Elijah, the greatest prophet Israel had ever known, was preparing to move on. He knew instinctively that his days on this earth were numbered, and besides, the times, they were a changin’.
Here in the 9thcentury BCE, the Jewish realm that King David had united had broken up into northern and southern entities, the separate nations of Judah and Israel. Prophets were no longer called to fulfill their prophetic responsibilities in the old way, directly serving this, that, or the other king.
Now they operated outside of any official political or religious system. They were free agents, answerable only to themselves and God/Yahweh. Consequently, not only miracles and healings marked their careers. They also unabashedly called out God’s chosen people and their leaders for misbehavior and ignorance about their unique relationship with the Holy One.
When we meet Elijah this morning, he and his sidekick and pupil, Elisha, were traveling together to Gilgal. God had put the finger on Elisha some years earlier to be Elijah’s successor. Elijah had looked far and wide for him and somewhere between Sinai and Damascus had discovered Elisha ploughing a field with twelve yoke of oxen, quite an accomplishment in and of itself.
At that time, Elijah threw his mantle (or cloak) over Elisha’s shoulders. Having been given the age-old symbol of leadership, Elisha set aside a life of farming, accepted this unexpected call to the prophetic office, and set out with the great and glorious aging prophet. That is all we hear about Elisha in the Bible until today. However, we can presume that for the seven or eight years after he dropped his plough to follow Elijah, he was a star pupil, eager mentee, solicitous attendant, and devoted friend.
Today we learn something more about Elisha. He was darn stubborn, a characteristic illustrated by his determined unwillingness to let go of his teacher. Imagine this scene: The two of them are at a crossroads, and Elijah announces that here they will part ways. “Elisha, you stay. God has sent me on an errand to Bethel.”
Maybe Elijah wanted some time alone before he left this earth. We do not know, but Elisha would have none of it.
“Not on your life! I am not letting you out of my sight!” I picture Elijah rolling his eyes and shaking his tired head before he acquiesced.
Anyway, they both went to Bethel where a bunch of minor prophets started heckling Elisha, “Did you know that God is going to take your master away from you today?”
“Yes,” the young man replied, “I know it. But keep quiet, and for heaven’s sake, do not remind me. It is bad enough knowing without you telling me too.”
This same scenario and repartee played out two more times. Elijah the mentor cannot shake Elisha, his longtime mentee. Elijah says he needs to go to Jericho, and Elisha says he will not leave him, not on his life. It is like the song: “I can’t live if livin’ is without you”. And the chorus of prophets in Jericho chime in again with their same observation to which Elisha replies, “Shut up! Do not keep calling it to my attention.”
Finally, a third time, Elijah announces that God has ordered him to the Jordan River. Elisha swears again that they will always stick together, like peanut butter and jelly, like salt and pepper, like father and son. He categorically refuses to give Elijah the space he seeks and, like a puppy, follows him to the Jordan River. This time, however, fifty minor local prophets, curious and prone to gossip and most certainly busy bodies follow along to see what will happen next.
They watched as Elijah took off his mantle, rolled it up, and swatted the muddy water. As with Moses before him, the waters parted and, without missing a beat, Elijah walked across, not getting so much as a toe wet, and Elisha followed, puppy dog fashion.
It was then that Elijah turned to his successor and asked him, “OK, you have come this far. What can I do for you before I am taken from you, before I head off to heaven?” Old Elijah signed audibly and continued, “Ask anything.”
And Elisha screwed up all his hutzpah and requested that which had been on his mind for a long time. “Give me your spirit. Give me your passion and your zeal. In fact, make it a double. I will need all the help I can get. Give me your life repeated in my life. Give me a double portion of whatever you had going for you.”
Elisha pointed to the fifty prophets looking on curiously. “I do not want to be like them. I want to be like you.”
“That is a hard one!” said Elijah. “Spirit is only for God to give, not me. However, if you are watching when I am taken from you, I imagine you will get what you have asked for. But only if you are watching.”
And then it happened – another pyrotechnic display of divine extravagance – the flaming chariot, the horses of fire, the whirlwind - and Elisha’s desperate voice overshadowing the whole event. “My father, my father! Mighty defender of Israel! You are gone!”
And he was too. Elisha kept staring into the fire and the sun until the chariot that was between him and Elijah was only a flash of light and a speck in the blue cloudless sky. Tears streamed from the young man’s face as he ripped his clothing in two – quite a display of abject grief especially if that is about the only clothing you own.
All that was left of his teacher and friend was the mantle (the cloak) that had dropped from the chariot as it rose into the sky. Elisha picked it up and buried his face in it, soaking up the faint odor of Elijah in a vain attempt to hold on to him a little bit longer.
Then he looked at the mantle, fingered the roughness of its fabric, took a deep breath, and rolled it up exactly as he had seen his mentor do. Putting both Elijah and God to the test, he walked to the edge of the river, just where the water meets the land. He looked up once more to where Elijah had disappeared and cried out, “My God, my God, where are you?” And with the rolled up mantle, he hit the water and watched it splash upward, the droplets catching the sunlight like a prism.
I like to imagine at first that nothing happened, and there was only silence. God apparently was not going to show up. Or, at least, that is what a lot of people would have thought if they had been in Elisha’s sandals. However, Elisha, for his part, was undeterred and would not accept failure.
With unflagging faith in Elijah and God/Yahweh, and in great high hope, he took a deep breath – and continued to wait. In time, the waters parted, and – like Moses and Elijah before him - he walked on dry land to the opposite shore, confident now in the double dose of what? Power – maybe. Faith - certainly. Spirit, passion, and zeal – undoubtedly.
The fifty prophets who had been standing by all this time applauded heartily: Bravo! Bravo! And they called out to anyone who happened to be listening, “The spirit of Elijah lives in Elisha!” And they gathered around the young prophet, slapping him on the back, toasting and hugging him, welcoming and honoring him as one of their own – but recognizing that he was so much more.
Elisha went on to be Israel’s #1 prophet, offering advice and calling out kings. He created his own legacy of miracles – from healing Naaman, the Syrian military commander, of leprosy to resurrecting a dead child to feeding a hundred men with twenty loaves of barley bread. Who would have thought those future events possible when today we find Elisha staring hopelessly into the sky, so sure he was not fully prepared to take up Elijah’s mantle and be the leader he would eventually become?
Somewhere along the way, Elisha learned something very important. It is like the story ofa famous preacher who was a bit of a fraud. You see, his sermons were great but no one ever realized that in fact they had all been written by his staff assistant. Finally the assistant’s patience ran out, and one day the preacher was speaking to thousands of expectant listeners and at the bottom of page two read the stirring words, “And this, my friends, takes us to the very heart of the book of Habakkuk, which is…” only to turn to page three and see nothing but the dreaded words, “You’re on your own now.”
And so it was with Elisha. He was on his own. He could no longer depend on Elijah to put the finishing touches on a miracle. He could no longer pretend to lead but really be protected by Elijah’s shadow. He was on his own. Who he was, what he would become, and the kind of leader he would be depended on who he now chose to be – on that and on his faith in the Spirit that he believed resided - two fold - within him now.
Elisha did not have all the answers. The path was not clearly cut and easy to follow. In a sense, he set out on a wing and a prayer. One blogger I read this week wrote, “What if Elisha would have said, ‘before I try and be like Elijah, maybe I better join a 4 week study group on how to part the Jordan River with God’s power?’ But he had seen enough. He had learned enough. It was time now to transform that knowledge” into action, into ministry.
As Lutheran pastor Michael Coffey notes, “You can’t keep staring up waiting for the one who taught you and loved you and encouraged you to come back and make it all better. It’s like Elijah is somewhere beyond the sun, but if Elisha keeps staring at the sun, the fiery chariot in the sky, to see or wait for what’s beyond, he’ll just go blind. He has to start living and trusting in the spirit in himself.”
And so it is with us Christians in our post-modern world. The time is past to keep staring back at what was – full pews, Sunday best, burgeoning Sunday Schools populated by well-behaved children, youth groups whose teens were never exposed to marijuana, gender identity, or confusing sexual mores. The church, it is a changing’.
Like Elisha, we donot have all the answers. That is for sure. The path is not clearly cut and easy to follow either. Yet, in the midst of all this uncertainty, like Elisha, none of us can continue to be complacent. We cannot figure that someone else will pick up the mantle and lead us out of this quagmire of declining church participation and growing secularism in which we find ourselves. It is not only the pastor’s responsibility. The church belongs to all of us.
Taking up the mantle of leadership is scary business, to be sure. After all, we do not know the consequences of assuming that mantle. However, it is the only way that we will survive and move beyond this “failure to thrive” diagnosis that afflicts so many mainstream churches today. It will take all of us to follow God faithfully, to lead one another to where we believe the spirit is taking us, to experience failure to be sure but also to believe in the God-given success we will discover as we find our way.
Elisha had to swat the water of the Jordan River - and faithfully wait before the waters parted. It took courage to do that instead of giving up. We too must never be afraid of failure nor of taking a bold step toward where we believe is God’s guiding us.
All this of course, will involve trying out new ideas. And when someone tries something new, it is up to the rest of us to support and follow – no matter who the leader happens to be. This ministry business is not exclusively a “clergy thing”, you know.
We are all in this together, and our work is to build up this community into a place where we can deepen our relationship with Jesus and to live out all that he stood for in his ministry, a place where we can confidently invite others to be part of the Body of Christ as well. As Episcopal priest Mary Brennan Thorpe noted, “ Our work together, you and I, is to build this (church) in the Spirit, so that each person who walks through those doors for the first time will say, ‘I feel something here – something special – and I want to participate in this!’”
We are all in this together, so let’s think seriously about making this pact among ourselves: First, we will look forward as Elisha learned to do. Second, we will not look back except in gratitude for the double dose of the Spirit which I trust we have been given to make our church – perhaps small in numbers but with the potential to be big in compassion and forgiveness and welcome (which is what is really important) – to make our church all that God calls it to be. And third, like Elisha, each one of us will, with God’s help, pick up the mantle we have been offered and assume the role of leader as we have been challenged to do.
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