose the way of Jesus in the midst of a difficult time that I actually
found out what love, joy and peace were all about. It's only when I was at the brink of tossing
my faith away that I gained a glimpse of that beatific vision which makes it
all worthwhile. So that now, when I pray
that prayer of the church that we will recite at the end of our service –
Wesley’s ‘Covenant Prayer’ - I often find myself weeping. Not so much with the grief and the pain of a
prophet, but with an inexplicable joy at the sheer gratuity of God's love.
This sermon was first preached at St Luke's Uniting Church, Mount Waverley, in 2004.
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